People who are familiar with Precision Agriculture know all about RTK and correction services like Terrastar to give you sub inch accuracy. I am not going to talk about this.
Many times people will think the GPS on their cellphone, fleet tracking device, or there lower cost GPS device is the same accuracy, and think its good enough to use for proof of placement and application control .
In the industry in NZ there are Proof of Placement systems offered to farmers on fleet telematics GPS hardware, cheaper hardware with lesser accuracy operation on Autonomous GPS.
Ag Leader GPS receivers like other comparable GPS Guidance and Machine Control Companies in the industry not only offer correction and RTK levels of accuracy, but they also offer more economically priced systems like GL1DE that operate in the reciever. There basic job is to ensure that only the best position is given to the the machine, anything odd is not used. Here is a great Article explaining GL1DE and its use in Precision Agriculture.
All our products we sell uses GL1DE at there lowest accuracy, even using Ag Leaders GPS6500 (a high spec L1/L2 reciever designed for Terrastar and RTK corrections) in GL1DE shows a very good reliable accuracy, clearly a lot better then other solutions that don’t have this capability and just use Autonomous.
The Value of this to you is a farmer is better data, its plain and simple, have you heard the expression with Computers, bullshit in bullshit out, its no different here.
Here is Two Graphs one showing a Standard setup fleet telematics unit and antenna currently sold in NZ in proof of placement applications, the second graph shows the improvement just by using a high quality L1 antenna, not the cheap patch antenna it was supplied with. In the Standard Test over 24 hours, we saw a drift of 357 inches (906cm), the second image is with a quality L1 Reciever showing 185 inches of drift (470cm). GPS data like this could give you a headache is using it for compliance next to sensitive areas like rivers or ponds. To improve this, we need to choose hardware with a higher quality GPS antenna and reciever/processor to get access to products such as GL1DE, Terrastar and RTK.
The only way to completely Elminate drift is paying for a level of Correction available as a subscription or RTK from you Precision Agriculture specialist dealers, Repeatablity over long periods of time can get down to 2cm, depending on the accuracy you use.
However you can minimise drift by using the right hardware to start with. Good quality Antennas like the NovAtel and Ag Leader products are great for this, and with GL1DE running in them, you will get data useful to your farming business, not a headache you will have to explain! For more information about Quality Ag Leader hardware and there ability to deliver industry leading Proof of Placement, give me a call on 0275 083 789. Not only do we sell the hardware, we use it, and help our customers with there proof of placement requirements.