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Starkville, Mississippi | I agree with plowboy. You can buy separate TCM's that will correct about any brand receiver. You can also "lock out" people from using base stations. That's a relatively easy thing to do if you want have a pay as you go RTK solution. The capability is already there to have every brand talk to each other. It just depends if they want to keep allowing it to happen or not. I don't think it will hurt a manufacturer in the long run if their RTK talks to someone else's RTK. I personally believe it is a lack of confidence in one's product that keeps them locked into proprietary formats (speaking of ag receivers). There are too many PA companies that have adopted open architectures that are still around and doing well for this kind of mentality to persist.
There are several systems up around the country like the one Applicator is referring to. These are referred to as Virtual Reference Systems. The idea is to set base stations at a set distance from each other, 40 to 90 km (depending on who you talk to). The systems will compute a "virtual" base station depending on where you are and the correction that you receive (usually from a cell link) will be based on this "virtual" base station. Some are putting radios of the physical bases to provide radio based corrections as well. The nice thing about these is that they can be configured to "broadcast" 2-3 correction protocols at once. So for example a network of Trimbles could broadcast RTCM and CMR corrections, thus enabling a wide range of operability across equipment brands. I know Atlanta has one running and is planning on statewide coverage. Ohio isn't far behind (I think). And several other states are in various stages of implementation. Down here in Mississippi we are bringing one online through the Univ. of Southern Miss., and should be fully operational in 2 years. Still some testing to and it yet to be determined as to how exactly it will be administered. I believe our system will be tied in with the one's currently being installed/designed for Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama. I believe you will start to see these become more prevalent in the next couple of years, because of the civil and local government impact. The benefit to having statewide RTK coverage is starting to make sense as far as emergency management , DOT operations, etc. This will no doubt trouble the power ag dealers, because of the potential of lost profit, and maybe they will loss some market share. I imaging most will a start to lock out other protocol options in favor of each one's proprietary one in a last bid to keep market share for the ag division. But that's just my 2 cents, and it probably worth less than that! | |
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Autosteer compatibility
