50 Hz GPS thread (Piksi RTK GPS receiver)

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Sebbi
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50 Hz GPS thread (Piksi RTK GPS receiver)

Post by Sebbi »

There is a kickstarter currently looking for funds that promises a RTK GPS receiver for just $900:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/swi ... s-receiver

What is RTK GPS? Simply put, it uses a base station with its own GPS receiver to do some clever corrections that can be used by the mobile GPS receiver to get centimeter accuracy (similar to DGPS, but much more accurate). Additionally their whole design will be / is open source and has an update frequency of 50 Hz (hence the topic of this thread). They also plan to support other constellations like Galileo, Glonass, Compass, etc ...

Worth investing in? Could lead to far cheaper products next year and finally copters which can do the acrobatics seen on Youtube (indoor copters with camera tracking) outdoors ;-)

alcab
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Re: 50 Hz GPS thread (Piksi RTK GPS receiver)

Post by alcab »

Now you can find a pre_order at $ 975,00 for two modules of Piksi GPS RTK http://store.swift-nav.com/
good navigation ;-)

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EOSBandi
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Re: 50 Hz GPS thread (Piksi RTK GPS receiver)

Post by EOSBandi »

Well, since they finished their crowdsourcing campaign, they simply disappeared. The last checkin in their Github repo is three months old, and the code is quite rudimentary. No sign of any rtk code and also no sign of the fpga correlator code.
The biggest issue is (I think) that a 168Mhz STM32F4 does not have the necessary horsepower to do RTK at an acceptable speed (5Hz or above), it also have only single precision FPU.

So I have doubts about usable RTK and the open sourceness of their code......

scrat
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Re: 50 Hz GPS thread (Piksi RTK GPS receiver)

Post by scrat »

So they took the money and disappeared?

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EOSBandi
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Re: 50 Hz GPS thread (Piksi RTK GPS receiver)

Post by EOSBandi »

scrat wrote:So they took the money and disappeared?

More or less yes.

fnoble
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Re: 50 Hz GPS thread (Piksi RTK GPS receiver)

Post by fnoble »

Hi everyone,

I want to nip this in the bud. If EOSBandi thinks we disappeared he didn't look very hard :)

Our github repo has actually been pretty active - look:
https://github.com/fnoble/piksi_firmware/network

There are some updates on our Kickstarter page too, you can see we have all the hardware assembled and ready to go:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/swi ... iver/posts

Right now we are scrambling to finish the software. The bulk of the RTK development is going on offline at the moment but I assure you it will be open source when released and the STM32F4 is powerful enough to run it.

Thanks,
Fergus Noble
Swift Navigation

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Crashpilot1000
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Re: 50 Hz GPS thread (Piksi RTK GPS receiver)

Post by Crashpilot1000 »

@fnoble: Welcome here! Obviously Twitter made you sign up and post (maybe it was uncomfortably for you to post it after I twittered it today to diydronesafety). Hopefully you live up to your claims. Otherwise you will be in good fellowship with 3DR - and that is not a bad thing since they raised 36Mio$ for crashing hard- & software.
Maybe EosBandi is not so far out of his mind, since other projects (with the same goals like you) use much more capable CPU's. Just saying without being a hardwareguy or having insights to the gps guts.
For me you are nothing more than a hoax until you actually deliver - and I seriously doubt that that day will ever come - but stupid people threw money down your throat - and that is GOOD (for you).
I stand by to be corrected until that day comes.
Cheers Rob

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Crashpilot1000
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Re: 50 Hz GPS thread (Piksi RTK GPS receiver)

Post by Crashpilot1000 »

@fnoble: Over a year later I guess all arducopters are flying with cm-GPS precision?

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Crashpilot1000
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Re: 50 Hz GPS thread (Piksi RTK GPS receiver)

Post by Crashpilot1000 »

A month later no answer so just a hoax and eating money? Hope you have a nice party (#PWDD = Party With Dickstarter Dough).

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