Part

GPS module, NEO-6M

NMEA at 9600 baud, once a second, from wherever you set it. Click it to lose the fix.

4 pins
9 settings
In 3 projects
In 2 lessons

Drawn live by the editor's own code, at the size you see it.

At a glance

The GPS module, NEO-6M in brief

What it is, and every setting the properties panel gives it.

The NEO-6M is the u-blox GPS receiver on the GY-NEO6MV2 breakout, with a ceramic patch antenna on a lead and a green LED that blinks each second with a fix. Its pins are VCC, RX, TX and GND; it takes 3 to 5 V through its own regulator, and TX swings to 3.3 V, which a 5 V Uno reads as high. To a sketch it is a serial port talking NMEA at 9600 baud: on an Uno, TX into pin 4 with SoftwareSerial; on an ESP32 DevKit, TX into GPIO 16 with Serial2.begin(9600, SERIAL_8N1, 16, 17). Mokxi sends the factory sentences every second, RMC, VTG, GGA, GSA, one to three GSV and GLL, about 450 bytes with checksums. The position is the lat and lon properties, speed and course move it along a heading, and clicking the module drops or restores the fix, after which the sentences go empty as they do indoors. TinyGPS++ reads it. The classic mistake is printing at 9600 baud while the GPS talks, so SoftwareSerial’s 64-byte buffer overflows and the GGA sentence goes missing. Satellites, the time to first fix, a wandering fix and commands on RX are not modeled.

Family: Clocks and links
Pins: 4
lat: 38.88947
lon: -77.03523
altitude: 18
speed: 0
course: 0
satellites: 8
fix: true
start: 2026-09-23 12:00:00
baud: 9600

A circuit built around it, running and explained: the GPS module simulator.

Pins

4 pins

Named as the editor names them, so a wire lands where you expect it.

Role

What it does

VCC

Input or output

Supply, 3 to 5 V. The breakout has its own 3.3 V regulator.

Input

Into the module. Accepted and ignored: see below.

Output

Out of the module: NMEA at baud, 8N1, swinging to 3.3 V.

GND

Input or output

Ground.

How to use it

How to use the NEO-6M GPS module with an Arduino

The module talks NMEA at 9600 baud and the Uno’s one hardware port belongs to the serial monitor, so the GPS goes on SoftwareSerial: its TX into pin 4, its RX from pin 3, VCC to 5 V and GND to GND. Feed every character to TinyGPS++ with gps.encode() and read gps.location.lat(), gps.location.lng(), gps.satellites.value() and gps.altitude.meters() when they update.

There is no sky in the simulator: the position is the part’s lat and lon, and clicking the module takes the fix away, so the sentences go empty and this sketch prints that it is waiting for satellites. Keep the serial monitor at 115200. At 9600 a printed line takes as long as 70 bytes from the GPS, SoftwareSerial’s 64-byte buffer overflows, and the GGA sentence with the altitude is the one that goes missing.

Part pin

Board pin

Pin 4

Pin 3

VCC

5 V

GND

On an ESP32 DevKit, use a hardware port instead: TX into GPIO 16 and Serial2.begin(9600, SERIAL_8N1, 16, 17).

Arduino Uno: GPS positionlive0.000 s 0.00x

Hold the button

This is the simulator itself, running here. Click anything to open it in the editor.

Open this project in the editor Read the full tutorial

Reading the module, from the GPS position sketch

SoftwareSerial gpsSerial(4, 3);
TinyGPSPlus gps;

void readGps() {
  while (gpsSerial.available() > 0) {
    gps.encode(gpsSerial.read());
  }
}

How it is modeled

What is true about the GPS module, NEO-6M, here

In its help article’s own words: what the simulation gets right, and where it stops.

Not modeled

The radio and everything that comes from it: acquiring satellites, the half minute a cold start really takes (here the fix is there at the first second), a stationary fix wandering by a few meters, multipath, the backup battery. Commands on RX (UBX or $PUBX) change nothing, so the rate cannot be changed from a sketch. The geoid separation is always 0.0.

From NEO-6M GPS module, in full.

Projects