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

[paul swed]

Also a note you should check that your antenna is useful for the other
frequencies. I needed to buy a newer multi-band antenna. Works great out
the window but somehow has not made it to the 90' level on the tower yet.
Spring is in the air.
Good luck
Paul
WB8TSL

On Tue, Mar 28, 2023 at 9:40 AM Bob Camp via time-nuts <
time-nuts at lists.febo.com> wrote:

> 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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