Batboard

I have 4 devices in a police car that use GPS, they all have their own antennas and wanted to know if there is a way that I can use one antenna to provide signal to all of the devices. The car is starting to look like a porcupine and I am starting to run out of real estate for on the rooftop. Does anyone have any Ideas?

MDT
APX7500
In car camera (DVR)
ALPR system

I did a Google for "GPS Splitter" and had many hits. Here are a couple.

http://www.gpssource.com/products/gps-splitter/137
http://www.instockwireless.com/gps-spli ... 10-fab.htm

Good info.. Thanks RFguy!

Has anyone used any of these? Had any success or issues?

motojoe1 wrote:I have 4 devices in a police car that use GPS, they all have their own antennas and wanted to know if there is a way that I can use one antenna to provide signal to all of the devices. The car is starting to look like a porcupine and I am starting to run out of real estate for on the rooftop. Does anyone have any Ideas?

MDT
APX7500
In car camera (DVR)
ALPR system

Part of your answer will depend on if any of the devices use an active antenna. Then you will have to find an active antenna that will work with how ever you end up splitting the signal from the other devices. What the ideal item would be is an active GPS antenna splitter that has a built in amp to compensate for the loss of any splitter being used.

Never had to look for a GPS multi coupler, so can't help in pointing anything out.

Jim

I made my own splitters out of four port CATV splitters that were rated for 2Ghz operation. I replaced the 75 ohm term resistors with 330 ohm. All ports pass DC. Had to buy FM to BNCF adapters from Pasternack. Works like a champ (*) with 30ft of RG58 to the roof, and 10ft RG58 to each DUT.

* One gps board by itself has a tough time acquiring because of the DC bridge in the splitter. Two or more boards give the active antenna more than enough current to operate correctly. On the plus side, it helps me ferret out the boards with low antenna drive, and poor correlators.

PS - I've used GPS Source stuff in the link above. They're great to work with.

If any of your devices use a serial connection via software, you can use one GPS (a-la MDT) and feed that data with a software splitter. There are a couple of good ones as well as a free one out there (xPort). If they accept USB, GPS Gate can also output via hardware serial ports and USB IIRC.

you guys that made a homemade one, how are you stopping dc power from feeding back to other devices? Active antennaes need power to run them

I'm not. But, I'm testing all the same series of gps boards, and they all provide have current limited dc.