All about NMEA Files

The NMEA file type is primarily associated with VisualGPSView.

NMEA	File extension: NMEA
	File type:	GPS log file

What is an NMEA file?

NMEA files mostly belong to VisualGPSView by VisualGPS. NMEA file is a standard file format developed by the National Marine Electronics Association.

• Main Use: NMEA stands for National Marine Electronics Association geolocation format. NMEA format is a standard file format maintained by the National Marine Electronics Association to store GPS-related data. It contains information that can be exchanged between various pieces of marine electronic equipment. It facilitates marine GPS devices to exchange information from marine electronics computers and other marine equipment. The NMEA files consist of latitude, longitude, time values , and other relevant data in an ASCII format.
• Additional Information: The contents of an NMEA GPS file start with the $ sign with each data field begging separated by a comma. The letters GP following the $ sign indicate that the file denotes a GPS location. If the $ sign is followed by GL however, it indicates that the geolocation is obtained using GLONASS and not GPS. The second data field would denote the time stamp for the UTC time in hours, minutes, and seconds. The third data field denotes the latitude in the DDMM.MMMM format (D stands for Degrees and M stands for minutes). The fourth data field is either N or S to denote North or South respectively. The fifth data field denotes the longitude in the DDMM.MMMM format. The sixth data field is either E or W to denote east or west respectively. The later fields include the data points denoting the parameters used for calibration of the geolocation. The final field denotes the checksum.

How to open an NMEA file

You need a suitable software like VisualGPSView from VisualGPS to open an NMEA file. Without proper software you will receive a Windows message "How do you want to open this file?" or "Windows cannot open this file" or a similar Mac/iPhone/Android alert. If you cannot open your NMEA file correctly, try to right-click or long-press the file. Then click "Open with" and choose an application. You can also display a NMEA file directly in the browser:. Just drag the file onto this browser window and drop it.

Online NMEA Text Viewer

Choose your .nmea file to view

or drag and drop it here

Online File Viewer

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How to extract texts from NMEA files or capture a screenshot to PDF, JPG, DOCX, TXT, ...

1. To do this, click the button "Choose your .nmea file to view" on this page.
2. Your NMEA file will then be displayed in the browser.
3. Now click on "Save as..." at the top of the page.
4. Then choose the file format (e.g. JPG, PDF, DOCX, TXT, ...) you want.
5. Download the converted file.

NMEA format details:

A file format defines how the data in the file is structured. Often, the file format can be deduced from the file extension or the initial bytes (called the signature). However, different programs can use the same file extension, and file extensions can be assigned incorrectly. So you need a detailed analysis of a file to find out the format and the associated program. In the following you will find our evaluation of the NMEA files:

Files with the NMEA extension are quite widely used. This file type mainly uses a defined NMEA format. But the following two file formats are common:

• 85% of all NMEA files belong to NMEA GPS log data. These files are plain text, which means they can be viewed with any text editor such as Windows Editor, Nano for Linux, and TextEdit for macOS. The file size is in the range of 1 KB to 160 KB. The file type is relatively new. The files contain the following words: GPGGA, GPRMC, GPGSV, GPGSA and GSENSORD. The file name FILE20180601.NMEA or FILE20180601F.NMEA is typical for these files. Files like these have the following tags: emer, output, hpim, scan, vico, gpslog, evenm, route and track.
• 2% of all NMEA files start with the bytes 24 50 crucial for this file format. These files contain text and words, not binary data. The files are on average 920 KB in size and range from 7 KB to 2 MB. Certain words are almost always found in the files, such as $PSIQSEL, PSIQAIS, PSIQCFG and PSIQREC. Such files are related to seaiq.

All other NMEA files (13%) have no uniform format. Tagged as gnss or data. If you want to find out what your NMEA file contains, drag and drop it onto this page.