[time-nuts] Re: Question about Trimble NetR9 receiver options

[Bob Camp]

Hi

The NetR9 comes in a somewhat bewildering range of sub models. The Ti-1 has
pretty much everything turned on from scratch. The Ti-2 can be upgraded, it comes 
with just Glonass and GPS. These and the TI-3 are all identifiable by the -10, -20 
or -30 at the end of the model number. (Ti-1 = -10 and so on ).

Can the -30 be upgraded? I’ve never played with one. Can the “other” version be
upgraded ( not listed above)? Apparently not based on internet comments. Maybe
so if you actually talk to a dealer.

Cost wise, the upgrades are in the “forget about it” range. Last time I checked on
doing a Galilleo upgrade, it was in the $10,000 range. What else that might have
gotten you … who knows. I can buy one with all the systems enabled on eBay
for about $2K delivered.

Adding more systems means more sats go into the mix. Errors go down baed
on the number of sats. How much they go down is very much a “that depends”
sort of thing.

Most precision timing relies on some sort of correction process. The easy / lazy
approach is to send things off to NRCan or Opus or something similar. If you wait
a few weeks ( 3 to 4) NRCan will give you a nice “.clk” file with lots of digits in 
the estimate. Most of the time, a week long file seems to be ok to about 0.1 ns.
There can be 1 to 2 ns bumps in some files. 

Keep in mind that all this is simply going back to GPS time and without some
further work, you don’t have a full link to BIH. 

If you sit down over a beer and taco’s with the folks who designed the NetR9,
they are very much focused on survey applications. They made a business 
decision to leave the timing market to somebody else on this sort of hardware. 
Just why is a somewhat long and convoluted story. 

The net result is that even with “everything right” there is a time offset between
the NetR9 (or NetR8 or NetRS or …) clock and GPS. It is measured in hundreds
of microseconds. Power cycle the device and it will come up with another 
random clock offset. There are commands to read out this offset. 

The PPS in and PPS out are a bit coarse on these boxes. The magic readout
commands do not tell you the offset of the PPS out of the device. (or if they
do, they aren’t doing a very good job of it). 

The R8 / R9 / NetRS devices all lock up nicely to an external 10 MHz input. 
Turn off clock steering and enable the input. They should lock up and tell you
they are locked. 

The R8/R9 generation will do L1/L2/L5 measurements. As far as I know, the
world of free correction services has not caught on to L5 yet. There also 
don’t seem to be any obvious candidates for correcting anything other than
GPS / Glonass. I keep hoping somebody will chime in with a correction to 
this part of it. 

Like all devices that write to flash memory, there’s only just so long that will
keep working. Eventually they will die. When they go bonkers, a firmware
reload *might* fix the problem. How long it stays fixed … who knows. A
full up firmware upgrade and repair contract from your local dealer is about
$1,250 or so per year. 

With the NetR8 selling for the same price as the NetR9, I’d ignore the R8.
In some cases NetRS boxes are listed for more, those people are a bit 
crazy. There also are sellers with upgraded Ti-2’s calling them Ti-1’s, 
welcome to eBay. ( The Ti-1 has 8 GB internal storage, an upgraded Ti-2
still only has 4GB). 

This sort of makes it sound like the NetRS is pretty much the same thing
as the NetR9. The R9 does do a better job. Is it enough better? That
depends a lot on how much you paid for each of them. A Mosaic-T will 
beat either one ….. ( just not in the area of packaging / ruggedness )

If you need more info, feel free to ask ….

Bob
 

> On Mar 26, 2023, at 9:26 PM, Stan via time-nuts <time-nuts at lists.febo.com> wrote:
> 
> I just got a Trimble NetR9, which I hope to ultimately use to make some high
> precision timing measurements. I've updated to the latest firmware and it's
> happily ticking along right now.
> 
> 
> 
> Questions: 
> 
> 
> 
> 1.	The NetR9 spec sheet says it's capable of receiving the GPS,
> GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou constellations. My receiver is currently
> receiving just the GPS and GLONASS birds, with the options for Galileo and
> BeiDou not enabled. Is it possible to enable them with a license key, and if
> so, what is involved in getting that key?
> 2.	If it is possible to enable them, is it worth it to do so in order
> to (significantly) enhance the precision of positioning and timing?
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Stan 
> 
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