Interfacing GPS, cam, and COM ports

COM/Foretrex adapter I built myself an adapter to connect my Garmin Foretrex 101 GPS receiver to the serial port (much cheaper than buying the cable). Thanks to GPSLib4J and the RXTX serial port API I now have real easy access to GPS information!

It took some figuring, though: it took me some time to realize that

• the GPSLib4J sample code expects the Java Comm API
• the RXTX library (at least the version I tried) comes with the Java Comm API included but
  
• the Java Comm package name has been changed to gnu.io, therefore
• the sample code has to be modified and
• in Eclipse, the GPSLib4J user library I created needs the "native library location" path set to the directory the RXTX DLLs reside in, otherwise the runtime will complain later.
  

But then the self-made adapter and the sample code worked like a charm. I was pleased to find out the Java Media Framework (JMF) API allows for capturing web cam images, though I didn't try that out yet.

Since the RXTX API allows for accessing COM ports, interfacing the Basic Stamp shouldn't be too hard either (touch wood).