I’m looking to purchase an RTK capable device for the purpose of creating as accurate as possible GPX tracks, to which I will be using alongside an Insta360 x5 for street view imagery. I will be using the unit on the car, on foot and perhaps cycling as well so I wanted a versatile solution and I like to put things together my own way.
I was set on getting the UM980 but then I saw the UM981 has dead reckoning capabilities. There’s not many tunnels where I am but it seems like it would be useful for mapping underground car parks and such.
Only thing with the UM981 is that (as of writing) that it currently doesn’t support Galileo HAS (E6b) in it’s current firmware, that’s the only thing stopping me. I’m planning on utilising Galileo HAS because there isn’t any free RTK bases near me in Ireland and would like to keep costs down for the time being and ~40cm accuracy should be more than good enough for most GPX traces I feel like. Of course 1cm accuracy would be ideal but I have budget constraints for the time being.
Long story short, Is it still worth getting the UM981 and waiting for a possible future firmware update to include Galileo HAS or should I just get the UM980 and call it a day?
Any input on getting an RTK device would be much appreciated, thank you.
I did see a few posts about the Quectel devices but unfortunately there’s not many RTK bases around where I am at the moment and I’m unable to set up a base myself because I have no clear surrounding view of the sky. The main appeal of the Unicore devices was that they had Galileo HAS which I could utilise without an RTK base for the time being.
Unless there’s a real reason to go for that unit, I did set myself a budget of 350 Euro or so to get a unit that would do the job and without much fuss
I don’t know where you live, but perhaps you can try to talk to the town hall staff, or farmers, and explain they could have their own base station connected on an open network.
In France we started the Centipede-RTK project a few years ago, and we see more and more base stations around the world, added by farmers, town, …
I got clarification from Ardusimple and they said that the UM981 has Galileo HAS enabled on it, just the website hasn’t been updated.
Think I might end up going for the UM981 just for the IMU features and to be able to record underground.
Turns out I didn’t do all the research I should have, I was just looking in the wrong area, I think PPK makes more sense for this general use case as I don’t exactly need the accurate location right off the bat. I need to post process anyways my recordings so realtime accuracy isn’t a major factor.
Correct me if I’m wrong in this way of thinking.
I live in Ireland and as you can see there isn’t that many bases around. Closest one to me is around 80-90km away.
Not even sure how to approach farmers and such about this topic and whether they would even have such RTK bases setup, at least they certainly wouldn’t be high tech farmers around the area.
From my reading I think that there will be a slight degradation in accuracy with trying to do PPK on a base approx 80-90km away but should still be accurate enough to around 20-50cm? Think that’s reasonable enough for GPX traces when most devices can only get around 3 meters and considering there isn’t any bases close to me
Oh yeah we did discuss this a bit in the group, didnt realise of the username.
Still on this predicament for the time being, haven’t gotten around to sorting it out yet. But I think it makes more sense for me to go the PPK route and just get the rinex files from the bases and should still be accurate enough.
Thank you Stephane. I’d like to understand how the base station coordinates with the rover, and the specific benefit of having a self-deployed base-station. Is this already documented in French?
There is nothing that you could consider coordination between the base stations and the rovers. The base stations broadcast corrections and the rovers listen to those broadcasts. Real-time kinematic positioning - Wikipedia
