NetRTK confusion, and a couple other app oddities

Yarbo Product Talk Yarbo Core
1

App 3.19.2; firmware 3.14.1.

I read this article about NetRTK: Yarbo NetRTK: Precision Positioning, Free for Life . I thought, “That might be helpful, I’m going to check into how it works on the app.”

  1. The article says this, “Regional availability — NetRTK availability varies by region. To check:
    Open the Yarbo app
    On the login screen, tap Check NetRTK Coverage
    Zoom to your yard and tap Check Coverage for This Area”

Well, when I open the app, there is no such option available. Either the article is incorrect, or my app is messed up… or both. How do I know why I do not have this option? Is there some other way I can check if my region is covered?

  1. In the app I looked under “Positioning Service”, and tapped on the question mark icon for help text. I expected to see something about switching to and from NetRTK, but instead there is a lot of stuff about something different called “NetRIP”. What is NetRIP? Is that something different from - and in addition to - NetRTK? For a normal user not in the industry this kind of inside lingo is frustrating and bewildering.

  2. Since I only have the snowblower module, I haven’t examined the app for a long time. So now, when I open the app, on the main screen under the icon for the GPS signal icon, I now see numbers: “0.00m”, or “99.00m”. What are those numbers telling me? What does the “m” suffix mean?

Thanks in advance for any help with these questions.

2

  1. this is if your Yarbo app is logged out (like you were a new user). That’s a good catch. If you go into settings, positioning, and tap on NetRTK to go through the process of switching, it will guide you through checking. You can also check here on the website. Yarbo NetRTK

  2. It was probably NTRIP. This is an industry term essentially for NetRTK. Old vs new names. Yarbo used to call it NTRIP but when they brought it to the public for use, they went with what the industry was calling it and that is nRTK AKA NetRTK. They should probably make that language consistent in their UI.

  3. That is the amount of deviation in meters. Essentially when your Yarbo loses GPS, that is how tightly Yarbo is tracking it’s intended line. Think of it like the amount of error. The higher the number, the more error. 0.00 means it has a good GPS fix and no error. It’s discussed a little here in this article on single antenna mode. https://wiki.yarbo.com/en/faqs/single-antenna

3

Thanks.

Regarding my question #1: You provided this link to find NetRTK coverage, Yarbo NetRTK . After entering my address, it merely showed me a list of ten towers and their distances from me in km, but, no indication if that meant fantastic coverage, adequate coverage, poor coverage, etc. How does a layman interpret those results?

Regarding my question #3: You provided a link to this article explaining single antenna mode, https://wiki.yarbo.com/en/faqs/single-antenna . It says this, “With PPVS enabled, the GPS icon shows a Deviation value and direction, in meters: green at 0.15 m or below, yellow above 0.15 m. This is your at-a-glance read on how tightly Yarbo is tracking its intended line.”

(A) Am I to understand that under this scenario the icon will show as green (good) if the robot’s potential error is as large as 0.15 meters (up to six inches)?

(B) The copied text says it will show deviation value and direction. How is the direction deviation displayed, how would I interpret it? Because I have temporarily parked the robot in a poor spot, I see this: 99.00m. That tells me the deviation for the value (which I expected to be poor/large), but I don’t see anything that indicates a deviation for direction. Should I also be seeing something like, for example, “35 degrees”, to show the direction deviation as well? (I am not.) Very confusing (to me). Is my question making sense?

4

If your address showed towers available, then you have coverage. No need to worry about distance, the machine will connect to the closest/best one.

I don’t believe there is any correlation with direction for the deviation. What the article is specifically targeting is single antenna mode. In this mode, Yarbo is only using one of the two antennas. Left is typically used for navigation and right is usually direction. In single antenna mode, it has to move some to determine its heading. As for the deviation, yes Yarbo has set that as their green/yellow threshold. However your PPVS settings will determine how far your Yarbo can go without GPS. So if you set that to zero, you’ll show almost no deviation, green GPS, but Yarbo will stop and wait for GPS to recover. So you have some control there if that’s your concern.