Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

What is the best, but cheapest WAAS-capable GPS receiver that you can get? The project on this website, "Tracking Geomagnetic Storms in the Ionosphere," says that you can get one for $40 - $80, but I haven't seen one.

The project doesn't link to a specific one, and we don't have recommendations. As products have changed, it may be that the price estimate on this project needs to be updated. I've filed this with our team for review.

Amy
Science Buddies

[Project url: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ionosphere ]

Hi - adding to Amy's reply, a few things:

1. This project was originally written in the mid-2000's, so just from inflation, the type of device it's referring to has probably increased in price and may now fall outside that $40-80 range.
2. That being said, when searching on Amazon I'm seeing a lot of USB GPS devices that are pretty cheap. Obviously they aren't standalone and would require a laptop to run, but that might be a good option. You would need to check the product descriptions to see if they are WAAS-enabled.
3. There are plenty of GPS apps for cell phones, but a quick search is showing me that cell phones use data from cell towers to supplement GPS instead of WAAS. This may be worth looking into more - i.e. are there any phones with WAAS support that you can turn on/off, or could you possibly adapt the project to use cell towers instead.

As Amy said, unfortunately we don't have a specific recommendation for a certain GPS unit, but we hope this helps.

Ben