I bought a RTK Express kit. Received the kit with a Express plus and connected the antenna and powered on.
The screen shows no satellites. 0. Left it sitting for half an hour and nothing.
Should I send this back?
The antenna needs a clear view of the sky. Please repeat your test outdoors. Within ~30 seconds you should see the RTK Express begin to detect satellites and get a fix.
This was done outside.
I left the unit charge all the way, and tried again and it is working.
Last night was cloudy, today is clear sky. Maybe that was it?
Clouds shouldn’t pose much degradation.
Please keep an eye on it. I think there’s a bug where the SIV is showing 0 and blinking, but the HPA is lowering which indicates reception. I’ve seen it about once a week in my use so it’s hard to pin down and replicate reliably.
Hello,
I have the same issue with the RTK express Plus, I was outdoor and the display showed 0 satellites, I left the unit for 30 minutes outside and nothing changed, I also have an RTK surveyor and I didn’t have any problem with it; It showed 30 satellites and the positions were almost the same.
Does anyone know what can be the problem? Any hint is greatly appreciated.
What’s your hardware setup? Do you have an Express Plus kit? Do you have all the cables attached, TOP106 antenna? Assuming you are using the same equipment as the RTK Surveyor, and if you want to open up the unit then please see this post: viewtopic.php?f=116&t=57492&p=232630&hi … tk#p232620
The main area of concern is the RF Input pin and if it has any issues.
Back to the same issue.
I don’t use the RTK every day or every week. Last time I tried to use it with a client, it did not acquired any satellite. Frustrating. I left it on the rest of the day and it finally got the satellites. I kept turning it on every day and it kept acquiring. Then I left it off for a week or so, and now I’ve been trying to make it work for 2 days and it just doesn’t acquire any satellites.
Any advice?
Within the same day, outside, you should have >4 SIV in less than 30 seconds. If you’ve left the device off for a few days or weeks, it shouldn’t take longer than about 30 seconds. If you’re not seeing that the following problems points come to mind:
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Internal RF problems. Unlikely since you are able to get reception at times.
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Connecting the cable to the SMA connector on the unit.
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Faulty SMA to TNC cable
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Faulty connector on the TOP106 antenna
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Faulty internal TOP106 antenna element or electronics
If you have another antenna and TNC cable available, that would help use remove them from the equation.
A way to test the cable to SMA on the unit: setup the unit outside, and slowly unscrew the SMA cable from the unit while watching the SIV on the unit. Unscrewing the connector will move the center pin around and may make contact with the sleeve where it may not have good contact.
Later on the day I turned it on and it finally acquired satellites. The only difference is that the sky was not as cloudy. But today there are heavy clouds and it sees 25 satellites. It seems like it needs a clear sky to view satellites after a few days of being off. Make any sense?
With the cable, I can unscrew almost half way until it goes to 0 satellites.
I don’t have any other cable or antenna.
Hmm, clouds have little to no affect on 1GHz to 2GHz signals: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L_band
L band waves are used for GPS units because they are able to penetrate clouds, fog, rain, storms, and vegetation. Only dense environments such as heavy forest canopies or concrete buildings can cause GPS units to receive data inaccurately.
I suspect it’s the antenna connection (mechanical) problem of some sort.