A GPS receiver is a positional sensor. It receives data from the GPS satellites in the sky and compute your position (latitude and longitude) on earth. It can also compute your altitude, speed and other data.
This GPS module uses a u-blox NEO-6M chip. It has an active ceramic antenna on-board, to get GPS signal on its own. Aditionally, this antenna can be disconnected from the tilt-and-swivel IPX/u.FL connector and you can connect other active external antenna (sold separately) to it. This is useful for connecting a longer/larger antenna so that you can operate the GPS indoor and still get a good signal. Most external GPS antenna uses SMA connector, so you'll need an SMA to IPX adapter cable.
Compatible with both 3.3V and 5V systems, you can connect it easily to the serial pins of a Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black or Arduino. It can also work with Windows OS. For this, you need a USB to serial converter like PL2303TA or FT232R based converter.
This GPS module can work with gpsd - a GPS service deamon which is also the de facto GPS API on Linux. gpsd listens to the stream of data from the GPS module and publish it in a much simpler format. This saves you a lot of trouble from having to interprete the raw data yourself.
Pin-out:
VCC - connect to 3.3V or 5V voltage source
GND - connect to ground
TX - connect to RX pin of your serial module
RX - connect to TX pin of your serial module
PPS - pulse per second output, can be left unconnected
Such pin arrangement allows this module to plug directly to the UART connector of DVK512 add-on board for Raspberry Pi.
Features:
GPS Chip: u-blox NEO-6M
Antenna: High-gain active ceramic antenna
Possible to connect to external active antenna with the IPX/u.FL connector on board
Communication interface: UART (Serial), TTL level compatible with 3V and 5V systems
Backup battery on board to save satellite data when GPS is not powered
