I've had some hit or miss luck with RTK. When I first put together my mower, it worked, but had a lot of GPS fix dropouts. Then, while working on other issues it seemed to start working pretty good. I've continued working on other unrelated issues and completing the build, but now I'm back where I can't seem to maintain a fix when starting mowing.
Issue: The mower will sit all day in a great spot with wide field of view and maintain a fix. However, when I tell it to mow, almost immediately the you'll hear the beeping, then the mower motor, then the gps will change to Invalid, then go back and forth between Invalid, float, and fix. Typically when there is a fix, it will go to start up the mower motor and then it goes right back to invalid.
I don't understand why it would sit there forever with a fix and then without moving at all, when I tell it to start mowing that it would start having issues. All of my wires are short and soldered in place if possible. All the high-current stuff is twisted together.
Things I've done recently:
Somehow I went from maintaining a fix 90% of the time, to barely being able to get the mower to start moving without getting an invalid state. I assume it has to be interference, but I don't see how I could make it much better.
Issue: The mower will sit all day in a great spot with wide field of view and maintain a fix. However, when I tell it to mow, almost immediately the you'll hear the beeping, then the mower motor, then the gps will change to Invalid, then go back and forth between Invalid, float, and fix. Typically when there is a fix, it will go to start up the mower motor and then it goes right back to invalid.
I don't understand why it would sit there forever with a fix and then without moving at all, when I tell it to start mowing that it would start having issues. All of my wires are short and soldered in place if possible. All the high-current stuff is twisted together.
Things I've done recently:
- After having this issue, I soldered the wires on the rover gps board to make sure there wouldn't be a bad connection
- I wired in the kill switch in-line with the battery, so I could turn off the robot. This was the change I made right before I started having these problems
- I enabled some IMU settings in the config to detect rotation errors right before this began
- I've made sure the base station has a good view of the sky (still in the same spot as before when working great)
- Checked how my wires are located in the mower. The only wiring that comes close to anything GPS related is the kill switch wiring is near the antennas
Somehow I went from maintaining a fix 90% of the time, to barely being able to get the mower to start moving without getting an invalid state. I assume it has to be interference, but I don't see how I could make it much better.