[time-nuts] Star Box

Joseph Gray jgray at zianet.com
Sun Aug 18 00:40:20 EDT 2013


Magnus,

Thanks for the comments. I did find the manual online. I will have to read
through it when I get a chance. From the past comments in the archives, I
was hoping to hear about anyone's experience using this in a GPSDO and
whether it would be better than other brands.

I have set it aside for now, as I have other projects that need to be
finished before the end of the month. Early next month I'll be away for
some training. I'd take some of my projects with me to work on in the
evening, after training, but I'm afraid I'd get arrested by the TSA when
they see electronic stuff :-)

Joe Gray
W5JG



On Sat, Aug 17, 2013 at 5:00 AM, Magnus Danielson <
magnus at rubidium.dyndns.org> wrote:

> Hi Joe,
>
> On 08/16/2013 04:47 AM, Joseph Gray wrote:
> > I just picked up a Star Box for $10. It has an Allstar DGPS board
> inside. I
> > saw several mentions of similar boards in the archives and I have found
> > some documentation on the net. Has anyone actually used one of these in a
> > GPSDO? Does it work any better than the usual Motorola, Rockwell, or
> other
> > available boards?
> >
> > The other thought is, since this is a DGPS board, how difficult would it
> be
> > to use it to obtain a more accurate position fix? Or do I need other GPS
> > boards to correlate this one with?
> >
> > I'll admit that so far, I have only skimmed the documentation that I
> > downloaded. If I need to RTFM for my answers, just tell me so.
> >
> > Some data on what I have:
> >
> > Star Box Part No. 100-600304-100
> > (DGPS Base Station option is checked)
> >
> > Inside the box is a carrier board that has a power supply and an RS-232
> > TX/RX chip. The GPS board that plugs onto the carrier has a label on the
> > underside that says "VAR 100". This corresponds to the suffix of the part
> > number on the box. The top side of the GPS board has the GPS receiver in
> a
> > large metal box that is imbossed "ALLSTAR 12" and "CMC", which is the
> > manufacturer (since then bought by Novatel?).
> Grab the manual, set it on self-survey and you have a nice little receiver.
>
> Since it does both code and carrier phase, you have added precision.
> Since it is a DGPS base station, it naturally have a built-in
> self-surveying using the power of that combined tracking.
>
> Hook it up to a good choke-ring, it deserves it. Multipath is what kills
> precision for this one.
>
> It will output DGPS corrections, such that any other DGPS receiving GPS
> you have can quickly acquire accurate lock, but you need to provide a
> link for the RTCM messages.
>
> Love to have one even if I have similar stuff.
>
> Cheers,
> Magnus
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to
> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> and follow the instructions there.
>
>


More information about the time-nuts mailing list