Yes, that makes complete sense. I would love to be able to make something like the cool novatel antenna, but its beyond my technical skills - I have a friend who I am brainstorming this with and Ive been doing a lot of reading. The best we have been able to come up with to date is a shorted annular patch antenna, a ring shape, with a hole in the middle thats shorted around its edge, sort of a very large circular via… which can be made on a PC board in a square shape… not too large. It needs two feeds at 90 degres apart, and a phasing network of some kind… still trying to figure that feed part out.
So… there are a lot of isolated geeks with the similar idea, and I think we need to get together so we can work on this as a group… I am not an RF person , I am a web person, and I am learning as I go. Luckily I think this is really interesting so thats a good motivator.
You must mean Oliver Huang of Skytraq? From the single email exchange I had with him he sounded like a smart guy and I think that his products are very good. I would be surprised if I can’t do as well as receivers costing much much more, perhaps even the limit for the technology with it.
It would be great to have Skytraq give a modest level of technical support (information, not money) to the open source community… help to know what was possible… I think RTKlib is an independent project, and I get the impression they could use some more info on the Skytraq’s internal command set…
They could really turn the game around with a committment to democratize the technology… As it stands now, there are only projects like Michele Bavaro’s Yuan 10 receiver - I think he is the first to sell a product - at least in the English-speaking web, based on that chip.
But Skytraq can’t be making it for nobody, where do they go?
Its a game changer…
Two of te Ublox chips also work with RTKlib… three if you use a specific firmware version… Also there are other chips out there that let you access raw data… most more expensive or older/less sensitive I would imagine…
This post-processing/low cost DGPS meme has been building since at least 2002. I’m sorry I went back and edited the original post, I did that because in retrospect, I thought I could have explained what I was trying to say better.
I really am just learning this… I make huge mistakes in my assumptions all the time. I am lucky that I have gotten help from people, thats been very helpful.
Its time to do this thing and get people excited about a technology that most of us only know a little, but I am starting to think, could make mathematics the new, cool gateway drug.