The long-awaited BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) connection with Reach is now available for Reach RS+, Reach RS2/RS2+, Reach RS3, and Emlid Flow on both iOS and Android devices.
While the BLE feature is still in beta, you can now fully use it to speed up your Reach setup. The BLE connectivity is much easier and faster than via Wi-Fi.
BLE is also handy when your Reach can’t access the internet in the field. If your smartphone is connected to the internet, you can receive corrections even though your Reach doesn’t have internet access.
To use BLE, make sure:
Your Reach has firmware version 31.6 or later.
Your Emlid Flow for iOS is updated to version 9.9 or higher. Bluetooth access and Bluetooth itself are enabled on your iOS device.
Your Emlid Flow for Android is updated to version 11.10 or higher.
To connect to the receiver via BLE:
Open Emlid Flow and find your receiver in the list of receivers.
Select the receiver with the Bluetooth icon under its name and wait for the app to connect to your Reach.
Once you connect to the receiver, you will see the location services permission request. Allow Emlid Flow to use them. This will allow you to connect your Reach and your mobile device to the same Wi-Fi network and access the receiver’s full functionality.
Just got my kit out this morning to go do some general as-builting and saw the update. This will be very helpful as I already use my cellular hotspot for other equipment and they fight each other sometimes if I need to use them at the same time. Initialization is much faster as well. Thank you Team Emlid!
Just ran a localization and bluetooth seemed to be acting strangely. I wasn’t able to receive corrections and while connected via Bluetooth it would not switch to Wi-Fi. I restarted and same thing but the hotspot signal became available and I was able to get on Wi-Fi back to the CORS. I’ll pull logs and shoot them over as soon as I can.
Figured out part of the Operator error. I didn’t know I needed to switch to NTRIP via Bluetooth in settings and now that piece is working. I’ll so stake out some of the points I just set in BT mode to see if there are any deviations.
I still can’t get it to see my phone hotspot when in BT mode so I will do some more testing on switching back and forth between connection types and NTRIP profile before sending in any reports. I was able to repeat switching to hotspot and then being able to switch to Wi-Fi.
Thanks for the feedback on the BLE connection! Yep, it’s no longer hidden.
It’s great to hear it’s helping with your setup. @michaelL, thank you for testing it out in the field. And nice catch—when connected via BLE, you’ll need to use the NTRIP over Bluetooth option.
@timd1971, BLE is only available with the RS models. Let us know if you have any questions.
When you select NTRIP over BLE, the corrections are just delivered through your phone’s Internet. If you’d like to use the SIM card inside the unit, you can stay connected via BLE and switch to the regular NTRIP option instead.
Thank you for this update. Is it not possible to get BLE NTRIP corrections from an android device while also outputting NMEA over bluetooth to another data collector?
Welcome to the forum, and thanks for your question!
Yes, it’s not possible to use NTRIP over BLE and stream the position via classic Bluetooth simultaneously. The device can only maintain one active Bluetooth connection at a time, so those two options could interfere with each other.
In this case, you can try connecting to regular NTRIP, which would free up Bluetooth to send NMEA to the 3rd-party app.
