In article ,
, Sir Gregory Hall, Esq. says...

I purchased an HP Stream 8 tablet and one of the reasons I
got it was it has a built-in Broadcom GPS. I have Open
CPN installed on my Toshiba laptop and it works great in
conjunction with my GlobalSat BU-353S4.

The laptop is Windows 8.1 and so is the Stream 8 tablet.
OpenCPN installed perfectly on the Stream as it did on
the laptop. It found and configured all the charts when
I pointed it to the chart folder.

However, OpenCPN can't seem to *find* the built-in
Broadcom GPS although it finds and works just great with
the BU-353S4, The Broadcom internal GPS connects via
COM1 serial port while the BU-353S4 creates a virtual
com port it calls COM3. The only difference I can see
is COM3 defaults to 4800 baud while COM 1 defaults to
9600. But, even if I change it from 96000 to 48000 it
still won't connect.

Anybody know why not?

As a workaround I have just ordered a microUSB thumb
drive GPS which has drivers for both Windows and Android
devices so if I can't get the OpenCPN software to
recognize the Stream's internal GPS, I'll be able
to plug in the thumb drive and it will then create
a virtual Com3 port there so the Open CPN will be
able to enjoy the benefits of GPS.

Here is the Micro USB thumb drive GPS-

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Notice the price. Cheap, huh?

Oh, the internal Broadcom GPS on the Stream tablet does work
because I downloaded and installed a car GPS navigator and it
manages to see and connect to the built-in GPS.

Your workaround is what I do with OpenCPN. Never had a problem with the
virtual com port method - but make sure it's supported for the OS (ie
Windows 8). I'm running it just fine on Windows 7.

And note also (thought I doubt it will help) that OpenCPN just came out
with a new major release - V4...

http://opencpn.org/ocpn/download

--
Duncan.