If you want performance precision, it takes performance parts. Look at the lengths Surveyors go to to be accurate! Survey Monuments!
I love their dedication! I also hope to be the proud owner of three of these this year.
No, no human can steer 1cm, even L1 WAAS guidance 12" error with time drift is better than the majority humans can accomplish. RTK is what robot farming is all about.
Just wondering if multipath might be a problem.
You could always temporarily remove the pot to experiment to see if it helped or not.
Wonder if the metal chain link fence affects anything. Let’s dig that up! Just kidding. ; )
I’ve also installed the M2 antenna inside of a plastic tractor roof so you can’t see it. There is a substantial amount of electrical harness in the same space as well. With no ill effects.
I am over seeing the antenna if at all possible. I think AG antennas are still huge because the manufacturers are overcompensating for their predatory profit margins, and tiny imaginations.
Plus a tractor driving super straight with no visible antenna makes me look like I am driving like a machine.
I get that, perhaps much better than most. My time on the lathe alone would buy 20 RS2s. But I am a stubborn old man who loves to tinker. I am over 70, I have a very successful engineering career in the rear view mirror, I have the time, I love learning new things, and I LOVE reinventing the wheel. So… On with the upside down pot!
You sir, are my hero! When I grow young some day, I wanna be just like you!
All kidding aside, I like that. Just for sh**s and giggles, I’ll try the antenna inside my cab.
It will be difficult for me to implement autosteer, but it’s a goal. For now, I’ll guide by eye with a gps assisted tablet path to drive to.
Heck no. Hence my 2 inch goal. Can a human drive to 2"? I think so, but only if they pay REALLY CLOSE ATTENTION. Right now I use what farmers call a marker. It’s a disk that makes a mark on the ground when you make a pass. On the next pass, you follow the marker and make a new marker. You would be surprised to see how well that works. A big slow machine is pretty easy to steer accurately. But the marker method has lots of weaknesses. To mention just a few, each pass must be next to the prior one, you cannot follow a path that disappears in a few days or weeks, and they are not straight from one end of a field to the other. Gps guidance solves those problems.
Why do you think that?
I think you will have everything ironed out in about a month or two Just have to get familiar with all the ins and outs of RTK.
Then you will be strapping an m2 to everything you can just for fun. The value of RTK precision is valuable for many tasks.
Ya, I saw your lawn cutting photo in another post… I laughed right out loud!
You prolly saw what my yard looks like in the photos I posted above. I can easily see myself cutting the grass with an M2 if for no other reason than for testing and practice. Just have to pray that no neighbour sees me. I wonder if I can hide the antenna under my hat… Hmmm,… I got it! I’ll just put the pot on my head!
I did have a high pdop when I first set things up. But with the setup I have described it is just over 2.
So at the risk of sounding stupid, my results show a wander of 6". I am absolutely sure that the fence does not move that much. If the fence moved my results a half inch I’d be thrilled. In other words, even if the fence does move, I just can’t see why a little fence movement matters.
Nonetheless, tomorrow I’ll put the rover on a tripod to see what happens.
I guess I am confused. I thought static implied no corrections (just long term averaging) and RTK implied that the system uses corrections from a base. But I’ll also try setting it to static to see if that changes the outcome.
I’m still trying to understand how my system can wander around by 6" in an afternoon. It just doesn’t make sense. Fundamentally, I am much more inclined to think I have something set wrong than that something really is moving around that much.
Mine doesn’t move around very much with just 100 counts either. Perhaps a bit more than yours, but not a lot more. The error doesn’t get big until you set the count to the highest setting which results in a long time interval.
I just can’t see why that should be.
I second that
OK, I ran the system again today with the base on a tripod and the rover set to static mode. The result was more or less the same. It wanders around slowly with a total movement of around 10cm.
Unless someone has a better idea, I plan to try moving both units into the open field on tripods tomorrow to try and get away from all noise and interference of any kind. I’m thinking about bringing a laptop or tablet with me to record the movement since I won’t have access to my home WiFi network.
I guess it’s time I learned how to record the data for subsequent analysis…
Seems to me you shouldn’t have to do all that with the M2 multi-band units. The single band M+ probably… but the the benefit of the M2 is so you still get good results in tougher areas like under trees.
It’s got to be something else, you’ll find once you find the sweet spot of settings, everything works great.
Wonder if the settings Fix and Hold and Continuous have any impact?
I am real curious why it is 6 inches or so off also.
EDIT: your environment doesn’t appear to be notorious for noise etc. I.e. a power plant, industrial facilities etc. Do you have some sort of machinery nearby that puts out EMI (electromagnetic interference) or RFI?? Flux capacitor of your time machine? Welders running at the time you were occupied?
Hmmmmm… I’ve been working on a flux capacitor based on alternating layers of corn husks and fly wings saturated in soybean enzymes in an old oil drum but,… it isn’t energized yet… Unless it is already generating a dark energy field of its own, I don’t think that is a problem.
But seriously, perhaps you are onto something. I do have a house full of smart devices - mostly WiFi based. And now that I’m thinking about it, the rover has been located fairly close to the line of fire between the wireless gateways (directional WiFi) that connect my barn network to my home network. That said, it’s a bit hard for me to think that’s a problem since both devices already use built-in WiFi for communications. Built in doesn’t get closer than that! Surely they are already designed to filter WiFi frequencies out.
All the more reason to test it again on tripods out someplace in an open field.
Edit - my area is FULL of windmills. The closest is about 3km away.
Edit 2 - What about my power supplies? I’ve been using USB Power Batteries. They must have some kind of voltage transformation in them in order to facilitate charging and operation at the same voltages. Perhaps they emit some Emi too?
I think all that is fine… I was suggesting items that may put out interference such as a welder running etc. I think everything you are going to do won’t really matter much, but you can sure try.
Hope someone can help eventually.
I see. I do have welders and similar things here at the farm, but they are not being used. Perhaps the biggest problem might be my air compressor. It starts and stops on its own as the pressure leaks down. But the nature of the wandering does not suggest momentary interference like that. It just slowly wanders around over the course of hours. Quite frankly, it looks like poorly corrected or unprotected dual band gps wander quite similar to the output I get from a Garmin Glo.
My base does not have “the pot” on it yet. I know that nobody on here likes them, but perhaps their contribution as a ground plane will help. I might also put the power blocks on the ground under something metal like a turkey broiling pan… 
Power lines are the worst. If I get near the 1.5KV lines near the edges of the fields I get some very goofy readings. Have not done any tests at lower voltages. I have also not taken any readings near the larger steel transmission towers yet.
But windmills 3km away should not effect it.
Power supply can also affect GPS, I use an ultra low ripple Weidmuller power supply for my Trimble bases, and also low ripple converters for usb power for the Reach.
The weird thing about your wander is it is along one directional path. I would log it and check your logs maybe you are slipping back into float.
Edit: one more wild thought, move the m2 from being stuck to the inside of the pot, to the pole inside the pot. That way the the M2 is isolated from the heat swings of the pot, but still under an umbrella.
I also forgot to say nice metal lathe!
Doesn’t sound like any of this is affecting things.
I’d export and post the system and settings reports from both your Base and Rover so people can examine your settings to see if anything jumps out.
