I recently purchased a LilyGo T-Deck board to use as a Meshtastic mobile node. Intrigued by some videos I found, I decided to purchase a GPS module and install it. It wasn’t difficult, all you need is a little bit of skill, a soldering iron and, of course, a compatible GPS module.
The GPS module
Let’s start from the GPS module. I was looking for a cheap module, I consider the GPS option a nice to have feature so I deicided to invest a low budget. I choose the FlyFishRC M10 Mini and bought it on Aliexpress: FlyFishRC M10 Mini. There are many others but this one was easier to find.
I did not remove the connector on the board but soldered the wires directly onto the exposed pins. The VCC and the GND must be connected to the VCC and GND connector on the TDeck while the TX and RX connector must be crossed so the TX from the GPS has to be connected to the RX on TDeck and the RX from the GPS has to be connected to the TX on the board.
Remember to switch off you device before work on it!
My (self - printed) encloser (here the link to the STL files) has a space for a GPS antenna so I put there the circuit.
Configure Meshtastic to use GPS
GPS configuration can be easy done from the Mestastic webapp by setting to ’enabled’ the GPS MODE parameters in ‘position’ page under the ‘radio config’ menu. Remember also to adjust the ‘Broadcast Interval’ to 3600 sec (down in the same page). It is also advisable to set the ‘Enable Smart Position’ parameter to true. To access to the Meshtastic configuration via Bluetooth remember to reboot the TDeck to the BaseUI
Final step
It’s now time to switch back on the device. Going to the GPS view after a (long) while, you will see the GPS coordinate and the number of satellite received will be higher than zero. The module I used takes a considerable amount of time to fix up the position, this proccess will be faster if you are outside. It’s now time to reboot to the MUI and start using the new feature.
I am using Meshtastic software version 2.7.15 and have not encountered any issues with the GPS module I chose so far.
UPDATE Firmware 2.7.16 improves GPS managment.