Configuring Emlid Reach as a Hardwired Permanent Base

This article walks through connecting your Reach (RS2, RS2+, Emlid Reach RS3, M2) to Emlid Caster using only a USB cable or RS-232 (or both) and the SNIP (simple NTRIP network caster) software. This allows you to establish a stable connection to the internet with your base using the ethernet connection of your PC. The example in this video uses an RS2+ connected to our PC's USB Gen 3.2 2x2 port to provide the data stream and power to the receiver. Similar configurations are possible using the EXT port of the RS2/RS3 if you don't have an available PC with a suitable USB port. You can then use a rover such as the Reach RX with your base. 

We are going to set up our Emlid Reach base on Emlid Caster using a hardline to the internet. We will be using a USB cable to provide both power and our Serial connection stream but this can also be setup using the extension cord or a combination of both USB and extension cords. You can power your Reach base on and off using the extension cord but our setup will suffice since we plan on letting the base run continuously.  

Since there isn’t a native solution to wire an internet connection to Emlid’s receivers, we will incorporate some free software known as the simple NTRIP caster (SNIP). To download this software Add to Cart and fill out the Personal Info to get the download link sent to your email. Once you have downloaded and extracted the zip file, run the setup program. Follow the setup instructions in the installer and then launch the program. Once the software is  launched, you can run it in an evaluation mode for up to an hour at a time. You can also register for a free Lite license that will be sufficient to run your base continuously for your current configuration. To register for the Lite license, click on Help, registration and then follow the steps in the Registration Wizard.   

Since we are limited to 3 streams on the free license, I am going to clear out all the Demo streams in the Relay Streams tab by right clicking and selecting remove. 

With the RS2 plugged in via USB, open up the Device Manager and check the COM port that is associated with your RS2. If it is not recognizing the Serial stream on your machine, update the driver and choose Ports (COM & LPT) from the list. Then select USB Serial Device and confirm the change. We can now see our receiver is on (COM3). 

Now in SNIP, Add a Serial Stream in the Setup dropdown, select your receiver on COM3, and match the Baud Rate set in your receiver. Then you will name the Stream and configure the Mount Point. We have several settings that we can customize or we can leave everything on Autodetect w/Parse and select OK to move on. I’m going to skip adding Start-up and Shut-down commands and complete the configuration of our Serial stream. With the Stream ready we can right click to start the data stream.  

Now we will add a new Stream, this time a Pushed-Out Stream to Emlid Caster so we can simplify anonymizing our IP address instead of configuring proxy addresses and the like within SNIP. Select the Serial Stream as your data source and output to caster.emlid.com and fill in the rest of the credentials using your Caster Mount Point credentials.  

Now we have our second Stream configured pushing out our base (RS2, RS2+, Emlid Reach RS3, M2) to Emlid Caster and we can see that our Mount Point is online. Since the Mount Point is live, we can connect our network rover to it using our rover credentials in Caster. After we have logged data for about 20 hours with our base, we will process our base location through OPUS and set that solution as our base point with 0 set as our base pole height.