Just got a RTK Facet delivered, and have been using it SW Maps. 140mm accuracy with no RTCM service yet! Beats the pants off of the Ashtech/Magellen/Spectra MobileMapper6 I was still using from 2010!
Couple quick questions, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to project a waypoint, or I guess “Stake Out”, with SW Maps. I would like to input known GPS coords, and have the rover take me to them in the field. Is that possible with SW Maps? I have read there is a way to import SHP files, which would be nice for importing tons of points, but I regularly need to just go check on one or two location while in the field, or need to stake out a location, and just want to enter the coordinates manually. Can anyone suggest an app that does this and has a built in NTRIP client? I am playing around with MapIt GIS but it seems their NTRIP is a separate paid app?
Next I have a question on NTRIP servers. I found two free NTRIP servers, but the caster locations are relatively far away. The closest is 95km away. Will this benefit my accuracy at all?
If not, is anyone using Skylark? I will only desire this greater accuracy for sporadic projects, and $50 for a month, a couple times a year seems like a no brainer in comparison to setting up my own permanent base and caster… My primary work location is ~35mi SSW of San Antonio, so I figure Skylark must have stations around SA, however I have not seen a map of their caster network.
Thanks for the feedback! Definitely plan on leaving a review.
I figured what could it hurt, and tried using the free RTK2GO.COM caster that was 95km away. I was able to get RTK fix with the unit and software getting down to 10-12mm!!
Any reason why the unit would show .014 and my phone show 10mm? I guess I was just paying attention to the horizontal, is the output on the screen of the Facet averaging vertical as well?
try this android program works well with facet , https://www.comnavtech.com/news/SinoGNS … N-187.html ,https://www.comnavtech.com/companyfile/306.html, set to nmea, bluetouth connection, set the coordinates according to the region where you want to do measurements you may need a geoid in ggf format for your area, you also have a stakeout, it’s strong ok I use it in parallel with surpad 4.2, don’t forget to set L1 and L2 parameters of the antenna for altimetry
Any reason why the unit would show .014 and my phone show 10mm? I guess I was just paying attention to the horizontal, is the output on the screen of the Facet averaging vertical as well?
Yes. And it’s kind of interesting. I asked the folks at SW Maps about this and this is what they said:
When displaying horizontal accuracy, u-center and previous versions of SW Maps calculated it assuming that the receiver position is inside a rectangle with length equal to longitude error and width equal to latitude error. So the horizontal accuracy was calculated as SQRT(eLon^2 + eLat^2). This gives 0.0141m when both latitude and longitude errors are equal to 0.01m. We think that this is not a good idea, and a better estimate for horizontal accuracy would be an ellipse with semi-major and semi-minor axes being equal to the latitude and longitude errors. So we take the maximum of the estimated error in the two horizontal directions as the horizontal accuracy, which gives horizontal accuracy of 0.01m.
@Gabriel_R - Interesting looking app. Do you have to side load the apk file?
Just got a RTK Facet delivered, and have been using it SW Maps. 140mm accuracy with no RTCM service yet! Beats the pants off of the Ashtech/Magellen/Spectra MobileMapper6 I was still using from 2010!
Couple quick questions, I cannot for the life of me figure out how to project a waypoint, or I guess “Stake Out”, with SW Maps. I would like to input known GPS coords, and have the rover take me to them in the field. Is that possible with SW Maps? I have read there is a way to import SHP files, which would be nice for importing tons of points, but I regularly need to just go check on one or two location while in the field, or need to stake out a location, and just want to enter the coordinates manually. Can anyone suggest an app that does this and has a built in NTRIP client? I am playing around with MapIt GIS but it seems their NTRIP is a separate paid app?
Next I have a question on NTRIP servers. I found two free NTRIP servers, but the caster locations are relatively far away. The closest is 95km away. Will this benefit my accuracy at all?
If not, is anyone using Skylark? I will only desire this greater accuracy for sporadic projects, and $50 for a month, a couple times a year seems like a no brainer in comparison to setting up my own permanent base and caster… My primary work location is ~35mi SSW of San Antonio, so I figure Skylark must have stations around SA, however I have not seen a map of their caster network.
Thanks for any input!
Did u find any program or a way to stake out poins?. I was playing with SW maps, and seems you can import points in Shapefile format in a layer, and from there you can see the differentials X and Y from your actual location. But you can’t see the coordinates of the pojnts, and when you check the distance between them with the ruler is not accurate, so i don’t know is this is correct.
Also looking for some help and guidance for stakeout. I have a need to stakeout some property corners (or close to). I’ve been using SW maps for data collection but looking to experiment with different apps that are compatible with the RTK FACET L-band. I’ve downloaded the FieldGenuis App for android and it looks promising but as far as I can tell is not compatible with Sparkfun Products.
Stakeout was one of the reasons I spent some real money and purchased Carlson SurvPC from a legitimate survey equipment dealer and a Panasonic Toughpad to run it on. It’s not cheap ($3K) but it works very well with the Facets and is amazingly capable.
I started with a used WinCE device running an old version of SurvCE and was impressed with the Carlson software. The old WinCE platform was very creaky so I upgraded to SurvPC running on a Win10 tablet.
Be aware of used devices on eBay claiming have SurvPC or SurvCE on them. Be especially careful with that eBay seller in Romania. There are a lot of listings that actually have limited demo versions or flakey cracked copies of Carlson sw.
Glad you’re having success with the Facets. I’ve done a lot of surveying with them.
I recently bought a SparkFun RTK Facet and I’m trying to connect it to a tablet with Win 10 and SurvCe PC 7 but I haven’t been able to, I’ve already tried to do it via Bluetooth (Windows Mobile) and Bluetooth Generic port without success.
Could you help me or does anyone have a manual to help me with this installation?
walkerTSOC:
Next I have a question on NTRIP servers. I found two free NTRIP servers, but the caster locations are relatively far away. The closest is 95km away. Will this benefit my accuracy at all?
My closest RTK2go caster is about 95 miles away. On rare occasions, it provides an RTK-Fix, but even in RTK-Float it brings the accuracy to about 35mm most days.
Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to get PointPerfect SPARTN data to your Facet over bluetooth from your phone running GNSS Master? Tell SparkFun - it seems like something they would want to enable for a non-L-band Facet.
I am having difficulty connecting NTRIP using Carlson’s SurvCe 7 software with SparkFun RTK Facet.
I already created an account on https://www.myfloridagps.com, but when it was time to establish the connection, I received a message waiting for transfer messages from the server and then another notification appears “I am not getting RTK corrections from the base, the socket closed correctly.”
