Hi,
If you get bored flipping through the TV channels you can read my story :), it is a long one, it tells how I built my own gps receivers.
My cost to build one receiver is approx 450$ with the case, for how much would it be wise to sell the receivers ?, would it make sense to start business building this units ?
I would appreciate any comments, questions, jokes 🙂 ...
Yuriy
Wow.
You make it look so simple.
I wish you the best of luck.
Congratulations.
Very, very impressive. That's quite a hobby you have there. I hope you can make some money doing it too!
Dylan
> Hi,
>
> If you get bored flipping through the TV channels you can read my story :), it is a long one, it tells how I built my own gps receivers.
>
> My cost to build one receiver is approx 450$ with the case, for how much would it be wise to sell the receivers ?, would it make sense to start business building this units ?
>
> I would appreciate any comments, questions, jokes 🙂 ...
>
> Yuriy
This has to be one of the most impressive posts I have seen, you are an amazing person, can't belive a post on a surveyors message board sent you down this path, I wish you all the best in your venture.
Really impressive, I would like to hear about the performance of your units.
it did, that post inspired me for some reason a lot... may because of cutting trees for a month at -30, and it seemed very easy to make the system, once I got into the details it was different story 🙂
I am still utlizing an oem gps chip (a module) so i did no built the heart of the system by myself, I would need several lives to make it :). But even my pcb that works with the oem module took me 3 years to develop, for an electronics guy it would probably take a month or so 🙂
after all this is just L1 GPS.
I am testing the system, a will make an accuracy report one day.
> My cost to build one receiver is approx 450$ with the case, for how much would it be wise to sell the receivers ?, would it make sense to start business building this units ?
That is extremely impressive, Yuriy. Your hardware design looks very good, although my own preference for the carrying case would be the padded bag like a prism bag that Trimble used for their 4600LS units. It packs well and is cheap and compact.
Yuriy, what oem GPS chip are you using? I know Ashtech sells them, and their serial control protocol seems to be fully documented. Plus their engineers are in Moscow, and are pretty friendly (via email).
I am using a special firmware built module from navsyc, an Irish company, (this is my little secret:)). Many modules report carrier phase but the only way to find out how precisely they do it is to buy and try, lots of my development expenses are there. I have a bunch of carrier phase enabled useless units in my electronics box. Not a nice impression after you spent time and $ to realize this 🙂
Ashtech, Javad and others do sell the units but they are expensive as far as I know, especially Trimble boards. Many of good board are discontinued now: superstar, motorola oncores, rockwell jupiter.
You taught yourself to do all that? That's incredible! Hell I consider myself a genius for being able to change the batteries in a flashlight.
Best wishes for success ($$$) in the future!
Have a great weekend.
Post a picture on your website of the entire antenna and receiver setup connected and recording data. I don't think you have a picture that shows everything all together and working. It is difficult to get an overall sense of the "finished" product without this.
> Hell I consider myself a genius for being able to change the batteries in a flashlight.
How does one do that???? 😉
Practice, Darrell, practice, and lot's of it.:-P
Have a great weekend, and enjoy the rain:-P
i will, i was going to add "assembly" section to the story, later decided not to because the story already got too long, in a few days I will update.
I cut my story in half of what it was originaly, did not want to overwhelm with info.
We will treasure this post. Truly inspiring. Best wishes to you!
I doubt he is using anything that is patented besides the gps chip, the intent of which is to be resold. Everything else he has created himself. I don't know if he can patent an antenna or not. In any case, if someone rips off his work, his website serves as proof of prior art. The reality is, the more he publishes and explains in detail, the more he is protecting himself.
Is that the old RPLS.com board? I think I remember reading that post when it was new. Amazing. Glad the spirit lives on here, because I think one could say the new old place just ain't what she used to be.
lots of new things to learn, patenting, licensing, etc. I do not know if I have enough patience for that....
thank you very much for warm inputs, I really appreciate his !
have a good weekend too!
... it is 11 p.m. here
see you tomorrow 🙂
this link is anchored to the "assembly" section that I have just added, it shows how all components are aligned, positioned inside the enclosure. (not sure if the anchor works if you have web page cashed, if not reload the page it should work)
yes that post was on the old rpls board, I still like old one more than the new one.
Yuriy
Very awesome that it all fits inside the antenna enclosure. What sort of device and software did you write to control, start and stop the receiver while in the field surveying? Do you still need to use a laptop, or have you ported your code to something else?