Piksi

Installing Configuration App

Linux

1. Go to the github for the application and clone the repository onto your machine.
2. Move into the repositories directory and run the following
3. ~$make deps
4. ~$make serial_deps
5. ~$sudo python setup.py install
6. ~$sudo pip install piksi_tools

Setting up the Piksi with app

NOTE: First thing is make sure both Piksi units have the latest firm ware (see update firmware section)

1. Place the "Rover" Piksi and its antenna away from you and with a clear view of the sky.
2. Apply power to the "Rover", it will start to search for satellites on its own.
3. Now place the "Base" Piksi antenna away from you can connect it to your computer via USB.
4. Open the Piksi console application.
5. On the main tab ("Tracking") you should see graphs showing the satellites you have connected to. The lines should be somewhere above 40 dB-Hz. If they are still all over the place wait a minute or two.
6. Once you have a basic lock on a few satellites go to the "Observations" tab. This will show what satellites the "Rover" and "Base" can both see. There should be more than 4 in the list. If you see nothing on the two tables then wait a few minutes. If nothing still happens you might have a communications problem (see trouble shooting section).
7. Now go to the "Baseline" tab. This will show you the RTK information.
8. Look on the list to the side. You should see a row in the tabel called "Mode". This will start out as Float. This means the system is moving the fix around to try and get a lock.
9. Now look at the row below that labeled "IAR Num. Hyps". This is how many guess at the RTK lock the system has. This number will start out as 1.
10. Look at the "IAR Num. Hyps" and wait for it to jump to something really high such as 700. Once this happens that menas it is trying to get a RTK Fix.
11. The "IAR Num. Hyps" number should start to count down, and some times go back up. Once the number hits 1 you have an RTK Fix and are ready to go! NOTE: if the GPS signal or either the "Rover" or "Base" gets bad the number will go back up and you might lose RTK fix.

Update Firmware

Thoughts

and now I need to figure out how to run it

also need to look into RFD900+ for long range com with reference station

If i keep hearing so many negative things we might want to look at UBlox M8P as alternatives to Piksi