I emailed the author of the GPS-Perl module and he suggested to use the alarm function. so I tried it out with the code below but, it still hung on the get_position so maybe perlmonks has a suggestion.

sub gps {
    my $gps_device;
    while (1) {
        goto END if $die == 1;
        if ($gps_start == 1) {
            $gps_device = GPS::NMEA->new(Port => $gps, Baud => 4800) o
+r die;
            my $timeout = 5;
            while (1){
                #stops the warnings in the GPS device module
                local $^W = 0;
                print "before\n";
                eval {
                    local $SIG{ALRM} = sub {die "GPS Device has timed 
+out\n"};
                    alarm $timeout;
                    ($ns,$lat,$ew,$lon) = $gps_device->get_position;
                    #warn $@ if $@;
                    alarm 0;
                };
                die if $@ && $@ ne "GPS Device has timed out\n";
                if ($@){
                    print "WARNING\n";
                }
                else{
                    print "nope\n";
                }
                
                #($ns,$lat,$ew,$lon) = $gps_device->get_position;
                print "after\n";
                print "$die\n";
                goto END if $die == 1;
                last if $gps_start == 0;
                sleep 3;
            }
            undef $gps_device;
        } else {sleep 4}
    }
    END:
}
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