I would like to get clarification on if I am connecting my RS2+ to my DJI Mavic 3E correctly for RTK corrections.
I am in an area where there is no internet or cell coverage, so I set up the RS2+ base and output as Local NTrip and connect to the drone and this works.
When I need to work remotely from the base, I take the rover and use the following workflow:
Set up the rover with the bipod
Survey a point
Set the base point in the RS2+ to the point just surveyed
To make sure I am understanding correctly, you are setting the base up on a known point and using LoRa to establish a new point for the base for the flight and then doing Local NTRIP to the drone?
Yes, as Michael mentioned, if there is no known point anywhere around, point 1 and 2 are superfluous. Just set the base up anywhere and accumulate raw data for the amount of time you’d require to fit in your precision tolerances, all this while you’re doing your flight and other tasks at the site.
Afterwards if you require absolute accuracy, you’ll just need to post-process the base data with whatever method is best for you.
Correct, I set up the Base on a known point and output LoRa to the Rover. I then move to where I need to fly and follow the steps set out above.
Step three is setting the base point in the Rover to the point just surveyed.
This process does allow me to get RTK lock with my drone but I would have thought with the Base giving corrections to the Rover and the Rover talking to the Drone, there wouldn’t be any need to set a new base point in the rover.
That’s pretty standard practice here. If there’s no control on site then I find the nearest benchmark and traverse something in. If there is control I localize and can setup my RS3 with Local NTRIP as my flight base station pretty much wherever I want. Once that point is set and occupied there’s no reason to continue corrections to the rover (base) so I would break down the LoRa base before flight.
As I mentioned before our data connectivity has gotten a lot better here over the last year or so and having access to the GEODNET RTK network my baselines rarely exceed 15km so I haven’t used LoRa in a while. I probably need to get out there and make sure it still works.
The only extra thing I would want is to make sure that the coordinates being sent to the remote are unchanging from the moment I lift off to the moment I land. Especially with a sensor like our L2 that relies on its IMU and RTK for QA.
I have never tried passing rover coordinates through local NTRIP without going in the rover’s Base Settings section and let it run an average over something like a minute so those fixed coordinates get broadcast to the remote.
Maybe someone else can confirm what the behavior is, or maybe you can check on the remote itself in the RTK section of DJI Pilot 2, see if the coordinate values change or not.
