NAME

       gpsprof - profile a GPS and gpsd, plotting latency information

SYNOPSIS

       gpsprof [OPTIONS] [server[:port[:device]]]

       gpsprof -h

       gpsprof -V

DESCRIPTION

       gpsprof performs accuracy, latency, skyview, and time drift profiling on a GPS. It emits to standard
       output a GNUPLOT program that draws one of several illustrative graphs. It can also be told to emit the
       raw profile data.

       Information from the default spatial plot it provides can be useful for characterizing position accuracy
       of a GPS.

       gpsprof uses instrumentation built into gpsd. It can read data from a local or remote running gpsd. Or it
       can read data from a saved logfile.

       gpsprof is designed to be lightweight and use minimal host resources. No graphics subsystem needs to be
       installed on the host running gpsprof. Simply copy the resultant plot file to another host to be rendered
       with gnuplot(1).

       gpsprof does not require root privileges, but it will run fine as root.

OPTIONS

       The -f, --formatter option sets the plot type. Currently the following plot types are defined:

       space
           Generate a scatterplot of fixes and plot probable error circles. This data is only meaningful if the
           GPS is held stationary while gpsprof is running. Various statistics about the fixes are listed at the
           bottom. This is the default plot type.

       polar
           Generate a heat map of reported satellite Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) using polar coordinates. A
           colored dot is plotted for each satellite seen by the GPS. The color of dot corresponds to the SNR of
           the satellite. The dots are plotted by azimuth and elevation. North, azimuth 0 degrees, is at the top
           of the plot. Directly overhead, elevation of 90 degrees, is plotted at the center. Useful for
           analyzing the quality of the skyview as seen by the GPS.

       polarunused
           Similar to the polar plot, but only unused satellites are plotted. Useful for seeing which parts of
           the antenna skyview are obstructed, degraded, below the GPS elevation mask, or otherwise rejected.

       polarused
           Similar to the polar plot, but only satellites used to compute fixes are plotted. Useful for seeing
           which parts of the antenna skyview are being used in fixes.

       time
           Plot delta of system clock (NTP corrected time) against GPS time as reported in PPS messages. The X
           axis is sample time in seconds from the start of the plot. The Y axis is the system clock delta from
           GPS time.

       instrumented
           Plot instrumented profile. Plots various components of the total latency between the GPS’s fix time
           and when the client receives the fix.

       For purposes of the description, below, start-of-reporting-cycle (SORC) is when a device’s reporting
       cycle begins. This time is detected by watching to see when data availability follows a long enough
       amount of quiet time that we can be sure we’ve seen the gap at the end of the sensor’s previous
       report-transmission cycle. Detecting this gap requires a device running at 9600bps or faster.

       Similarly, EORC is end-of-reporting-cycle; when the daemon has seen the last sentence it needs in the
       reporting cycle and ready to ship a fix to the client.

       The components of the instrumented plot are as follows:

       Fix latency
           Delta between GPS time and SORC.

       RS232 time
           RS232 transmission time for data shipped during the cycle (computed from character volume and baud
           rate).

       Analysis time
           EORC, minus SORC, minus RS232 time. The amount of real time the daemon spent on computation rather
           than I/O.

       Reception time
           Shipping time from the daemon to when it was received by gpsprof.

       Because of RS232 buffering effects, the profiler sometimes generates reports of ridiculously high
       latencies right at the beginning of a session. The -m option lets you set a latency threshold, in
       multiples of the cycle time, above which reports are discarded.

       uninstrumented
           Plot total latency without instrumentation. Useful mainly as a check that the instrumentation is not
           producing significant distortion. The X axis is sample time in seconds from the start of the plot.
           The Y axis is latency in seconds. It only plots times for reports that contain fixes; staircase-like
           artifacts in the plot are created when elapsed time from reports without fixes is lumped in.

       -?, -h, --help
           Print a usage message and exit.

       -d FILE, --dumpfile FILE
           Dump the plot data, without attached gnuplot(1) code, to a specified file for post-analysis.

       -d LVL, --debug LVL
           Sets debug level.

       -l FILE, --logfile FILE
           Dump the raw JSON reports collected from the device to the specified FILE.

       -n SEC, --wait SEC
           Sets the number of seconds to sample. The default is 100. Most GPS are configured to emit one fix per
           second, so 100 samples would then span 100 seconds.

       -r, --redo
           Replot from a JSON logfile (such as -l, logfile produces) on standard input. Both -n, --wait and -l,
           --logfile options are ignored when this one is selected.

       -S STR, --subtitle STR
           Sets a text string to be included in the plot as a subtitle. This will be below the title.

       -t STR, --title STR
           Sets a text string to be the plot title. This will replace the default title.

       -T TERM, --terminal TERM
           Specify the terminal type setting in the gnuplot(1) code. Typical usage is "-T png", or "-T pngcairo"
           telling gnuplot(1) to write a PNG file. The default terminal is "x11".

           Different installations of gnuplot(1) will support different terminal types. Different terminal types
           may work better for you than other ones. "-T png" will generate PNG images. Use "-T jpeg" to generate
           JPEG images. "-T pngcairo" often works best, but is not supported by some distributions. The same
           terminal type may work very differently on different distributions.

           To see which terminal types your copy of gnuplot(1) supports:

           gnuplot -e "set terminal"

ARGUMENTS

       By default, clients collect data from the local gpsd daemon running on localhost, using the default GPSD
       port 2947. The optional argument to any client may override this behavior: [server[:port[:device]]]

       For further explanation, and examples, see the ARGUMENTS section in the gps(1) man page

SIGNALS

       Sending SIGUSR1 to a running instance causes it to write a completion message to standard error and
       resume processing. The first number in the startup message is the process ID to signal.

EXAMPLES

       To display the graph, use gnuplot(1) . Thus, for example, to display the default spatial scatter plot on
       your x11 display, do this:

           gpsprof | gnuplot -persist

       To generate an image file:

           gpsprof -T png | gnuplot > image.png

       To generate a polar plot, and save the GPS data for further plots:

           gpsprof -f polar -T jpeg -l polar.json | gnuplot > polar.png

       Then to make the matching polarused and polarunused plots and pngs from the just saved the GPS data:

           gpsprof -f polarused -T jpeg -r < polar.json > polarused.plot
           gnuplot < polarused.plot > polarused.png
           gpsprof -f polarunused -T jpeg -r < polar.json > polarunused.plot
           gnuplot < polarunused.plot  > polarunused.png

       You can split the pieces up, so you do not need to run the entire chain at once. To allow tweaking
       settings without recollecting all the data. Like this:

           gpspipe -w -x 3600 ::/dev/ttyS0 > MY.raw
           gpsdecode  < MY.raw > MY.json
           gpsprof -r -T pngcairo -t "MY Title" < MY.json > MY.plt
           gnuplot MY.plt > MY.png
           display MY.png

       The gpspipe saves one hour of raw data from the local gpsd device /dev/ttyS0 into MY.raw. It will take
       one hour to complete.

       The gpsdecode converts the raw data in MY.raw into a gpsd JSON file called MY.json.

       The gpsprof reads MY.json and creates a gnuplot program in MY.plt.

       The gnuplot executes the program in MY.plt and creates the image file MY.png.

       The display program paints MY.png on your desktop.

RETURN VALUES

       0
           on success.

       1
           on failure

SEE ALSO

       gpsd(8), display(1), gnuplot(1), gpsctl(1), gps(1), libgps(3), libgpsmm(3), gpsprof(1), gpsfake(1).

RESOURCES

       Project web site: https://gpsd.io/

COPYING

       This file is Copyright 2013 by the GPSD project
       SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-clause

AUTHOR

       Eric S. Raymond

GPSD, Version 3.25                                 2023-01-10                                         GPSPROF(1)