I’m using FieldGenius for Android v.3.1 connecting to a SparkFun Facet which is receiving RTK corrections over radio from another identical Facet running as a base over a known point. The Facet rover is connected as a NMEA Basic instrument. The fix is good and I’m getting decent residuals, but the satellite count is often 12 on FGA while the equipment reads it as around 30. The two receivers aren’t very far from each other. Also, the skyplot in FGA doesn’t show what I would expect. I’m assuming that the solution position is coming in fine, but I have a feeling something about the configuration on one or both sides isn’t quite right. I tend toward using the surveying defaults on these units. Any tips to make sure I’m getting the best solution I can out of these things? TIA!
FieldGenius is likely using the GGA sentence, which has a legacy limit of 12 for its “satellites in use”.
In the facet config, you can turn GNGNS Sentence ON.
I can’t promise FieldGenius will use it, but it might be worth a try ?
Interesting! Would that be under the Message Rates config – setting NMEA_GNS to “1”? Sorry, I haven’t educated myself on the specific NMEA settings. I either use “Surveying Defaults” or “Logging Defaults”
Oh, and I should have mentioned that this is only to show you “better” metrics. Your positioning won’t be impacted by the limit of “12” birds reported over NMEA at all, if that is the issue.
Thanks so much. I’ll give that a try. And yeah, this is only to get a clean reading about what is going on in FGA. The problem is that what I’m seeing on the Facet hardware display and my solution don’t match the FGA status. I will report back!
Changing the NMEA_GNS setting to “1” did not resolve the problem. I also reached out to Field Genius support and they requested a communication trace file, which I provided. I’ll give an update if they are able to resolve it, but it is seeming more and more like an NMEA mismatch between the receiver output and the DC software.
I’m suprised that FieldGenius cant parse GNGGA messages, or GNS.
It appears it’s using the “NMEA Basic” driver, which has the 12 bird limit for legacy devices.
That’s unfortunate, especially for a pricy app.