One caveat that I would add to all of this that has not been mentioned by
@Detritalgeo. You will NOT be able to use a Starlink system with the RS2+ as a Wi-Fi hotspot when connecting the drone to the RS2 for corrections. There is an IP address conflict. Starlink assigns and IP address that cannot be changed or manipulated. If your Starlink assigned IP address is a 192.168.1.xx, it will conflict with the IP address of the drone via smart controller connection and will not allow the drone to receive NTRIP corrections via the RS2+ Local NTRIP output. It is a known issue with the V3 firmware and the engineers are working on a solution in the next firmware update to be released, as I was told, late this year.
I recently finished a very large mining project out in the open desert and it was a nightmare to complete! I had one of my RTK V3 crash due to a bad battery cell, which AUTEL kindly repaired under warranty, but due to project timelines and sending the drone back and forth to them for repairs I purchased an additional V3 Enterprise to continue flying. There were extremely narrow valleys with extreme elevation changes within a very short distance on either side. In some cases up to a 45° incline. From the bottom of the valley floor, to the top of the ridges that have the massive inclines, was approximately a 950 ft average, so there were some places on the properties that I could only achieve photos between 700 to 900 ft. I was not able to achieve a constant RTK fix one the drone due to the location (It was seeing the satellites but just not shaking hands) so I laid 11 different control points with the RS2+ and although they were approximately 36 to 48 inch markings they were a nightmare to get entered into PIX4D MATIC due to the extreme pixelation from the elevation in some locations. There are some attachments of the pictures of the project site and some screenshots from the drone crash.
Here is some of that email correspondence I had with Auel regarding the Starlink.
Good morning Mitchell,
After a lot of testing and trying to recreate the issue, they found that the IP address is currently conflicting with the V3 aircraft's IP address which is the primary reason you could not connect.
As a temporary solution, you can change the wifi source to and address other than 192.168.1.XX. Please try to switch to 192.168.0.XX.
The engineer also asked if you are using a wifi source named Starlink 1, he asks if you can modify that IP address to 192.168.0.XX. He is saying once this adjustment is made, it should resolve the issue.
Our research and development team will address the IP issue in the next software update but this should be the workaround in the interim.
Here is my reply and again their final reply.
So after researching, I am not able to manipulate the Starlink IP address.
Unfortunately, I am unable to use any other Wi-Fi source. The mining site is out in the open desert and there is no cell phone signal whatsoever. The emlid RS2+ has a sim card, but cannot pickup any signal. That is why I am using the starlink. The rtk module on the aircraft will not fix, that is why I was trying to connect to the RS2+ for a fix over a know marker on site.
Hello Mitchell,
Our engineers are looking into this currently. In the interim, they offered a few solutions:
- Contact Starlink and request to change the IP address to something other than 192.168.1.XX, as long as it doesn't start with 1.
- If your goal is to "FIX" the drone, there's no need to use the Correction inputin the Emlid App. The correction input is meant for "FIX" the base station.
- Use Reach's hotspot instead of connecting to other Wi-Fi networks to link with the RC.
- There are three videos demonstrating how to do this; please refer to the videos.
- If the you want to "FIX" the base station to obtain accurate location coordinates, we should split the process into two steps:
- First, you can use the Starlink internet to apply the correction input to "FIX" the base station and record those coordinates.
- Then, they can use the second solution mentioned above to "FIX" the drone.
Again I did contact Starlink and you are pretty much stuck with IP address they assigned to your unit.
I finally ended up processing the data (6004 pictures for the largest property) over a 4-day period in PIX4D Matic and then adding the contour lines in PIX4Dsurvey and then importing the Orthomosaic with the contour lline DFX file as an overlay in QGIS and resizing to architectural D format for the client.
I was extremely surprised at the long processing time. I have two different computers that I used, which I consider to be high-end machines. My desktop workstation which is a Ryzen 5950X with 128 GB of DDR4 3200 and 2x 2TB PCIE 4 NVME m.2 SSDs with a RTX 4070 TI.
My other computer is an I-9 13980 HX with 64 GB of DDR5 at 5600 with a RTX 4080 and 2x 2TB PCIE 5 NVME m. 2 SSDs.
Oddly my I-9 13980 errored out several times on the processing at various different stages. ( And I am aware of the PIX4D - Microsoft OneDrive incompatibility issue) so I finally ended up using my desktop which ran and completed processing without any error on the 1st attempt.
Attached are a couple of screenshots of the final outcome.
I share this in hopes that if any one of you have the same type of project or issues you will have this knowledge to work with. That is why I'm so very grateful for this form and all of the members that participate. Thank you to all of you!