Hi, I’m Marc from Referent Solutions, official Emlid distributor in Spain.
We’re currently facing a couple of issues with a client who rented two Reach RS3 units to work in a mountainous area near Albacete (Spain), using a base and rover setup with Aplitop’s TcpGPS software.
The first and most relevant issue regarding Emlid is that the client reports losing LoRa correction at distances beyond 300 meters. Do you have any recommendations for improving range in terrain with elevation changes and some vegetation? Anything we can try to enhance the LoRa coverage?
The second issue is with TcpGPS itself. When collecting points with the rover through TcpGPS, the displayed coordinates are all zeros (X:0 Y:0 Z:0). The software allows them to save points, but they’re saved without coordinates—just raw data. However, when using Emlid Flow, everything works perfectly: they receive corrections, coordinates are displayed, and points are stored correctly.
Even though we believe this issue is likely related to TcpGPS, we’d like to double-check if there could be anything on the Emlid side affecting the coordinate output to external software, or if there are specific settings to consider when working with TcpGPS.
If you find out the issue with the poor range please let me know. I can get about 1/2mile fairly reliably if there’s not too much obstruction. My RS2 units seemed much better.
I have a similar question regarding the LoRa range between an RS3 Base and Rover pair. I need to shoot the profile of a remote 2 km stretch of small stream located in rather narrow canyon that has a bit of a dog leg midway down the valley. I can probably set the Base on a hillside near the mid point (and almost keep line of site between the RS3s) but the Base will be a couple hundred feet above the valley floor. At its farthest point, the Rover won’t be much more than a km from the Base.
I know very little about radios, but in the past I’ve had issues with robotic total station radio transmissions to a data collector when the data collector dropped below the total station and below/behind a shoulder in the terrain. I was told that problem was due to some sort of “loop” in the total stations transmitted radio signal that didn’t like having the data collector below the transmitting total station with a ground surface in the way. Does the RS3’s LoRa transmission have any similar issue (e.g. the Rover being below the Base and potentially a bit behind a ground surface) that I should be aware of that would limit the distance I can operate the Rover from the Base? Thanks.
