HiLetgo VK172 G-Mouse USB GPS/GLONASS USB GPS Receiver for Windows 10/8/7/VISTA/XP

As an Amateur Radio Operator (Ham Radio), location reporting is very useful as we support public events, search & rescue, disaster response, etc. This wonderful little dongle makes position reporting simple and easy. Based on my personal use, it works on Apple IOS (MacBook Pro 2015) and on Windows 10 (a virtual machine running via Parallels Software on my MacBook). I have also used it with other Apple & Windows, GPS-aware apps, and everything seems to get along and work fine.

Just be aware that this dongle provides GPS information only. What you can do with that data is up to you and other apps you may have that can use GPS data. No software is provided with this dongle…it is intended to simply be a source of GPS data.

When used with GPS-aware apps like Winlink (ham radio software that allows emails to be sent/received via the Internet and via radio signals), position reporting is super simple with this little dongle. GPS coordinates are acquired then other apps like Winlink pass them along to other location tracking software and apps like APRS.fi. This dongle opens up a world of capabilities. It also seems to work well even in interior environments (as within our home) so don’t let the small size fool you. It does work.

For the money and small size, this is a great inexpensive investment in GPS technology that has practical real-world uses.

Summary: it works on Windows 10 and raspberry Pi, and is reasonably sensitive. It will take some time and technical ability to get it going as there is no included documentation. Glosnass can not be used simultaneously with GPS/WAAS so it’s of limited use for most. Build quality is okay, don’t abuse it and you will be fine.
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This review is long and aimed at technical users. The VK172 does not include any instructions, software, drivers, etc. It utilizes the u-blox 7020 chip and outputs a stream of standard NMEA-0183 messages readable by most GPS software. When utilizing u-blox u-center software, special configuration messages (ubx) can be sent/received (also possible without the software, just not as easy).

For initial testing I used Windows 10. After plugging it in, it was assigned a serial comm port without needing to install any drivers. Others have reported needing to install Windows drivers so it depends on what drivers you already have installed.

I used device manager to find the correct comm port number, then used PuTTY terminal software to connect to it. It immediately showed the NMEA sentences streaming by, it didn’t matter what the baud rate was set to, although 4800 is the NMEA standard. I next downloaded the UBLOX “u-center for windows” software to verify functionality. Once connected, I saw satellites start to appear and within a couple of minutes I had a position lock and the blue led started to regularly flash. This was indoors away from windows. After a while it picked up a WAAS signal and was receiving 8 to 12 GPS satellites.

After 20 minutes or so I felt the device, it was barely warm, a good sign. I then tested with Google Earth in realtime GPS mode and it worked just fine.

The following morning I tried it again at the same location, it took nearly 5 minutes to get a 3D fix. Part of this may be day vs night, as night time RF signals get less interference or perhaps it didn’t retain the ephemeris data. The PDOP at night was around 2, during the day it was over 3-4 at the same location. When moving the receiver close to a window, eventually two WAAS satellites were picked up and several more satellites. The daytime PDOP near the window eventually improved to 1.3-1.8. A full cold start (initiated through u-center) in this location took 5 minutes and 20 seconds to get an initial fix. A hot start took less than 3 seconds. A warm start took 31 seconds.

Although it’s advertised as working with Glonass satellites, it’s not too useful in reality. When looking at the configuration through the u-center software, it appears Glonass isn’t enabled. The u-blox 7 documentation states that either GPS/SBAS/QZSS or Glosnass can be enabled, but not both. After unchecking “enable” for all other systems, I could enable Glonass and it did work. GPS is generally better than Glosnass, so the only advantage would be if it receives both simultaneously. Since it doesn’t, there is little point in bothering with Glosnass.

After playing with Windows, I did a quick test on a raspberry Pi 3. No driver was needed and a serial port was created as /dev/ttyACM0 which I connected to using putty and I saw the expected NMEA strings streaming by. Gpsd also seemed to work after a bit of effort.

I next took a look inside. The notable components are the ublox G7020-KT GPS chip, a ft25h04s 4Mbit serial flash, a small battery like component, and the patch antenna (note- the antenna is on the side with the LED so best reception occurs with that side up). The battery (or supercapacitor) is approximately 4.8mm x 1.5 mm, and measured just over 1 volt. The markings are obscured, but I think it’s an XH414 which is rechargeable and it’s likely only used to retain the ephemeris data for a hot/warm start. The soldering was good, except for the USB connector’s mechanical contact points which had not flowed properly (often an issue due to the connector acting as a heat sink), the signal pins were fine. I touched up the weak solder joints, but not really necessary.

Overall a decent unit as long you don’t need Glonass and GPS simultaneously.

This works great on Linux (Beaglebone, Raspberry Pi, PC Ubuntu) with gpsd and on Windows with mapping apps like Marble and Google Earth. After the initial cold start which took under a minute, It takes only seconds to get a fix even after disconnecting.