Tech Chat | How to make your RTK work with GIS software?

2023-01-17

Although both belong to the geospatial industry, GIS and surveying have different tendencies in the selection of equipment for point surveying work. GISers are more concerned about the compatibility with GIS software and the portability of equipment, while surveyors pay more attention to the accuracy and measurement-related performance.

For GIS collection work, we normally select the portable devices, such as SingularXYZ P1 receiver and T8 Pro tablet. As for land surveying, we would choose professional RTK receivers like Y1 GNSS receiver.

But sometimes surveyors may come across ad-hoc GIS collection projects. It's not worth buying an expert GIS receiver for ad-hoc tasks since they already have RTK equipment. Is it possible to use RTK receivers with GIS software to perform tasks?

In this blog, we will take Y1 GNSS receiver as an example to introduce how to use RTK receiver for GIS tasks.

Part 1: Send RTK coordinates to PDA internal GPS using SingularPad software as intermediary
Part 2: Developer function – Convert real-time WGS84 BLH coordinates to local coordinates

Part 1 - Send RTK coordinates to PDA internal GPS using SingularPad software as intermediary

1. Connect Y1 GNSS receiver with SingularPAD

2. Setup Y1 as a Ntrip Rover

For more details of work mode configuration please refer to our SingularPad tutorials on YouTube.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiFQs75959ep_Hm4KI0UBf0RP3Zf2f6de

3. Enable Mock location service on your controller/PDA device and choose SingularPad.

4. Enable the location services on SingularPad.

Then the Y1 RTK positioning results will be shared to the Android location service. You can choose any GIS software and use the Internal GPS(GNSS) mode to get the Y1 RTK results location and conduct the GIS collection work.

Part 2: Developer function – Convert real-time WGS84 BLH coordinates to local coordinates

Unlike surveyors who need to set the projected coordinate systems before surveying, most GIS data collection software will use the WGS84 BLH coordinates for data collection by default. So GIS users always need to convert the collection points from the WGS84 BLH coordinates to the local XYZ coordinates according to different project requirements.

In order to help simplify this process, our SingularPad location service also defined the Local coordinates interface for GIS platform/software developers.