We've been waiting for Galileo for over a decade now, and it appears as though the next new kid on the Block will be BeiDou:
http://gpsworld.com/beidou-launch-schedule-shared/
A plethora of new signals coming even before 2019 (I know they need validation, but...).
Is anyone getting excited about BeiDou?
Galileo is still going to be slow-going, not to mention the implementation in receivers may be even slower. I read a comment somewhere in my recent research that developers are slow to implement because they're not sure what the licensing structure will look like. Remember, Galileo is supposed to have a paid-access scheme to some of the signals.
Needing RTK in the woods here...is already slowly getting better - and is way better than it used to be - but still has a lot of room to improve.
I guess .. At this rate equipment (antennas and collectors) are just going to keep getting cheaper, but software upgrades and subscriptions are going to be a lunch-eater ??
When is it just going to be cheaper and easier to break out a total station and run the lines on the ground.
R.J. Schneider, post: 447481, member: 409 wrote: When is it just going to be cheaper and easier to break out a total station and run the lines on the ground.
In my rural ag environment the answer is: Never.
Every business/workflow designed to improve efficiency over the last 40 years has centered on less man hours. RTK is easy measuring and I cannot imagine myself ever going back and being competitive.
Think about it. Guys were buying these systems for 40 to 60k in the 90s and making money with them.
Steve
I disagree. It depends on the exact situation. I can be more profitable with the total station than the GPS on about 50 percent of my rural jobs.
For over 2 decades, [most] all of my work was GPS only. Big projects, out in the open desert.
However, the last 4-5 years, EVERY project REQUIRED BOTH GNSS & Total Station observations. Although the majority of the Corners could be positioned with GNSS, there were (quite) a few that required "GPS-Pairs" and humping a Total Station into the area. This often meant a full day (2 guys) to tie ONE or two Corners, but that's the breaks.
:plumbbob:
Loyal
sjc1989, post: 447530, member: 6718 wrote: In my rural ag environment the answer is: Never.
counter: We have trees .. lots of them
R.J. Schneider, post: 447481, member: 409 wrote: When is it just going to be cheaper and easier to break out a total station and run the lines on the ground.
nm. Found out you can write off nearly 0.5MM / year in equipment expenses. unbelievable.
We updated the FW on our Trimble BD970 based RTK earlier this year and upgraded to SurvCE 5 to get the RTCM V3.2 so now have GPS, GLONASS and BeiDou running. Down this way (SW Pacific), this is what we get in RTK in open sky (typically 4 BeiDou out of the 19 "fix"):
BTW in those photos I am standing next to the base but the latency is sitting on 2 seconds. I'm fairly sure that prior to the BeiDou upgrades (receiver FW and SurvCE software) the latency would have been 1. Has anyone else experienced this and/or know if it is an issue?