I feared I had abandoned this forever.  But this is a quick note, almost a year later, to say the project is back on the workbench and a couple of the pebbles that I stumbled over and used as a fig leaf to stop progress have been removed.

Notably, I could never get any of the GPS modules I'd bought to work with any of the esp32/8266/arduino/2040 or full Pi boards.  The likelihood that that was "I have no idea what I'm doing" ism is likely 95.622%.  (If you search for "GPS Module Receiver, Navigation Satellite Positioning NEO-6M" on amazon it'll hit you in the face.)

When I started pursuing information on how to wire these things so they would even pull data, I got almost nothing, except ONE video from a guy who demonstrated how a VAST percentage of the gps units were just straight-up counterfeits and didn't work. 

GPS logging was my first "yeah yeah, buying the stuff and networking it is fine.  But start making it DO something" sub-project, and having that level of problem with THAT felt like getting kicked in the gut by the bouncer of the "cool projects club."

But I think I have a solution and all kinds of reasons why my newfound hope in this project may not be merely delusional.

EDIT:  Welp!  I've figured it out.  It was indeed me and my breathtaking lack of knowledge.

The GPS modules that "didn't work" had 4 pinouts, but no headers or anything soldered to them.  I didn't know enough to know that they were just bare USB pinouts and, without a USB-Serial interface layer, pretty much couldn't be made to work with the boards I was trying to attach them to. 

Not QUITE sure how I never tripped over that last year.  But here we are. 

Boy I'm sure glad I bought a usb gps unit to replace the usb gps units.  

What I'll probably do for now is just wire it to a pi zero instead of an esp32 so I can get myself going again.

If that's as easy as it could be (lol) then the next task is to start on sensor communications (as it dovetails with another project of mine.)  So, whether to get all this stuff to talk using something like MQTT or not to bother with anything even THAT heavyweight. 

To the lab!