Hi, I’m having an issue with RTK dropping out regularly. My field is in a valley with tall trees on all sides but even when driving in the center of the field RTK fix will revert to float or I will even lose RTK all together. When this happens the line shifts and the tractor turns sharply to recapture it. This means if I was cultivating the tractor will drive through the bed before I have a chance to stop it making the auto steer useless in it’s current condition.
That’s the field I’m talking about. My system is running a single gps antenna connected to an F9p and a v4.5 std aio pcb. I have RTK corrections from a public station roughly 20km away. Could this be the issue? Would installing my own base station improve the reliability of RTK corrections? Or is there some other issue?
Possibly a related issue I’m experiencing is that even when it says I have RTK fix I will get warnings saying not connecting to caster.
As you can see I have RTK fix while that warning is showing. Any ideas are welcome thanks!!
You have to be aware of the fact that f9p can continue fix up to about 3 minutes after last received base connection. So maybe your problem is the lack of stable mobile connection?
As example I have the problem with no caster connection when I move to a field where I am closer to another mobile mast, then ip change and caster is no longer available, until I disconnect ntrip and reconnect ntrip.
Here we are even talking about mobile masts, belonging to same company!
Ok what your talking about is the “fix age” in the picture its at 57 so I assume that means 57 seconds correct? My mobile connection is definitely not perfect but I have at least 2 bars at all times while anywhere in the field and can easily surf the web and send messages.
Yes. That 50 second fix age would indicate you haven’t had a fix for that long. That with the caster error sounds like you have a bad Internet connection. You can watch the fix age and when it gets up over 45 or so you better stop or it will veer off as you described.
ok that’s a good tip ill defiantly keep an eye on that If I cant find a solution. Not sure what I can do My service works well for all other tasks.
You might try it somewhere where you know you have a good signal and see what your fix age is there. I assume you are using your phone as a hotspot. Maybe there is an issue with that?
I’ve had this exact issue, it definitely happened more when I updated from 6.3 to 6.6. I’m putting it down to phone signal being iffy. If it stays on RTK float or RTK fix there is no problem but when it flicks between it starts jumping
is it only this particular field?
do your corrections stay stable everywhere else?
For a frame of reference: if your RTK fix age is more than 2 seconds old something isn’t working right.
A base station usually sends out corrections once per second, network delays should be less than a second.
You can change the settings so that autosteer is disabled when RTK fix drops. That will avoid the wild turn and panic reach for the steering wheel while wiping out beds.
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