Determine Application
It is vital to determine if the Piksi® Multi GNSS receiver will meet your application needs before moving forward. Piksi Multi is a precise RTK receiver and for the best results it requires relatively clear open sky view. RTK to operate requires a base station; either another Piksi Multi or existing CORS base station can be used.
Physical Integration
Physical integration is one of the most important parts of Piksi Multi deployment. It is necessary to isolate Piksi Multi from shock and vibration and to mount the receiver board far from sources of RF radiation. It is also necessary to mount the GNSS antenna far from any other RF transmitters or noisy electronics.
Electrical Integration
Electrically, Piksi Multi will require a clean power source. Be careful not to provide power at voltages that exceed the specification. Additionally, the unit will require a means of communicating with a host processor via one of available interfaces: UART, USB, CAN, Ethernet.
Software Integration
For most uses of Piksi Multi, one should only use the libSBP serial library and documentation to decode serial data received from the receiver. The Swift Navigation tools source code repository can provide examples for using Python to communicate with the device, but it is not necessary to install this repository to interface with the device.
It is also necessary to determine the host system which will communicate with Piksi Multi. It is typical to use an existing embedded system, flight controller / autopilot, or any on-board processor to communicate with the device. This communication can take the form of reading and interpreting messages to be used in real time or logging data to disk for post-processing.
Deliver Observations
To perform RTK differential positioning, observation messages must be sent from the base station to the rover Piksi Multi. This can be accomplished via the radio modems delivered with the Evaluation Kit, another radio modem, WiFi, or an existing telemetry link with the rover unit. If an existing telemetry is used, it will be necessary to inject the SBP observation message (mandatory) from the base station to the rover. If injecting the corrections into an existing stream, some software integration is required.