RTK package selection help

Hi Sparkfun,

I wanted to start off by thanking you all for putting up such great info and documentation, I just discovered the page and have been having a lot of fun researching anything RTK.

I also wanted to ask if someone on your team might be able to lend me a hand – I’m currently a senior mechanical engineering student at UCSB working on a final year project involving building two autonomous drones. I’ve opted to try an incorporate RTK technology for both rovers, but currently know very little, and would appreciate it if I could maybe get a little guidance ordering a complete package from you.

For a bit of background:

  1. We’ll have two autonomous “rovers” – i.e 2x ZED-F9P units?

  2. Compatible GNSS antennas for both rovers – selected the ones below (one is an Arial drone, thus helical, and the other will be a ground rover, thus no need for weight savings/compact design)

  3. Sparkfun RTK reference station – for plug and play RTK correctional data

My main questions about the ordering process stem from a couple issues:

  1. I don’t want to rely on transferring correctional data from RTK reference station by radio given expected interference and wasn’t sure how to transmit to both rovers anyhow. This then makes uploading data to services like RTK2go seem more feasible, especially for multi rover operation, but wanted a little more insight on how this is done. Would I need any supplemental hardware? The rovers themselves will be fit with raspberry pi modules which can ideally pick up the data?

  2. The autonomous rovers will be using pixhawk and raspberry pi controllers, is it an easy integration to include the ZED-F9P?

Thank you so much for your time and please let me know if there may be anything else I haven’t considered. We’d like to get ordering as soon as possible so any information you can give would be greatly appreciated!

  1. You can use Wifi, Bluetooth, or RF radios to tx/rx with the rovers…RF radios (LoRa) have the longest range, so that’s generally our suggestion. For the most part you would not need add’l hardware (unless you use the serial radios, you’d need them or something similar) https://docs.sparkfun.com/SparkFun_RTK_ … transport/

  2. Yes, there are plenty of videos online detailing their implementations with the F9P