Measure Bike Speed with PocketCHIP and GPS Receiver

I won a #FreePocketCHIP last Christmas. It is a "pocketable" Linux computer running Debian, and has one USB 2.0 host port. Apart from adding a speaker and playing PICO-8 games, PocketCHIP's form factor and hackability make it suitable for many other projects. Today, I'm going to find out how fast I am riding a bike, with the PocketC.H.I.P and VK-172 GPS receiver.

Meet the GPS Receiver

The GPS receiver I have is the VK-172 G-mouse USB GPS receiver (paid link). It has a small form factor, and connects to the PocketCHIP via USB. When connected, it identifies itself as a USB device with ID 1546:01a7, and shows up as a serial port:

chip@chip-c:~$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 008: ID 1546:01a7 U-Blox AG
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
chip@chip-c:~$ ls -l /dev/ttyACM0
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 166, 0 Jul 27 19:16 /dev/ttyACM0