What is new in the SNIP 1_4_0 release  [February 14th  2017]
This is the next release of SNIP following after the Rev 1_2_0 release of last month (January 13th) with some major new functionality. It is recommended for all users and is now the primary download.  This release has the new NEARest mountPt feature set which was first released in the Beta channel (1.3.0) about two weeks ago.  At this writing, SNIP is now being used in over one hundred countries to operate NTRIP Caster networks.

The primary improvements made from release 1_4_0 are as follows:

• All paid editions of SNIP now support a NEARest mountPt function to allow NTRIP Clients to be automatically connected to whichever mountPt would be closest to their current location.   NEAR streams provide a convenient way to connect your NTRIP Clients to the best mountPt in a selected pool while automatically dealing with Base Stations that may come and go in your network.  [This feature is enabled as part of the evaluation package but it is not available in the free or Lite license mode]  The NEAR feature is treated in SNIP like other data source, appearing in it own Nearest Tab with various controls for each stream.

• The Basic license mode supports a single NEARest stream using the RTCM 3.0 message formats.  In the Pro license mode, three such streams are supported.  And, these streams can also use any of the common message formats [RTCM3, RTCM2, CMR, uBlox, BINEX, etc.] to form the pool of Base Stations to be used.  In the Enterprise license mode the number of allowed concurrent NEARest streams is unlimited.

• When creating a NEARest stream using the RTCM 3.0 message formats various options for extensive message content filtering are provided.  This allows controlling which Base Stations will form the the “pool” of Caster streams used in each NEARest stream.You can, for example, omit or include only those Base station streams that contain GLONASS, or the presence of Ephemeris (orbital) data.

• Another feature allows sending a full set of ECEF messages to a connected NTRIP Client regarding the precise base station location at the moment a change is made to a new Base Station.  This allows utilizing the new Base Station in under a fraction of a second, a key safety feature for SNIPs automotive DSRC clients.

• The NEARest stream function also supports enabling defined Regional areas.  This allows operating a single SNIP Caster installation that provides a regional set of local base stations.  At the same time, SNIP can also connect other NTRIP Clients to Base Stations around the world with normal single baseline mountPts.  Alternatively, a NEAR mountPt can be set up (with no region) to simply connect any Client to the closest base station to it.  A maximum baseline distance between the NTRIP Client and the Base Station can also be set to ensure de-correlation levels are met.  Another setting (Hysteresis)  allows control over the distance threshold used when changing a Client’s data stream source.

• Further details regarding the controls used to set up a NEAR style mountPt now have their own section in the knowledge base.

Besides the release of the NEAR feature, several important but more minor improvements were added in this release of SNIP.

• Further improvements in the automatically performed corrections to Caster Tables entries when a Base Station provides no entry (or an ill-formed entity) have been added. Besides automatically providing an enumeration of the message contents, the GNSS type and Carrier counts are now also updated.   Additional detection logic for Caster entries with “dummy” entries has been added (when such entries are detected, SNIP fills in the correct data from the analysis of the data stream).
• A new “info” button now appears on many of the tabs and dialogs and will bring up the correct Knowledge Base page to assist the SNIP operator when needed.
• User requests to provide additional data about which NTRIP Client agent was used by any connected user have resulted in this information being added to various reports that list the connected clients.
• In prior SNIP releases, when any new PUSH-In data connections were made, the new data stream was treated as “RAW” and was not parsed.  Some users preferred this mode (often those using CMR data stream), while others preferred to have the data parsed and analyzed in the RTCM3 style (which also resulted in automatic and correct Caster Table entries due to SNIP‘s analysis)   But using RTCM3 also required the operator to select the Parsed check box with each new reconnection.  In this release either mode can now be the default behavior. This can now be controlled by a global “Auto Parse” check box in the PUSH-In streams tab which in turn allows unattended operation.
• It was requested that an “Are Your Sure…” dialog be added when the close button is pressed to avoid SNIP shutdown by mistake.  This has been added.

The various article entries in the Knowledge Base which are affected by this new release have also been updated at this time.

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