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Anybody have any luck with this new model of the BU-353? I thought my old BU-353 was giving me problems so I bought a S-4, but Kismet keeps dropping its connection, and when it does work Kismet says it's getting unexpected characters. Meanwhile, it turns out that the problems I was having with the old unit were due to a cheap WalMart USB extension cable, so it looks like I'll be sticking with the old unit for now (replacing the extension cable did not help the new unit).

I bought my 353's in April. (I'm not sure if they're S4 or not). Depending on what software you're using (such as Linux/gpsd, or something else), it may have been put into binary mode (instead of NMEA) or the baud rate may be off. Have you verified both of those? I know that on Linux with gpsd, once it's in NMEA mode, it's a good idea to start gpsd with the "-b" option (read only), to prevent it from being changed back to binary mode.

Thanks for the info. Messing around with the gpsd settings now due to upgrading to Kali Linux.

The BU-353-S4 is labeled "G-STAR IV" on the top and has model number BU-353S4 on the bottom.

The BU-353 is labeled "GPS" on the top and has model number BU-353 on the bottom.

Curiously, Kali comes with kismet installed, but not gpsd. Once gpsd is installed, the BU-353 is plug-and-play. The S4, which is supposed to be better, doesn't get a signal. At least it worked sometimes in BackTrack.

I suspect that my problem is an USB extension cable that is too long.

Well, after spending an evening mucking around with this thing, it works, but damned if I know why it works now or why it didn't want to work in the first place. I have it on a 3 foot extension cable now (it was on a 6 footer). It ignores gpsctl commands half the time; sometimes I could get it into NMEA mode, but it seems to reset itself into SIRF. Kismet seems to be happy with it now and lock-on seems to be a little faster and better than the ol' BU-353, so I'll leave it alone for now. If you're happy with your original BU-353, I wouldn't bother upgrading.

Yes I have got it work with my laptop.
the problem is the mapping for software does not work. But kismet it works well . I cant get any other thing to work. A lot of post are not for this gps from what I have found.
/dev/ttyUSB0 or USB1 the Alfa and gps will change the usb devices name as you plugin more and more hardwar.
commands
gpspipe -r
gpsmon /dev/ttyUSB0
is what I use to get it going

How you have to purge your gpsd and install again. If you dont know the commands you want to look read up on it . Also change the configure file also.

be sure to add the "-b"("broken", read-only mode) argument to gpsd. That will prevent the device from reverting back to binary mode and causing issues.