How to debug NTRIP connection

In order to test the NTRIP connection, multiple tools can be used:

U-Center (recommended - Windows only)

U-Center is an application from u-blox that you can download from https://www.u-blox.com/en/product/u-center. With this tool, one can:

• Connect to a Fixposition sensor and visualize the decoded NTRIP messages:

  1. Setup the NTRIP connection on your sensor.

     

  2. Open the drop-down menu next to the connection icon:

  3. Network connection → New

  4. Connect to port 23010 of the sensor: tcp://<sensor_ip>:23010

  5. Open a packet console by clicking on the following icon:

     

  6. See the decoded RTCM messages received by the sensor.

• Use your computer as an NTRIP client:

  1. Receiver → NTRIP Client

  2. Introduce your connection credentials and setup a manual position close to the base station.

  3. See the log messages by clicking on NTRIP client: <caster_address>:<port>

Connect to the sensor’s NTRIP TCP port (Linux)

First, you need to install cfgtool. For that, clone the repository in your desired folder location as:

cd <folder_location>
git clone https://github.com/phkehl/ubloxcfg.git

Then, install the required libraries as:

sudo apt-get install gcc gcc-multilib perl libpath-tiny-perl libdata-float-perl mingw-w64 doxygen

Finally, build the necessary tools to interpret the NTRIP messages:

make test
make cfgtool

Afterward, access the 23010 port on the sensor. You should see either the encoded (not readable) NTRIP messages or some readable error message (e.g. ‘Unauthorized access’). On a bash terminal:

nc <sensor_ip> 23010

You can pipe the output of ntripclient to cfgtool in order to decode the messages:

nc <sensor_ip> 23010 | <global_path_to_cfgtool>/cfgtool-release parse

Supported RTCM3 input messages:

• Reference station position (rate: every 10 seconds, or more often), one of

  • RTCM type 1005 (Stationary RTK reference station ARP)

  • RTCM type 1006 (Stationary RTK reference station ARP with antenna height)

• GPS observables (rate: 1 Hz), one of:

  • RTCM type 1074 (GPS MSM4)

  • RTCM type 1075 (GPS MSM5)

  • RTCM type 1077 (GPS MSM7)

• Galileo observables (rate: 1 Hz), one of:

  • RTCM type 1094 (Galileo MSM4)

  • RTCM type 1095 (Galileo MSM5)

  • RTCM type 1097 (Galileo MSM7)

• BeiDou observables (rate: 1 Hz), one of:

  • RTCM type 1124 (BeiDou MSM4)

  • RTCM type 1125 (BeiDou MSM5)

  • RTCM type 1127 (BeiDou MSM7)

• GLONASS observables (rate: 1 Hz), one of:

  • RTCM type 1084 (GLONASS MSM4)

  • RTCM type 1085 (GLONASS MSM5)

  • RTCM type 1087 (GLONASS MSM7)

• GLONASS code-phase biases (rate: every 5 seconds, or more often):

  • RTCM type 1230 (GLONASS code-phase biases)

The latency (age) of the data should be kept as low as possible, ideally better than 1 second.