[time-nuts] Star Box

[Magnus Danielson]

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