Description
Real Time Kinetic GNSS Base Board
TinkerNav incorporates a PX1125R GNSS receiver from SkyTraq and a RP2040 processor from Raspberry Pi (equivalent to a Pico). The board can act as either a rover or a base station in your own RTK system or buy one board and connect to the internet using either our WiFi or mobile radios to receive corrections from publicly available sources or paid subscriptions. The PX1125R can produce RTCM correction messages for one or more rovers in a base station mode, or receive correction data and GNSS signals and produce an RTK location solution. See our overview of RTK systems for more details in how they operate. The board will be configured as either a rover or a base station based on the option you select, but can be reconfigured using a USB to UART connector and the SkyTraq configuration software.
The RP2040 is programmable using the popular Arduino IDE or the C/C++ and MicroPython tool stacks described by Raspberry Pi on their getting started page. The memory on the TinkerNav is equivalent to the Raspberry Pi Pico which allows to use existing tools and tutorials without modification.
Base Station or Rover Configurations
The attached images shows the high level architectures of the TinkerNav board in either a rover or a base station configuration. TinkerNav software for different TinkerSend radios and TinkerCharge configurations are open source and are found at our GitHub repository. In the base station configuration the TinkerNav needs some way of sending the RTCM correction data computed by the PX1125R to one or more rovers. Our page describes the different methods we support and how each is implemented. For testing, simple jumper wires can take the place of radios, but for real life applications a method of sending data is required. We offer three TinkerSend options for sending RTCM data, including long range LoRa based radio, an ESP32 for attaching to WiFi or sending data directly over WiFi frequencies, and a SIM7600G based 4G mobile modem that uses a SIM card and data to send data to anywhere in the world as long as it has 4G signal.
Additional Tinkering Flexibility
TinkerNav is a small format board measuring 52X25 mm and weighing XXXX grams, allowing it to fit in tight spaces and go anywhere. With headers soldered the board is breadboard friendly fitting in common breadboards and allowing jumper wires to connect to all pins. The board can accept two pairs of headers, one pair with 4 pins for connecting to battery power and one pair of 10 for connecting to RP2040 GPIO pins, for programming the Px1125R, and to expose the RP2040 C/C++ debugging interface. A detail of the exposed pins is attached, with the full KiCad files available at our GITHUB REPOSITORY.
Modular Architecture
The TinkerNav can be incorporated by itself into projects or can be used in conjunction with the TinkerSend and/or TinkerCharge boards to build a complete custom system to meet your project’s needs. The attached image shows the functions of each board in the TinkerRTK family.
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