I’d like to see if there is a ready made cable to connect a Satel Easy Pro radio, to an RS2+ so that I can use the RS2+ as a base station for Leica gs14-18 Rovers. Also, if there are any other nuanced things I should know about before attempting this. I believe this should work, so long as I’m able to get the two pieces of hardware connected.
To add to Ruths reply, yes there are two cables available that when combined end to end should work for you.
Emlid Lemo 9 pin to DB9 Male ↔ Female DB9 to ODU 8 pin Satel
The Male cable in the pinout diagram provided by Ruth is the one you want from Emlid. I have a couple and they are very well made. Be careful not to inadvertently order the alternative Female or No connector versions (unless you want to fit your own Male DB9).
For the other, big name OEM cables can be horrendously expensive however there are generally aftermarket cables available at much lower cost that are still well made if you look around.
It’s pretty standard stuff what you are doing, the various cables are interoperable and I’ve used aftermarket cables for Trimble 7 pin and Pacific Crest 5 pin radios with no problems. The common connection is the DB9 Male/Female.
Note if you do get any quirky RS232 issues look at disabling the Satel side CTS & RTS flow control signals. These are not normally used or even available (including by Emlid) on the assumption your data rate doesn’t exceed the transmission rate. In the Satel it appears you can disable them in settings - Handshaking.
Sorry im just getting back to this. I was able to get everything connected, i.e. I was able to get corrections to the Leica rover, via an RS2+ and a Satel radio. I purchased the suggested cables, and once I had everything hooked up, I just had to get my base up and running through the Emlid app (just a quick “here” point to test it out) had to make sure the baud rate on the base was the same as the radio as well, and it was up and running.
It locked up in a handful of minutes of watching the leica reciever radio signal pumping, confirming connection to the radio. It took much longer to get a fix vs emlid to emlid, or leica to leica for whatever reason (parking lot at the office wasnt ideal gnss conditions). NTRIP was able to get a fix very quickly in the same area.
The main issue I’m trying to work through now is the correction update frequency is very slow (like once every couple seconds as opposed to once every half seconds or so as Im used to) and it seems like its on either the emlid side or the Satel radio side (Im leaning toward the Emlid base, but Im not certain), but I havent found a soloution. You can certainly get work done this way, its just not as noce for things like construction layout or topo. Boundary work it would be fine, but before I put it out in the field as a full-time base, I would really like to fix that part of this setup.
If anyone knows how to increase the update rate, I’d appreciate it!
Thank you Wombo! Your post got me what I needed, i just needed to know what the connectors were called so that I could track them down.
Do you have any idea how I could get the corrections to be at a quicker interval? It seems to be slower than with a Leica base or NTRIP. Takes a little longer to get a fix at first also, but this is less of a concern. Layout and topo would be annoying at the rate that it is currently, and I’m having trouble figuring it out. Any further assistance is greatly appreciated!
Choosing constellations and a frequency for each one’s corrections individually is done in Base Settings, then RTCM3 messages.
The frequency for each constellation is set in Hz, e.g. 1 Hz is once per second, 0.5 Hz is every two seconds etc.
You will need to do your own research and/or experiment for the optimum configuration for the Leica, I’ve never used one.
As a general rule of thumb the bandwidth for UHF and TT450S is going to be more limited than NTRIP (or LoRa to another Reach) so don’t go overboard with too many constellations and too fast or you can cause issues that will slow down or overload and stop things.
Minimum start point is typically GPS & Glonass only at 1 Hz and build out from there.
Thanks for sharing! This will depend on the interface type of the Satel Easy Pro radio and RS2+ device and the signal transmission requirements required.
