SNIP STRIP Caster

Yes, I have been using it for a few months, works great. They provide absolutely great tech support. I have emailed them several times with questions, they respond very quickly. Also, I had a few suggestions for features, and within a few days they had implemented them.

I set it up with a Trimble R7 GNSS and a cellular modem Microhard Bullet Plus) at one end, and a serial port emulator on the PC at the office end. No problems at all. If you have your base unit local at the office, it is even easier. So using SNIP is a way to use a receiver without built-in NTRIP. I just set the R7 to broadcast RTCM (could be XMR, but I haven't tried that yet) out the serial port to the modem. The modem is setup to auto-connect to my office PC, where TCP-COM receives the incoming corrections over the internet and relays them to SNIP over a serial port that it emulates. If you have a PC at the base directly connected to the receiver over a serial port, then the TCP-COM software in between is not necessary. SNIP recently added a feature t their BASIC version that eliminates it as well.

As an example of their quick support, I emailed them last week about a VRS operator that I was trying to log in to. I THOUGHT (incorrectly) that my login had a "/" in it, which SNAP was not accepting. So i thought it was a bug in their software. They responded that they were not aware of any VRS operators using that symbol in their login, but they issued a patch right away so that their software accepted it. Turns out it was my mistake, it was not in the login, but that is an example of how quickly they responded. They also implemented at my suggestion a "built in" serial port emulator so that the setup I had would work without running an emulator on my PC.

I can't say enough about them, I actually feel bad using the free LITE version and getting such good support that I am going to buy the BASIC version.

If you want any advice on how to set it up, let me know and I will try to help. I am in Finland this week, but after that should be in the office if you want to chat.

Hi John

Any advice you could part with would be greatly appreciated. Im at a loss of how to start. Im interested in trialing this. Would you happen to have a cheat sheet handy of how to get this working. I understand Surveying but data communication, ports and ntrips etc are a mystery.

mattb, post: 430354, member: 8629 wrote: Hi John

Any advice you could part with would be greatly appreciated. Im at a loss of how to start. Im interested in trialing this. Would you happen to have a cheat sheet handy of how to get this working. I understand Surveying but data communication, ports and ntrips etc are a mystery.

Remind me next week, I will be in the office then. Send me an email with what your configuration is (receiver type, inside office network or outside, etc).

I set mine up so that I could easily setup a temporary base anywhere there is cell coverage, and within a minute or so be serving up corrections on my office PC. One thing that makes it easy for mine to work is that the IP address of my office never changes, even though i do not have a fixed IP. I have FIOS service, and at one time I did have a fixed IP years ago, but not currently (not needed), the IP address has remained the same for many months, even after power failures, service outages (car hit a pole), etc. The microhard modem wants an ip address to connect to for the remote end, I have requested that they enable the use of a url address as well. I haven't heard back from them, so i don't know if they did that yet or not. The modem does have a fixed IP, so i can connect from the office to the modem with no problem, but the way I have it configured is that as soon as data appears on the serial port, it initiates a connection to the office PC. Of course, if your receiver and NTRIP server are at the same place, none of this is necessary.

Hi John

Thanks for that. I'll be sure to send you a reminder. Best to email or post on here?

best to [email protected]