Hi all, this is my first post here and I look forward to contributing in future however as I’m new to this I’m going to need some help to start.
I’m an electrical engineer and farmer so while I’m not new to tech I’m new to building a positioning system.
I’ve looked through here and while there are hundreds of posts on various RTK configurations I’m wondering has anyone come across a post that gives a general overview guide to getting a fully functioning RTK system operational. Our farm is based in ireland and is spread out over various locations so transmitting correction signals via radio most likely won’t work so I’m looking to setup the following:
-RTK base located on home farm
-Rover obviously on tractor
-transmit correction data over wifi
Main questions I have is:
-hope to use learn spark fun f9p boards or other (open to suggestions) so what exactly do I need part wise- I’ve read ground plane etc. On base station. Is there anywhere I can obtain an exact parts list, and guide to setting up - configs, requirements for sending correction data over wifi rather than radio, etc.
Ardusimple have tutorials and ready made base configuration files. Most often you need to tweak settings a bit yourself, like measurement rate and which messages to use.
Do you have good wifi coverage? Radio might be simple for decent coverage but if you want to use wifi, I’d build an NTRIP caster runing on a laptop and the base F9P connected to that computer.
The small ANN MB antenna needs a small ground plane.
Hey, thanks for the comment. 4G coverage is good, at least where I am.
I’ve done some more research since and there’s a guy in Northern Ireland- farm theory - (YouTube, FB) that’s running this type of setup and getting corrections through RTKLIB. So I’m in the process in researching how that would work for me. I will most definitely set up RTK using a base station but for now internet corrections would suffice.
All I need it for is spraying and fertiliser spreading - poor marginal West of Ireland land… so I don’t theoretically need cm level accuracy for now, not using auto steer for now either.
I have 2 Ardusimple F9P receivers as they have the most support on the site. One is my base at the house connected to the internet casting on rtk2go. The other is the rover in the tractor which uses my phone as a data hot spot for the tablet allowing me to receive my NTRIP corrections through AOG from the base at house.
If you get a good F9P gps, I recommend ardusimple seems to be the most common in this forum. if you don’t need cm accuracy or repeatability you likely don’t need any RTK correction at all. I have done some test’s with no RTK and for applications like you described I think you would be just fine, even more so if your just going to drive off the light bar with no autosteer.
just to clarify the internet is a method of providing the correction signal and the base station creates the calculation. So if you use the 4g or radio or wifi to get the signal to the rover from the base station.
Got ya, so if you’re not using RTK what receiver are you using? This is the bit I’m getting stuck on. Can I set up an ardusimple board on a rover to work on its own using GPS with local antenna and not use the base station to provide RTK for now?
No problem there, the F9P would work in autonomous mode even with the configuration intended for RTK. You might consider SBAS though when working without RTK, I have no experience about F9P without RTK but some at the forum have.
i have ardusimple rtk resiever when i use u-center i see the satelites (up to 35) also rtk is actieve (i use flepos belgium ) but when i go to agopengps nothing apear there
is there somwhere a instal guide that just explane what we need ? or someone from belgium/the netherlands who can explane ?