[time-nuts] u-blox "naked" chips - anyone brave enough to try them?

Attila Kinali attila at kinali.ch
Tue Jun 14 19:38:06 EDT 2016


Moin,

Some of you might know that the u-blox chips are available in small
quantities and for quite cheap too. Just go to aliexpress or taobao
and type in "UBX-G7020" or "UBX-M8030" and you will get plenty of
results. My guess is, that these chips are leftovers from cellphone
production that get sold off close at wholesale price (I've seen
that with other chips as well). So it is likely that these are 
actually genuine chips.

Now, the documentation for those chips is not that readily available.
But fret not! Some of it can be found if you look hard enough. At least
for the G7020. I think, this information should be enough for anyone
who wants to build his own GPSDO with Trimble like oscillator control
(ie that the reference oscillator of the GPS module is steered directly).

The UBX-M8030-KT, which would be a timing chip and thus for sure
support the RAW data commandos, is unfortunately quite google proof.
At least I couldn't find any documentation for those but the official
public one provided by u-blox. I would guess, that the pin out is very
similar if not the same, but without guarante.

(I know that least the UBX-M8030-KT datasheet UBX-13001634 is floating
around, but So far i was not able to get hold of it, due to insufficient
chinese language skills)

As for the UBX-G7020, you can find the following documents:


UBX-G7020-KT/KA u-blox 7 GPS/GNSS chips Data Sheet GPS.G7-HW-12001
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ArdentHeavyIndustries/straightedge-gps-firmware/master/Datasheets/UBX-G7020-Kx_DataSheet_(GPS%20G7-HW-12001)_Confidential.pdf.pdf

u-blox 7 GPS/GNSS chips Hardware Integration Manual GPS.G7-HW-10003
https://www.olimex.com/Products/Modules/GPS/MOD-GPS/resources/UBX-G7020_HardwareIntegrationManual_-GPS.G7-HW-10003-_Confidential.pdf


So, if anyone would want to give those a try, let us know.
I'm sure many here would be interested.


				Attila Kinali

-- 
Malek's Law:
        Any simple idea will be worded in the most complicated way.


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