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| He's asking about setting up a base station with one of the low-cost RTK receivers like the uBlox ZED-F9P or the SkyTraq PX1122R. Neither is from China by the way.
Either one as a bare board is about $200 USD. But that's only part of what's required. To really answer this, he needs to tell us what receivers his tractors are using. These low-cost boards can make base stations for a lot of receivers, including Trimble receivers, provided they can accept RTCMv3 messages. Older Trimble units can do CMR only, and Deere receivers can understand NCT only, so these cheap units cannot help there.
I emailed him earlier to ask what receivers he's using but did not see a reply yet.
I wrote up some blog posts on how I made my first base station that works for my Trimble 372 receivers:
http://torriefarmprojects.blogspot.com/2019/06/diy-rtk-with-trimble...
http://torriefarmprojects.blogspot.com/2020/02/diy-rtk-part-2-zed-f...
These posts do not talk about the actual GPS receiver configuration, though. I configured it through the uBlox U-Center application.
That said, I'm about to rebuild my base station. I want to make it easier for others on the farm to maintain and set it up, and make it easier to replace when it fails. I'm going to use a Linux ARM SBC computer (like a Pi) running the fantastic RTKBase[1] software. Has a web interface to configure it and tell if it's working. I'll attach the GPS receiver via USB and RTKBase will automatically configure it. I'll also attach a Digi SX Pro radio via a USB module as well. RTKBase will add the 1008 message trimble requires, and allow me to synthesize any message type the commercial receivers require. And I can send the stream to an NTRIP caster for cell-based corrections, and also to the radio module via USB.
To be successful going this route you need to not be afraid of a soldering iron, and some experience setting up a Raspberry Pi -like device is probably required. If you could get someone to set it all up for you, maintaining it shouldn't be very difficult. If you need a turn-key easy solution, you may have to look elsewhere. And there's always the "last mile" sort of issues, like building or finding a compatible radio module to attach to your tractor GPS units to talk to the base station, or a bluetooth module.
[1] https://github.com/Stefal/rtkbase
Edited by torriem 5/8/2023 21:35
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RTK base station
