// CERBO GX GPS
Three ways to add GPS to a Cerbo GX
A Cerbo GX has no GPS receiver of its own — but Victron officially supports three ways to give it one: a cheap USB receiver, your boat’s existing NMEA 2000 network, or the GX LTE 4G with its optional antenna. This is the hands-on guide to all three: the exact parts, the correct ports, and the settings that trip people up. We’re an independent service and not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Victron Energy. Rated 4.9 on Google.
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/01 — THE SHORT ANSWER
The three ways to add GPS to a Cerbo GX
There are three officially supported ways to add GPS to a Cerbo GX. One: a USB GPS receiver — any third-party receiver speaking NMEA 0183, around £18 from UK retailers, plugged into a data USB port; the right answer for most vans, motorhomes and off-grid systems that already have internet. Two: your boat’s NMEA 2000 network — the position your boat already produces, fed into the Cerbo over VE.Can with around £52 of cabling and no new GPS hardware at all. Three: the GX LTE 4G modem — a built-in GPS receiver activated by an optional antenna, roughly £215 all-in plus a SIM; the right answer when the system needs its own mobile internet anyway.
A detail that surprises people: Victron doesn’t sell a USB GPS of its own. Instead, the official Cerbo GX manual supports most third-party USB receivers under ‘Connecting supported non-Victron products’ — which is why the cheapest route on this list is also an officially supported one. Whichever route you pick, the position lands in the same place: the GX device list first, then the VRM Portal’s map, geofence and location history.
The rest of this page walks each route in hands-on detail — exact part numbers, the correct ports, and the two or three settings behind almost every ‘my Cerbo GX GPS isn’t showing up’ forum thread.
/02 — THE USB ROUTE
Cerbo GX USB GPS: the £18 route for most vans
The Cerbo GX auto-recognises most third-party USB GPS receivers that output NMEA 0183 at 4800 or 38400 baud — plug one in and it simply appears in the device list. No driver, no configuration.
Which receiver? The officially tested models in the Cerbo manual include GlobalSat units: BU353-W, ND100, BU353S4, MR350 + BR305US and BU-353-N5. Separately, u-blox-based dongles such as the VK-162 and the Navilock NL-602U are widely used with GX devices because they meet the same NMEA 0183 criterion — they work, but they are community-verified rather than on Victron’s tested list, and that distinction is worth knowing if you want the by-the-book option. On price: a VK-162 is around £17.50 from UK retailers at the time of writing (some sell it specifically for Victron use), while the officially tested GlobalSat BU-353S4 typically sits somewhere around the £30–45 mark.
Now the gotcha that generates the forum threads. On the Cerbo GX, the USB port closest to the HDMI connector is power-only — it exists to power a GX Touch screen and carries no data. Plug your GPS in there and it will sit warm, lit and completely invisible to Venus OS. Move it to one of the other USB ports and it should appear within moments.
Placement matters too: give the receiver the clearest view of sky you can — a dashboard or window shelf works in most vans. A weak, drifting fix is the usual cause of geofence false alarms later on.
/03 — THE BOAT ROUTE
Boats: feed GPS from NMEA 2000 over VE.Can
If your boat already has a GPS on its NMEA 2000 backbone, don’t buy another receiver — the Cerbo GX can read the position your network already carries. The physical link is the Cerbo’s VE.Can port, connected to the backbone with Victron’s VE.Can to NMEA2000 micro-C male cable (part ASS030520200, around £52 from UK retailers at the time of writing) or the OSUKL 3802 adapter.
Two requirements, and both matter. First, the Cerbo’s VE.Can port must be switched to the 250 kbit/s NMEA2000 profile in its settings — on the wrong CAN-bus profile, nothing talks. Second, the N2K device supplying position must present itself as Device Class 60 (Navigation) with Device Function 145 (Ownship Position, GNSS). Dedicated N2K GPS sensors and antenna pucks reliably do. Chartplotters are the caveat: whether a given plotter re-broadcasts its position with that class and function varies by manufacturer, so check your specific model before assuming it will feed the Cerbo.
If the chartplotter check fails, the fallbacks are a dedicated N2K GPS puck on the backbone — or simply the £18 USB route above, which works just as well afloat. For the full marine picture, including boat GPS tracking beyond mobile signal, see our Victron boat GPS tracking page.
/04 — THE GX LTE 4G ROUTE
GX LTE 4G: internet and GPS in one box
The GX LTE 4G is Victron’s cellular modem for GX systems, and it has a GPS receiver built in — with one catch that trips up nearly everyone: the GPS stays inactive until you fit the optional active GPS antenna (part GSM900200100, around £32–36 from UK retailers) to its GPS SMA connector. The GX LTE 4G GPS antenna is not in the box. With it fitted, the official manual puts it plainly: ‘the system can be tracked as well as geo-fenced on the VRM Portal’. You’ll need Venus OS v2.60 or later and a Mini-SIM.
Buy the right variant: three exist for different regions, and the UK/Europe model is the GX LTE 4G-E (GSM100100400), around £183 from UK retailers at the time of writing — so roughly £215 plus a SIM for the complete route. And avoid the older GX GSM: it is a 2G/3G unit, and UK 3G networks have been switched off.
One honest caveat before you budget for it: the modem provides internet for the GX system only. It is not a wifi router for the people on board — if you want browsing and streaming, that is a separate solution, and the £18 USB GPS plus the internet you already have may be the smarter buy.
/05 — CHECKING IT WORKS
Check it works: device list, VRM map, log interval
Whichever route you fitted, verification is the same three looks. First, the GX device list: a working GPS appears as a device on the Cerbo — on the console or remote console — with its fix status and satellite count. If it isn’t there, nothing downstream will work: on the USB route, suspect the power-only port next to the HDMI connector; on VE.Can, suspect the port profile or the Class 60 / Function 145 requirement.
Second, the VRM map: once the GX is logging to VRM, your installation gains a live position on the portal’s map — and while you are actively watching, VRM’s realtime mode streams updates roughly every two seconds.
Third — the step almost everyone skips — set the log interval to 1 minute (Settings → VRM online portal → Log interval). Position reaches VRM inside the ordinary datalog, so the resolution of your recorded track equals the log interval — and the default is 15 minutes, which renders a motorway journey as a handful of long straight lines. At 1-minute logging the data cost is modest, around 25 MB a month, and the recorded route starts to look like the road you actually drove.
/06 — WHAT GPS UNLOCKS
What GPS unlocks in VRM — and what it honestly isn’t
Credit where it is due: everything in this section is Victron’s own VRM Portal doing its job, included with the platform. Once position is flowing you get the map — including the multi-installation map, which Victron’s own documentation pitches for fleets of vehicles with GX devices and GPS. You get the VRM geofence (Settings → Geofence): draw a circle, rectangle or free shape around the current position and VRM alarms when the system leaves it and when location data stops arriving, with a slider to disarm it before legitimate trips — ‘typically used for RVs and boats’, as the manual says. Give the antenna clear sky, though: GPS drift is a known cause of false geofence alarms. You also get location history on the Advanced page’s GPS widget and a downloadable track with .kml export for Google Earth — and if you share your site publicly, VRM hides the exact location by default, which is a good privacy default.
And what it honestly isn’t: this is not a theft tracker. It carries no Thatcham certification, insurers don’t recognise it, it is powered from the house battery — isolate the battery and tracking stops — it isn’t concealed, and there is no internal backup battery. The geofence plus the signal-loss alarm is the honest closest thing VRM offers, and it is genuinely useful; but if theft recovery is the real requirement, fit a dedicated tracker as well. The wider picture — what Victron GPS tracking is genuinely good at — is on our Victron GPS tracking guide.
One more honest limit: VRM keeps the detailed data where GPS lives for at least six months, not forever. If you want every trip you have ever made, that needs storage of its own — which brings us to the last section.
/07 — BEYOND VRM
Beyond VRM: a custom route-tracker dashboard
The hardware above gets position into VRM. What we build on top is a custom route-tracker dashboard: your journeys on a branded live map at your own URL, with a permanent route archive that outlives VRM’s six-month detailed-data window — the official VRM API supports downloading GPS tracks, and we store them properly. The GX itself buffers its logs through connectivity gaps — its internal buffer can hold several days of logs — and uploads them when it reconnects, so the honest headline is: live tracking whenever it has internet, a complete route history even when it doesn’t. For the live pin we stream the GX’s event-driven GPS feed — near-live, typically updating every second or two — and we filter out GPS drift so a parked van doesn’t scribble on the map.
Proof of the architecture is already on this site: our own off-grid van, the 365 Crafter, streams its real battery and solar telemetry onto our custom VRM dashboards page right now. We haven’t fitted GPS to the van yet, so there is no route-tracker demo to click — we would rather tell you that plainly than fake one. Ask us for a demonstration and we’ll show you how the same live pipeline carries position.
How working with us goes: we advise and configure remotely, worldwide — route choice, VRM setup, log intervals, geofences and the dashboard build are all remote work; physically fitting the receiver, cable or antenna stays with you or your installer. Our work is quoted individually — no invented prices here. We are independent and not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Victron Energy. Office hours Monday to Friday, 9–5 UK time: call +44 1202 775566, email help@365techies.co.uk, or start on the contact page. The strategy view lives on our Victron GPS tracking pillar.
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// GOOD QUESTIONS
Frequently asked
Why is my USB GPS not showing up on the Cerbo GX?
Check the port first: on the Cerbo GX the USB port closest to the HDMI connector is power-only — it exists to power a GX Touch and carries no data, so a GPS plugged in there lights up and does nothing. Move it to another USB port. If it still doesn’t appear, confirm the receiver actually outputs NMEA 0183 at 4800 or 38400 baud — that is the criterion the Cerbo auto-recognises. A working receiver shows in the GX device list within moments of being plugged in.
Which USB GPS receivers are officially tested with the Cerbo GX?
The official Cerbo GX manual lists tested GlobalSat models: BU353-W, ND100, BU353S4, MR350 with BR305US, and BU-353-N5. u-blox-based dongles like the VK-162 and Navilock NL-602U are community-verified — they meet the same NMEA 0183 requirement and are widely used with GX devices, but they aren’t on Victron’s tested list. Both approaches work; the GlobalSat units are the by-the-book choice.
Can my chartplotter feed GPS to the Cerbo GX over NMEA 2000?
Maybe — and that is the honest answer. The Cerbo accepts NMEA 2000 position over VE.Can, but the sending device must present Device Class 60 (Navigation) with Device Function 145 (Ownship Position, GNSS). Dedicated N2K GPS sensors and pucks reliably do; whether a chartplotter re-broadcasts its position that way varies by manufacturer, so check your specific model. If it doesn’t, a dedicated N2K GPS puck or an £18 USB receiver both solve it.
Does the GX LTE 4G include GPS or do I need the antenna?
Both, in a way that catches people out: the GX LTE 4G has a GPS receiver built in, but it stays inactive until you fit the optional active GPS antenna (part GSM900200100, around £32–36 from UK retailers at the time of writing) to its GPS SMA connector — and the antenna is not in the box. With it fitted, and Venus OS v2.60 or later, the official manual confirms the system can be tracked and geofenced on the VRM Portal.
What baud rate does the Cerbo GX expect from a USB GPS?
NMEA 0183 at 4800 or 38400 baud — the Cerbo auto-recognises receivers at either rate, with no configuration needed. That single criterion is why so many inexpensive third-party dongles work: if it speaks NMEA 0183 at one of those two rates over USB, the Cerbo will very likely pick it up and list it as a GPS device.
How much data does 1-minute GPS logging use on VRM?
Around 25 MB a month — small enough that it is rarely worth worrying about, even on a modest SIM plan. It is worth setting deliberately (Settings → VRM online portal → Log interval) because the default is 15 minutes, and the resolution of your recorded route equals the log interval: at the default, a motorway trip renders as a few long straight segments; at 1 minute it looks like the road you drove.
Does GPS work with a Raspberry Pi running Venus OS?
The mechanism should be the same, because the USB GPS support lives in Venus OS — the software layer — rather than in the Cerbo’s hardware. The documentation we have verified covers the official GX devices, so we won’t promise a specific dongle on a specific Pi sight unseen — but the NMEA 0183-over-USB route is exactly what Venus OS recognises. Ask us and we’ll advise honestly on your actual setup.
Do you install the GPS hardware for me?
No — and we would rather say that plainly. We are a remote service: we help you choose the right route, point you at the right parts, then configure VRM, log intervals, geofences and any custom dashboard remotely, worldwide. Physically plugging in a receiver, running a VE.Can cable or mounting an antenna is a job for you or your local installer. Support is Monday to Friday, 9–5 UK time, on 01202 775566 or help@365techies.co.uk.
Can I use Cerbo GX GPS as a theft tracker for my van or boat?
Treat it as location awareness, not security. It has no Thatcham certification, insurers don’t recognise it, it runs off the house battery — isolate that and tracking stops — it isn’t concealed, and there is no backup battery inside. VRM’s geofence plus its signal-loss alarm is the honest closest thing, and genuinely useful for knowing something moved; but if theft recovery matters to you or your insurer, fit a dedicated tracker as well.
Get GPS onto your Cerbo GX without the guesswork
We’ll help you pick the right route, talk you through the fitting gotchas, then configure VRM — log interval, geofence, the lot — remotely, worldwide. Hardware fitting stays with you or your installer; everything else is our job, quoted clearly. Monday to Friday, 9–5 UK time — 01202 775566 or help@365techies.co.uk.
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