The NEARest tab is used to view, create, and manage NEAR™ Base Station style mountPts. This type of stream is made up of other suitable Base Station data streams available in the SNIP Caster. The collection of Base stations, referred to as a “pool,” are selected according to the criteria which you establish when creating the NEAR mountPt.
In the RTCM / NTRIP industry these single baseline streams are often called “NEAR” streams and allow a convenient way for any NTRIP Clients to connect to a single mountPt at your Caster, periodically send in NMEA-183 $GGA messages as they move, and as a result be automatically directed to the closest suitable Base Station at all times. The general concept of a NEAR mountPt is described further in this article.
Setting up a NEAR stream involves using the the NEARest mountPt Setup dialog, which is described in further detail in several knowledge base articles. This dialog is reached by right-clicking on the slot and selecting the Edit item. For detailed information see the knowledge base articles on: Geographical Regional settings, on Message Stream Content controls, and on Connection Distance controls.
To operate a NEAR stream your SNIP installation must have registered a Basic License of better (operation of one NEAR stream is also allowed during the evaluation period). Additional License levels allow additional streams and pool filtering features.
Hint: The above image shows four active NEAR mountPt streams on a SNIP node that has just restarted. The user has hovered the mouse over the “Pool” entry for the stream NEAR3_SAE. The tool-tip has popped up and is displaying the five Base Stations that make up the pool. [Shown are several Base Stations operated by the Michigan DOT as part of their CORS network; the Not-USED Base Stations are located in other parts of the world]
Hint: You can also right click and plot the Base Station in the pool on a map in the normal way. Another right-click selection will display the current setup details.
