Enclosed RTKs & 6DoF IMUs
The RTK Reference Station was released yesterday, but we will talk a little more about it today, along with two new BMI270 6DoF IMU boards!
Hello everyone and welcome back to another Friday Product Post here at SparkFun! As we initially showed off yesterday, the SparkFun RTK Reference Station, our newest addition to the RTK Surveyors line, is now available! Nathan stops by to give us a bit more information on the base station and what it's capable of. Following that, and not to be shown up, we have two new BMI270 Qwiic 6DoF IMUs. These boards are extremely low-power and are featured in our Standard and Micro-sized form-factors. Now let's dive in and take a closer look at all of this week's new products!
A great point of reference!
Designed and manufactured in Boulder, Colorado, USA, the SparkFun RTK Reference Station is the perfect solution for your high-precision geolocation, surveying, and time reference needs. For basic users, it is incredibly easy to set up a fixed location NTRIP server, enabling RTK for rovers and even as an NTP server for equipment synchronization and an astoundingly accurate time base.
Under the hood, the Reference Station is based on the ESP32-WROOM processor and u-blox ZED-F9P multi-band GNSS module. It runs the same open-source firmware as our other RTK products. The Reference Station has 10/100 Mbps Ethernet connectivity and it can be powered by Power-over-Ethernet (PoE). The microSD card is connected via a 4-bit SDIO interface, providing an order of magnitude improvement in read and write speed. Similarly, the u-blox ZED-F9P GNSS module is connected via a high-speed SPI interface, also providing an order of magnitude improvement in the GNSS data transfer speed. Want to log RAWX and SFRBX from all constellations at 20Hz? With this product, you can! We also included an ATECC608A crypto co-processor if you want to write your own firmware and use the Reference Station for crypto mining/space weather station applications or to secure/authenticate your GNSS data.
Standard or Micro? This 6DoF IMU has options!
The SparkFun BMI270 6DoF IMU Breakout is a Qwiic-enabled breakout board based on the ultra-low power BMI270 from Bosch. This chip is a highly integrated, low-power IMU optimized for wearables providing precise acceleration, angular rate measurement, and intelligent on-chip motion-triggered interrupt features. Not only does the BMI270 comprise a fast and sensitive accelerometer and gyro pair, but it also contains several intelligent, on-chip motion-triggered interrupt features.
Nearly identical to the board above, the SparkFun BMI270 Micro 6DoF IMU Breakout is Micro-sized with a 0.3in. x 0.75in. footprint that makes this breakout board an ideal option for your smallest projects using our solderless Qwiic cables and compatible controllers. On-board solder jumpers allow you to easily select the device address, remove the I²C pull-ups, and disable the power LED if need be.
That's it for this week. As always, we can't wait to see what you make. Shoot us a tweet @sparkfun, or let us know on Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn. Please be safe out there, be kind to one another! We'll be back with more new products next week so make sure to check back then. Happy hacking!
