Hello, I have a RTC Surveyor that was not giving clear indicators which version of Flash I have. The initial response from the GUI tool was that it could not tell but defaulted to 16mb. After tying to upgrade the firmware several times I finally discovered it was failing due to not enough space in flash. I assume that means I have the 4mb version.
I want to be sure I have the correct version of firmware to load. There are many versions could you point me in the correct direction?
thx
Hi,
The very first RTK Surveyors were 4MB. We quickly switched to 16MB to support things like Over-The-Air updates (which require twice the flash). So, congratulations! If it is indeed a 4MB, you were clearly an early adopter. Thank you.
I have a 4MB model too. I have it programmed with version 1.12 (v1_12):
https://github.com/sparkfun/SparkFun_RT … usVersions
IIRC, we made some big changes starting at v2.0 (v2_0) which weren’t supported by the 4MB variant. I’ll check that again, but that’s my understanding.
The Uploader tool tries to detect the flash size before uploading:
If it can’t detect the size, it defaults to 16MB and uses a partition file which will only work on 16MB. Trying to put the 16MB partitions onto a 4MB model will go horribly wrong…
Please give 1.12 a try and let me know if you need any extra help. I can talk you through performing a manual update from the command line if needed.
Best wishes,
Paul
Looks like I was completely wrong about versions >= 2.0 not working on the 4MB model. I just tried 2.6 and it seems to be working well.
Huh. Go figure. I just tried 3.3 and that is working too. I know it can’t and won’t be able to do OTA updates, but everything else seems to be working.
The critical thing is making sure that the correct partitions file goes on there. Like I said, things will go horribly wrong if the 16MB partitions file is put onto a 4MB model.
When you run the Uploader tool, please make sure you have nothing else accessing the COM port. The detect and update will fail if you have Tera Term running in the background for example.
Let me know how it goes,
Paul
I tried as you suggested and loaded 3.3 with success. For reference, my surveyor never gave the flash size. Instead, it said it could not identify the flash size, so it defaulted to 16 MB.
Im running an M1 Pro Mac, and it took me a while to figure out which serial port to use. If I tried to use one of the serial ports that contained the name “RK Surveyor” or one called (tty.114992872223900490-S2100) none of these worked.
After closing all the other software that could access serial ports a device called USBserial-833110 showed up and it let me upload the firmware using the GUI uploader 1.5.2. All are working now.
Have you tried Kylark? There are two versions Skylark and Skylark RTK. The cost difference is double for the second version but in testing the Skylark version, I am getting about 50 cm and I would like to get much closer. My question is do you think it is worth upgrading?
Hi,
Excellent - glad that’s working for you.
I do have Skylark, but just the standard version. IIRC, it was giving me about 30cm accuracy last time I checked. Looking at the RTCM 1006 data, the base was about 50 miles away in my case. I don’t know if they do anything clever to shift or interpolate the corrections closer to your actual location. Probably not?
I haven’t tried the RTK service. It’s almost certainly worth giving it a go for a month - and cancelling if it doesn’t live up to expectations. But that’s just my personal opinion.
Best wishes,
Paul
