We are a municipality looking for a GPS to use for recording locations of water service connection lines as they are installed and were wondering about the RS2+. We currently have a Topcon HiPer VR with Topnet Live for our primary surveying, but would be looking for something more cost effective to be onsite with the crews to pick up the service connection points as they are made.
Would the RS2+ be a good option for this? What would we need to get it up and running? Can we utilize the Topnet Live service we already have or the Emlid Caster? The work would mostly be in an urban/suburban environment, so not wide open skies. Probably a lot of work in the public ROW in a trench at the watermain.
Just looking for some ideas. If anyone is using one of these in the Chicago area and willing to give a quick demo of its operation that would be great. Any information is appreciated.
To evaluate the cost, what does the Topnet Live subscription cost?
By having a pair (or a few) of RS2+ units, you can have one act as a permanent CORS at your offices while the rest act as rovers. The cost then only becomes outright purchase of the units, the ops budget is unaffected by susbcriptions for a correction service. There are other options like for example using an M2 as a permanent base. It’s been done by a few users here and this opens up options of using a better antenna and keeping the more sensitive electronics inside.
The Topnet Live subscription costs about $1800 per year. We just upgraded our primary survey equipment with a new Topcon total station and gps, so we wouldn’t drop this subscription.
I don’t think we would be looking to get into setting bases, either permanent or temporary. Having one (or a couple) RS2+ units as rovers with RTK would be ideal if it is feasible and would give acceptable accuracies.
Then, as long as the Topnet Live service is a normal NTRIP connection, I see no reason for it not to work with any NTRIP capable receiver. RS2+ would be perfectly capable for that.
It seems we’ve just released the product which should perfectly suit your workflow! You mentioned that you don’t want to set up a permanent base and are going to work with NTRIP. So I thought you may be interested in our new Reach RX.
It’s designed to be an RTK rover receiving corrections over NTRIP.
Of course, Reach RS2+ is also good for your case. If you assume you will need to work in PPK or set up your own base one day, choose Reach RS2+.
Regarding the compatibility with Topnet Live, it seems to be compatible with non-Topcon receivers. If it streams data in RTCM3, everything should work fine. Reach needs information about base position and GPS observables, most services provide this info.
I will need to look into the details of our Topnet Live subscription, but it looks like the Reach RX would be a good option if we can get it to work together with the network.
