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sparkfun RTK Surveyor Hook-Up Manual
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sparkfun RTK Surveyor Hook-Up Manual

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SparkFun RTK Surveyor Hookup Guide
Introduction
The RTK Surveyor from SparkFun is your one stop shop for high precision geolocation and surveying needs. For
basic users, it's incredibly easy to get up and running and for advanced users, the RTK Surveyor is a flexible and
powerful tool.
SparkFun RTK Surveyor
 GPS-18443
With just a few minutes of setup, the RTK Surveyor is one of the fastest ways to take centimeter grade
measurements.
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Summary of Contents for sparkfun RTK Surveyor

  • Page 1 The RTK Surveyor from SparkFun is your one stop shop for high precision geolocation and surveying needs. For basic users, it’s incredibly easy to get up and running and for advanced users, the RTK Surveyor is a flexible and powerful tool.
  • Page 2 An RTK Fix in SW Maps By connecting your phone to the RTK Surveyor over Bluetooth, your phone can act as the radio link to provide correction data as well as receive the NMEA output from the device. It’s how $10,000 surveying devices have been operating for the past decade - we just made it easier, smaller, and a lot cheaper.
  • Page 3 Depending on your setup you may want to use your phone for RTCM correction data. If a source is not available online, you will need a 2nd RTK Surveyor setup in base mode and a radio link connecting the Base to the Rover.
  • Page 4 Retired To charge the RTK Surveyor you will need a USB C cable and a power supply. SparkFun carries a few options: USB 2.0 Type-C Cable - 1 Meter Reversible USB A to C Cable - 0.8m  CAB-16905  CAB-15425 USB Wall Charger - 5V, 2A USB-C Wall Adapter - 5.1V, 3A (Black)

  • Page 5: Hardware Overview

    NTRIP to increase rover reception to 10km! Hardware Overview The RTK Surveyor is a fully enclosed, preprogrammed device. There are very few things to worry about or configure but we will cover the basics. Switches...
  • Page 6 When the SETUP switch is set to Base the device will enter Base Station mode. This is used when the device is mounted to a fixed position (like a tripod or roof). The RTK Surveyor will initiate a survey. After 60 to 120 seconds...
  • Page 7 The Power switch is self explanatory. When turned on the LED will turn Green, Yellow, or Red indicating battery level. The RTK Surveyor has a built-in 1000mAh lithium polymer battery that will enable up to 4 hours of field use between charging.
  • Page 8 Antenna: This SMA connector is used to connect an L1/L2 type GNSS antenna to the RTK Surveyor. Please realize that a standard GPS antenna does not receive the L2 band signals and will greatly impede the performance of the RTK Surveyor (RTK fixes are nearly impossible).
  • Page 9 04V-S). 3.5V to 5.5V is provided by this connector to power a radio with a voltage that depends on the power source. If USB is connected to the RTK Surveyor then voltage on this port will be 5V (+/-10%). If running off of the internal battery then voltage on this port will vary with the battery voltage (3.5V to 4.2V depending on the state of...
  • Page 10 30 hours of run time assuming 25% is lost to efficiencies of the power bank and charge circuit within RTK Surveyor. The RTK Surveyor can be charged from any USB port or adapter. The charge circuit is rated for 1000mA so USB 2.0 ports will charge at 500mA and USB 3.0+ ports will charge at 1A.
  • Page 11 Two internal slide switches control the flow of NMEA and RTCM traffic between the external connectors and the internal BT UART used on the ESP32. Ostensibly the Bluetooth Broadcast switch can be set to pipe RTCM data to the ESP32’s UART (instead of NMEA) so that correction data can be transmitted over Bluetooth. Point to point Bluetooth radio support is not supported because the useful range of Bluetooth is too short for most RTK applications but may be helpful in some advanced applications.
  • Page 12 LiPo and Charging The RTK Surveyor houses a standard 1000mAh 3.7V LiPo. The charge circuit is set to 1A so with an appropriate power source, charging an empty battery should take roughly one hour. USB C on the RTK Surveyor is configured for 2A draw so if the user attaches to a USB 3.0 port, the charge circuit should operate near the 1A max.
  • Page 13 A Qwiic connector is exposed on the end of the unit. This allows connection to the I C bus on the ESP32. Currently the stock RTK Surveyor does not support any additional Qwiic sensors or display but users may add...

  • Page 14: Hardware Assembly

    Shown here is the most common RTK Rover setup. A monopole designed for cameras is used. A cell phone holder is clamped to the monopod and the RTK Surveyor is mounted. The ¼” camera thread of the monopole is adapted to ⅝” 11-TPI and a L1/L2 antenna is attached. A Male TNC to Male SMA cable connects the antenna to...
  • Page 15 Basic RTK Surveyor Rover setup with RTCM over Bluetooth We have done lots of testing with the u-blox L1/L2 antenna and it's very good for the price and size. Mounted to a ground plate you will get good results. It's just a bit ungainly when mounted to the top of a monopole. We recommend the 'ufo' style L1/L2 antennas because they have a larger antenna element and a slightly larger ground plane than the u-blox antenna.
  • Page 16 We strongly recommend against using a rigid helical antenna configuration as shown below. The RTK Surveyor is not designed for such configurations and can lead to permanent damage to the antenna connector. The helical antenna becomes a large lever arm. If the unit is dropped this lever is capable of damaging both the SMA connector and where the connector is soldered to the PCB.
  • Page 17 Picture hanging strips from 3M make a nice semi-permanent mount. Plug the 4-pin to 6-pin JST cable included with the RTK Surveyor from the Radio port to either of the Serial Telemetry Radios (shipped in pairs). We really love these radios because they are paired out of the box, either can send or receive (so it doesn't matter which radio is attached to base or rover) and they have remarkable range.
  • Page 18 Any tripod with a ¼” camera thread will work. The Amazon Basics tripod works well enough but is a bit light weight and rickety. A cell phone holder is clamped to the tripod and the RTK Surveyor is held in the clamp. The ¼”...
  • Page 19 This means that nearly any GIS application that can receive NMEA data over serial port (almost all do) can be used with the RTK Surveyor. As long as your device can open a serial port over Bluetooth (also known as SPP) your device can retrieve industry standard NMEA positional data.
  • Page 20 Note: *BC41* is the last four digits of your unit's MAC address and will be unique to the device in front of you. This is helpful in case there are multiple RTK Surveyors within Bluetooth range. **TIP:** The MAC address for a RTK Surveyor can be viewed by attaching a USB cable to the ESP32 and opening a terminal at 115200bps.
  • Page 21 List of available Bluetooth devices Next we need to send RTCM correction data from the phone back to the RTK Surveyor so that it can improve its fix accuracy. This is the amazing power of RTK Surveyor and SW Maps. Your phone can be the radio link! From the main SW Maps menu select NTRIP Client.
  • Page 22 NTRIP Connection - Not there? Be sure to select 'u-blox RTK' instrument Enter your NTRIP caster credentials and click connect. You will see bytes begin to transfer from your phone to the RTK Surveyor. Within a few seconds the RTK Surveyor will go from ~300mm accuracy to 14mm. Pretty nifty, no?
  • Page 23 RTCM format. You, the user, don't need to know how to decode or deal with RTCM, you simply need to get RTCM from a source within 10km of your location into the RTK Surveyor. The NTRIP client logs into the server (also known as the NTRIP caster) and grabs that data, every second, and sends it over Bluetooth to the RTK Surveyor.

  • Page 24: System Configuration

    ⚡ Warning! All data in and out of RTK Surveyor is 3.3V. Exposing these pins to 5V logic will damage the device.
  • Page 25 When powered on, the RTK Surveyor will broadcast itself as either Surveyor Rover-XXXX or Surveyor Base-XXXX depending on the position of the SETUP switch. The menus will timeout after 15 seconds of inactivity, so if you do not press a key the RTK Surveyor will return to reporting status messages after 15 seconds.
  • Page 26 Controlling various NMEA sentences and options Measurement Frequency By default, the RTK Surveyor outputs a solution or location 'fix' 4 times a second. This can be increased but anything above 4Hz is not guaranteed to be stable. The Bluetooth buffer can quickly become overwhelmed and/or if datalogging is enabled the system can become bogged down with SD write delays.
  • Page 27 Select the type of base setup By default, the RTK Surveyor will enter 'Survey-In' mode when a user sets the SETUP switch to Base. The unit will monitor all constellations until both the observation time and required mean 3D standard deviation is met. u-blox recommends 60s and 5m but these are configurable.
  • Page 28 Setting for the NTRIP Server This is a new and powerful feature of the RTK Surveyor. The RTK Surveyor can be configured to transmit its RTCM directly over WiFi to the user's mountpoint. This eliminates the need for a radio link or a cell phone link.
  • Page 29 Connect a USB A to C cable from your computer to the ESP32 port on the RTK Surveyor. Now identify the com port the RTK Enumerated at. The easiest way to do this is to open the device manager:...
  • Page 30 -z --flash_mode dio --flash_freq 80m --flash_size detect 0 RTK_Surveyor_Firmware_v13_co mbined.bin Note: You will need to modify COM6 to match the serial port that RTK Surveyor enumerates at. Programming via the esptool CLI Upon completion, your RTK Surveyor will have the latest and greatest features! Creating Custom Firmware The RTK Surveyor is an ESP32 and high-precision GNSS hackers’s delight.

  • Page 31: Troubleshooting

    SPARKFUN TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE PAGE If you don't find what you need there, the SparkFun Forums are a great place to find and ask for help. If this is your first visit, you'll need to create a Forum Account to search product forums and post questions.
  • Page 32 How to Build a DIY GNSS Reference Station M8Q) Hookup Guide Learn how to affix a GNSS antenna, use PPP to get its The SparkFun ZOE-M8Q and SAM-M8Q are two ECEF coordinates and then broadcast your own RTCM similarly powerful GPS units but with different project data over the internet and cellular using NTRIP to applications.
  • Page 33 Setting up a Rover Base RTK System How to Build a DIY GNSS Reference Station Getting GNSS RTCM correction data from a base to a Learn how to affix a GNSS antenna, use PPP to get its rover is easy with a serial telemetry radio! We'll show ECEF coordinates and then broadcast your own RTCM you how to get your high precision RTK GNSS system data over the internet and cellular using NTRIP to...

This manual is also suitable for:

Gps-18443