RTK Facet L - Band - No L band coverage in Aus

GPS/GNSS Development Boards
1

I recently picked up an RTK Facet L band, followed the set up guides, however I don’t seem able to get any RTK float or fix. Just single. At first glance Point perfect seems to cover my area (Melbourne, Australia), but this might not include the required L - band? Just MQTT?

Just wanting to confirm that I’ll have to use RTCM, and that L band wont work for me here - as opposed to there being something wrong with my unit or set up.

Thanks!

2

Sorry friend! We tried to make it really clear on the product page that the L-Band service only covers North America 48 and EU. Please let us know if something was misleading or confusing (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/20000).

Now, it looks like there is L-Band service in AUS: https://thingstream.statuspage.io/ But I need to do some digging to see if the receiver in the Facet L-Band is compatible with the satellite freq for AUS. I doubt it (because Murphy’s law) but there’s a chance.

All that said, your L-Band device will still work just fine if you provide it with corrections from a base station or other RTK service (does Skylark have coverage? Not quite yet: https://support.swiftnav.com/support/so … rk-rtk-faq).

3

Thanks for that. There is some confusing information - I don’t think Point Perfect and L-band are interchangeable terms. Quote from the product page

Please Note: The PointPerfect broadcast provides uniform coverage on a continental scale in Europe, the contiguous USA, Canada, South Korea, and Australia regions, including up to 12 nautical miles (roughly 22 kilometers) off coastlines. Please keep in mind that u-blox reserves the right to not approve all applicants to this system.

However I think the last line in this table is the problem?

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/nmF5- … N_P9=w1280

I managed to get NTRIP data from the Australian Government at https://gnss.ga.gov.au/stream via SW Maps, and get RTK Float (<30mm Accuracy) which is pretty good. Still not as easy as L Band, so look forward to seeing what you come up with.

4

I’m glad to hear you found a local correction source!

The google image failed to come through. Can you post a link? I think you’re here: https://developer.thingstream.io/guides … escription Oh, yep, that’s it.

U-blox is very thorough but some times impenetrable. I’ve reached out to our FAE for info.

Looks like the L-Band freq is given when we subscribe to the topic. Let me poke at this tomorrow, there may be a way.

5

Oh, yes this table on the product page is entirely misleading:

Please Note: The PointPerfect broadcast provides uniform coverage on a continental scale in Europe, the contiguous USA, Canada, South Korea, and Australia regions, including up to 12 nautical miles (roughly 22 kilometers) off coastlines. Please keep in mind that u-blox reserves the right to not approve all applicants to this system.

I’ll talk to our catalog group about that. Please feel free to ask for a refund. That’s very misleading.

6

sparky:
Looks like the L-Band freq is given when we subscribe to the topic. Let me poke at this tomorrow, there may be a way.

Thought I’d follow up on this?

Thanks

7

Unfortunately there is not currently coverage for AU/NZ. From u-blox:

Right now we don’t cover with L-band other regions than US/CAN and Europe. We are considering expansion to APAC next (mostly AU/NZL), but timeline is still TBD.

8

hi guys just found this discussion while trying to answer the same question of l-band PP coverage in Australia region. Do you know if there have been any updates to this?

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You can get SPARTN data for portions of Australia via an internet connection to ThingStream

My supposition is that it’s not a technical issue, but an economic one. I’m not familiar the satellite coverage and availability of bandwidth in the Australian market.

Now if you have cellular, or StarLink coverage, you might be able to use the IP service to quickly establish a solid base location, for example using one of SparkFun’s ZED-F9P boards, and modems or MCU, etc.

Nordian’s entry into the Brazilian market with L-Band PointPerfect does give me some hope. I’m not sure if you have similar players there, or not.

10

Hey Sponsoredlinks,

Unfortunately, it looks like PP L-Band coverage is still limited to the northern hemisphere:

PointPerfect service coverage | u-blox

I have prodded Core Electronics to make the coverage map more prominent, since their customer base is outside of the coverage area, but I haven’t heard back from them about it.

11

Isn’t a sizable part of Brazil below the Equator?