Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-24 Thread David J Taylor
From: Mark Sims Yes. It also works with GPSD so should be able to work with any device that GPSD supports. It also works with most common GPS receiver native binary languages and provides full device control. --- Thanks, Mark. I look forward to playing with a copy. I

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-23 Thread David J Taylor
The interpolation does not spread the data to where sats have not appeared... what it effectively does is intelligently make the dots bigger... but only along the azimuth "axis". For each elevation angle, it starts at azimuth 0 degrees and searches forward until it sees a point with signal.

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-23 Thread Christopher Hoover
> I'd like to try something like a Voronoi tessellation, but that gets rather nasty to implement.. There's a boost library... ___ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts

[time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-23 Thread Mark Sims
The interpolation does not spread the data to where sats have not appeared... what it effectively does is intelligently make the dots bigger... but only along the azimuth "axis". For each elevation angle, it starts at azimuth 0 degrees and searches forward until it sees a point with

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-22 Thread Charles Steinmetz
Mark wrote: The tricky bit is interpolating signal levels between logged points (there is a display options for showing the raw signal level data). Heather interpolates between adjacent azimuth points at each elevation angle. I always wondered about the "filled in" (interpolated) plot.

[time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-22 Thread Mark Sims
The colored signal level vs az/el plot follows that convention... outer edge is the horizon, center point is zenith (90 degrees above the horizon). Color represents the average signal level seen at a given point in the sky. The tricky bit is interpolating signal levels between logged

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-22 Thread jimlux
On 11/22/16 10:13 AM, Mark Sims wrote: Attached is a screen shot from Lady Heather showing various antenna signal displays. The antenna was a cheap GPS/GLONASS patch antenna (mounted on a 3 foot ground level tripod ) connected to a rather nice NVS-08 receiver tracking GPS, SBAS, and GLONASS

[time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-22 Thread Mark Sims
That screen is one of the features in the next (5.0) release. If you click the mouse on one of the signal level maps in that display, it will zoom that one to full screen. Besides the normal "zoom" keyboard commands, with the 5.0 release you can also zoom the clock/watch/sat map/signal

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-22 Thread Jeff AC0C
-nuts@febo.com Subject: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality? Attached is a screen shot from Lady Heather showing various antenna signal displays. The antenna was a cheap GPS/GLONASS patch antenna (mounted on a 3 foot ground level tripod ) connected to a rather nice NVS-08 receiver

[time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-22 Thread Mark Sims
Attached is a screen shot from Lady Heather showing various antenna signal displays. The antenna was a cheap GPS/GLONASS patch antenna (mounted on a 3 foot ground level tripod ) connected to a rather nice NVS-08 receiver tracking GPS, SBAS, and GLONASS satellites (typically around 22 sats).

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-21 Thread bg
Hi Atilla, Read the document below https://www.ngs.noaa.gov/ANTCAL/docs/NGSantcalprocedures.pdf And the reference within         antenna_README.pdf Antennas are generally not calibrated individually by the user. You make sure the antenna you buy are in the ANTCAL or Geo++ lists. Any use of a snow

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-21 Thread jimlux
On 11/21/16 10:10 AM, Tom Van Baak wrote: For the equipment hobbyists usually have, the phase center is not that important. Most antennas have a variation <5mm. Even 10mm would lead to just a ~33ps variation. I agree. And besides, for those of us here in Oregon/Washington, the very ground is

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-21 Thread jimlux
On 11/21/16 2:58 PM, Attila Kinali wrote: On Mon, 21 Nov 2016 08:22:50 -0800 jimlux wrote: I'm not sure about whether an anechoic (which is really "hypoechoic") chamber is going to get you the data you need. Calibrating the chamber to the needed level of accuracy might

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-21 Thread Attila Kinali
On Mon, 21 Nov 2016 08:22:50 -0800 jimlux wrote: > I'm not sure about whether an anechoic (which is really "hypoechoic") > chamber is going to get you the data you need. Calibrating the chamber > to the needed level of accuracy might be harder than doing field >

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-21 Thread Tom Van Baak
> For the equipment hobbyists usually have, the phase center is not that > important. Most antennas have a variation <5mm. Even 10mm would lead to > just a ~33ps variation. I agree. And besides, for those of us here in Oregon/Washington, the very ground is moving northwest at several inches per

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-21 Thread jimlux
On 11/21/16 8:38 AM, Bob Camp wrote: Hi On Nov 21, 2016, at 9:54 AM, Attila Kinali wrote: On Sun, 20 Nov 2016 14:13:58 -0800 Hal Murray wrote: If I gave you a pile of data, how would you compute a quality number? Can I just sum up the S/N slots

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-21 Thread David
When I was doing VHF and UHF direction finding antenna design, I would drive out to the highest readily accessible hilltop for testing. Once I came up with a low sidelobe design, I started picking up things like lamp posts, trees, and bushes in the parking lot, aircraft over LAX and John Wayne

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-21 Thread jimlux
On 11/21/16 6:54 AM, Attila Kinali wrote: On Sun, 20 Nov 2016 14:13:58 -0800 Hal Murray wrote: If I gave you a pile of data, how would you compute a quality number? Can I just sum up the S/N slots for each visible/working satellite? There are multiple issues. As

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-21 Thread jimlux
On 11/21/16 4:15 AM, Bob Camp wrote: Hi At spectrum analyzer bandwidths, the GPS signals out of the antenna are more than 20 db below the noise floor. You can’t see them with an analyzer. You need to run things into the equivalent of a receiver to turn it into anything you can see above the

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-21 Thread Attila Kinali
On Sun, 20 Nov 2016 14:13:58 -0800 Hal Murray wrote: > If I gave you a pile of data, how would you compute a quality number? Can I > just sum up the S/N slots for each visible/working satellite? There are multiple issues. As already mentioned, SNR is only a part of

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-21 Thread Poul-Henning Kamp
In message <2974f356-3729-448e-a428-dc4d340ff...@n1k.org>, Bob Camp writes: >If I put up a handful of antennas on the back porch, I can indeed hook them >up to various receivers and cables. I actually had a chance to do that once: http://phk.freebsd.dk/raga/ I was very careful

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-21 Thread jimlux
On 11/20/16 7:41 PM, Mark Sims wrote: When I was developing the precision survey code for Lady Heather, I used a lot of antennas. My definition of antenna quality boiled down to how well the results of a 48 hour survey compared to the cm level survey point that I had for my antenna position

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-21 Thread Bob Camp
t to lock mode), but you can handle that in your data reduction. >> >> /tvb >> >> - Original Message - >> From: "Hal Murray" <hmur...@megapathdsl.net> >> To: <time-nuts@febo.com> >> Cc: "Hal Murray" <hmur...@

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-21 Thread Gary E. Miller
Yo Hal! On Sun, 20 Nov 2016 14:13:58 -0800 Hal Murray wrote: > Is that even a sensible question? Yes, it is a good question. I have been buying a lot of cheap GPS antennas for testing on RasPis. I plug the antenna into a GPS, then just wait until the GPS gets a good

[time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-20 Thread Mark Sims
When I was developing the precision survey code for Lady Heather, I used a lot of antennas. My definition of antenna quality boiled down to how well the results of a 48 hour survey compared to the cm level survey point that I had for my antenna position (from a Ashtech Z12 receiver / matched

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-20 Thread Mike Cook
sl.net> > To: <time-nuts@febo.com> > Cc: "Hal Murray" <hmur...@megapathdsl.net> > Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2016 2:13 PM > Subject: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality? > > >> >> Is that even a sensible question

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-20 Thread Chris Albertson
If you run two antenna simultaneously then... 1) they both can't be at the same location and 2) What if the two antenna interfere one with the other. I think maybe you need to collect data over a long enough period of tine that wether averages out. the satellite tracks repeate pretty much

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-20 Thread Tom Van Baak
/tvb - Original Message - From: "Hal Murray" <hmur...@megapathdsl.net> To: <time-nuts@febo.com> Cc: "Hal Murray" <hmur...@megapathdsl.net> Sent: Sunday, November 20, 2016 2:13 PM Subject: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality? > > Is that

Re: [time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-20 Thread Graham / KE9H
You need a definition of "Quality" to work with. One definition might be "does it meet published specs? under what conditions?" Another definition might be associated with reliability and ruggedness. Longevity in outdoor conditions. Another might be with the antenna supporting your use case.

[time-nuts] How can I measure GPS Antenna quality?

2016-11-20 Thread Hal Murray
Is that even a sensible question? Is there a better way to phrase it? The problem I'm trying to avoid is that the weather and the satellite geometry change over time so I can't just collect data for X hours, switch to the other antenna or move the antenna to another location, collect more