Hello, I am new here. I am planning to build gps for my tractor. But I can’t seem to find simple information on connecting base station to the rover without using port forwarding because I don’t have static ip.
I’ll be using two Ardusimple ZED-F9P
Also, are there any alternatives to raspberry pi as base station, because they’re expensive right now.
What do I need to do? Please help, spring is coming.
Cheap alternative to raspberry pi is orange pi, look it up on AliExpress, also you can use a ESP32 or even an old laptop but i wouldt recommend that.
You can use a caster service to transmit your correction over the internet. Services like rtk2go, centipede, emlid. I use emlid and am very happy with them.
I don’t know how to setup a static ip and your one server, but im hoping someone will explain it to you and the rest of us.
Go to dynu.com and register an address there. You’ll find agents that will update your DNS entry whenever it changes automatically for you.
You can get a client for linux (so rpi, opi etc) that will do it automatically. Then, you just go to (for example) furizan.mywire.org:2101 and you’re away.
Also, static IP isn’t a necessity for port forwarding; just do “what is my IP” before you’re on the home network before you leave the house in the morning - and hope it doesn’t change during the day 
What you need a a dynamic dns “dyndns” service, can either be with a domain you own, or just a free subdomain from whatever site you choose to use…then simply run a client locally (on the rtk base or maybe on your router) which just updates the dynamic DNS server with your current IP, then use that domain name to access your network, as it will stay updated with your current IP no matter how many times it changes.
Hi, welcome!
Assuming you want to us something like RTKBase on a small linux single board computer like the Pi; check out the orangePi, RockPI, or LePotato. I haven’t tried any of them, but all of them should work, lot here have used the OrangePi. You don’t need a Pi 4, a Pi 3 or Pi 2 might be more available?
You can also use a windows machine (using free SNIP caster or other). Maybe you have an old desktop or laptop around? Its kind of heavy on power useage and you can’t screw it to your chimney outside, but it can work.
There’s also ESPrtk using an ESP32, but I don’t think the firmware is free and it uses wifi instead of ethernet. You’ll want 100% uptime and ethernet is always more robust.
The really easy work around is not to connect to the base station at all. Use a server (called an NTRIP Caster) between the base station and the rover (tractor). The base station connects to the server, the rover connects to the server, no one needs a static IP. RTK2GO is a free NTRIP caster, there’s also centipede and Emlid caster service and probably others.
But if you really want to connect to the base station directly, simply use a dynamic DNS service. There are lots of free dynamic DNS services, I use DuckDNS. You’ll go to the site and register a subdomain like furizan.duckdns.org. On your base station you’ll setup a small job to connect to furizan.duckdns.org every few minutes automatically. Your base station’s IP address will be stored at furizan.duckdns.org. At the rover side you’ll just enter furizan.duckdns.org as the base station’s IP address, it will connect there and grab the base station’s IP.
Another possibility to get direct connection to your base station over the internet without using a third party caster is a VPN. I mentioned using Tailscale before, but there’s also another excellent free one called ZeroTier. Neither VPN uses an actual server. Everything is peer to peer and totally private and secure. Completely sidesteps the issues with a changing up address and even if you have no accessible public IP address. There are clients for phones so you can use ntrip client app to connect directly to your base station over your virtual up address. I used this last year for my sprayer rtk. Worked awesome. I’m a big fan of this style of VPN.
Could you tell me more about how you got the VPN setup going? How do you cast base station information to the VPN? How should the rover connect to the VPN? I’m completely lost so any hints would help.
This is important to check. if you are behind CGNAT or other wise dont have publicly accessible ip address, port forwarding or DNS to your ip will not work. You need to use VPN, rtk2go or other service.
ESP32 as ntrip wifi master to rtk2go is simple and easy to do. You should not have problems with wifi connection if you are reasonably close to router.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by cast the base station information to the VPN.
I’ve been using two different VPN systems, Tailscale and Zerotier. Each of them is server-less and creates a private network between my devices. So if my base station is a part of this VPN network, I can run the tailscale or zerotier app on my phone and join my phone to that network. Then from NTRIP Client app I connect directly to the caster running on the base station. The phone feeds that data over bluetooth to the GPS receiver on the rover.
On the base station running on a Pi, you could have to install Tailscale using their instructions: Download · Tailscale. It does involve some Linux terminal work to install. ZeroTier has a similar process for installation. The phone apps are quite easy to install and use.
Tailscale has one drawback and that is you have to re-authorize each device every six months, and on the Pi this has to be done with a terminal command. Not hard but has to be manually done. sudo tailscale login is all. But has to be in a terminal. There’s no GUI for the Linux version of Tailscale yet.
The phone app walks you through the authorization and set up.
After the private network is established, and you turn it on on the phone, then your base station should be reachable through a special IP address that your private devices are assigned. So instead of rtk2go.com and port 2222, it would be your private address (something like 100.#.#.#) and the port the RTK Base station is using for it’s internal NTRIP caster.
Perhaps a few videos might shed light:
Hello. I successfully setup VPN and have a connection between 2 windows computers. On one I am running snip caster and on another I’m running AgOpenGps. But “no RTK” light is lit up on both f9p modules and I’m not getting RTK signal, could it be a bad configuration or maybe the baud rate is important or something else?
Antennas right now are under the roof if that could be a reason.
You’re sure the VPN-assigned IP address to your snap caster computer is the address you’re using for NTRIP on the AOG computer?
Yes, in the AOG software I’m using the IP address that is assigned to my snip caster pc and also have set the same IP in the snip caster software. And successfully connected to my mount point.
Are you able to ping successfully in each direction? Have you set a static IP on the network adapter of your AOG computer?
With antennas under roof you won’t get a fix, but you should at least get a float.
