GEODNET

There's a good interview with one of the founders in The American Surveyor:

https://amerisurv.com/2024/01/11/geodnet-global-earth-observation-decentralized-network/

Thanks for the info.

As I rapidly approach retirement this rather appealed to me as a potential source of supplementary income. Of course it would be dependent upon due diligence with localized market research. So for the sake of discussion, I would be curious to hear what others might see as potential commercial uses outside of our beloved profession. Certainly, precision agricultural immediately comes to mind as an example.

Moreover, as my surveying experience has primarily been within the transportation sector, and given the context of the future of IoT with full automation, it occurred to me that at some point in the not too distant future, our transportation system should require some form of fully integrated RTN corrections. And would it (or should it) be so ubiquitous as to be made accessible for other services? Thoughts?

I dug a little deeper into Geodnet, and it's...complicated. The overarching concept is to establish a dense global network of RTK base stations for use by customers of all kinds (e.g. precision ag, surveyors, drone operators). The founders decided that the only way to accomplish that was to have the base stations owned by entities (mostly individuals) willing to fund each base and its connection to the Internet in exchange for cryptocurrency earnings, i.e. trade data for crypto.

They divided the globe into hexagons 10 km on a side, and base station owners ("miners") inside each hexagon split 48 geod tokens (the crypto) for each day of acceptable-quality data. (It's more complicated than that, there are incentives for certain areas and other special cases.) The token isn't widely traded yet, but it's worth roughly a nickel per token, so in theory a miner can make a couple of bucks a day running his base if there are no other miners in the hexagon.

There is apparently an option to forego the crypto in exchandge for lifetime access to the network, which otherwise costs $400 annually. In my case, there are already 2 miners operating in my hexagon, so the payback time would be 3 times as long (i.e. I'd only get 16 tokens a day if I were to erect a base).

The network access might be appealing if the network is dense enough in your area of operation, and if the operators do a good job of managing it. That last bit is kind of iffy; I don't think the monitoring of the base positions is very rigorous; one video I watched indicated that they determine the base position from a single 24-hour observation and call it good. They use NRCAN for the positioning.

It's also unclear whether or not the network access license allows you to download RINEX files from all the bases, or only from your own.

The base receiver they sell is dual-frequency and triple band, so it should pick up all the useful constellation signals. It's also configured to upload data only to the Geodnet network; you can't run it into your own NTRIP caster without some serious fiddling with the insides. The antenna does have an NGS model.

By the way, on the network map the base positions are munged, reportedly for privacy purposes. The one nearest me showed up in a drainage canal, but on one of the distributor websites I saw that they published the XYZ positions (in a *very* small font), and I was able to find the actual location.

I'm still intrigued, but not so enthusiastic that I'm going to run out and buy a base.

I asked them a few questions about how they plan to monitor/manage the reference station positions in regions that experience movement (secular, episodic, and unpredictable vertical displacement) such as California and was less than impressed with their response. Coincidentally (?) they subsequently pulled some of the information from their station map. For example, some stations had NAVD88 orthometric heights and others had "CGVD" heights, which I took to mean California Geodetic Vertical Datum. We do have California Orthometric Heights, which are not equivalent to NAVD88 heights in definition and can vary by well over a decimeter (currently) in areas of subsidence.

Turn it on and let it cook and check once a year might work in many areas, but it won't work here.

I own of these base stations, About a year ago I purchased the Rock Base from Rock Robotics. They work very good for the price, great for large construction sites. RINEX data and RTK is available. I chose not to mine. For the $700 cost you have a choice to mine and not have access to your base, or have access and not mine. What I don't like is the false advertising. This is by no means a Network GNSS system. As far as I know there are no surveyors running or monitoring this system. No network solution, no atmospheric corrections. These are all single base solutions. The mount point list is so large your software will time out before it can grab the list. They are shipped with a 12" long 5/8" all thread with no emphasis on the stability of the mount. I've had to contact them to correct the antenna height.

To add to this. I'm looking into how we as surveyors can use these $700 Base stations in a RTN or VRS, whiling helping strougling network agencieslike NYSNET. My home office is located in a dead zone on the NYSNET, and NY is having trouble finding funding to replace base or add stations. NYSNET is free. If the state charges a subscribers fee, I'm told this money goes to a general find and not tonthe NYSNET system. Years ago Alan Chace and Duane Frymire ran Magellan basestaion at MVCC College that was part of the NYSNET. This was about 15 years ago or more, it only provided static data. At the NY conference last week I learned that NY has only two people operating NYSNET which most of the hardware is 20 years old, on expected 10 year life span. They have no budget to upgrade. There are 5500 subscribers. Most of them are in the Agricultural and GIS, surveyors are by far the minority of users. Twitter no known as X is used to notify users of changes or outages want to to charge fir the service. If they go back to email notifications it will be useless. NY only allows them to send 1000 emails a day, so it would take 5 1/2 days to notify all users. I believe this group can come up with some ideas to help. They are looking into grants from Ag.

Wow, that was fast! I just received an email notifying me that the funding has been secured to completely overhaul/upgrade New York's CORS Network.

At the NY conference last week I learned that NY has only two people operating NYSNET which most of the hardware is 20 years old, on expected 10 year life span. They have no budget to upgrade. There are 5500 subscribers.

Sounds like they need to up their access/subscription fees. 5500 users, even at moderate prices, can provide a substantial yearly operating budget, with enough left over for periodic upgrades...

At the conference, the presenters said that the issue with charging subscriptions for NYSNET access, is that the fees just go into a general fund and do not get specifically allocated to upgrade/maintain the network.

Here is a map of GeodNet/Rock Bases in NY.

When I first found out about Geodnet on the Rock Robotic site, I thought it could be a game changer. Then when you dig deeper you see just how flawed the whole thing is. It might be an option for you if you have a large error budget, are able to make frequent checks to known control, or if you care mostly about relative measurements. Even the commercial networks have issues with antenna stability and less than ideal site selections. So, a crowd sourced network with near zero quality control sounds like a nightmare as a surveyor. Some guy with a drone gets one and puts it on a questionable flimsy mount with bad multipath, you test it and start using the mount point and find it's giving acceptable results for a while. Then without warning, said drone guy decides to "improve" the flimsy mount and results in antenna position change. Would their system even be able to flag this type of event? Not to mention that those little antennas are not exactly geodetic quality.

To build something to the scale that their concept envisions, mostly user-funded, yeah quality will be problematic but it's still pretty smart and likely surveyors are the only ones who would care about that last 10-20cm anyways.

CGVD stands for Canadian Geodetic Vertical Datum, CGVD28 or CGVD2013. It's laughable that any of their stations would show this outside of Canada, plus mount points should have an ellipsoid height that they broadcast to allow for a geoid model to be applied. Which reference frame are they using? Is that clear? Is it consistent?