Aust. Geology/Tribolite Solutions

[grubstake]

Katie McRobert, general manager at the Australia Farm Institute, said Australian farmers sourced their GPS signal from one satellite, which was a critical risk to rural industries.

“Having all your GPS eggs in one basket is a vulnerability on a good day, and a fatal weakness on a bad one,” McRobert said.

I can't imagine how that could possibly work - as I understand it, you need at least three satellites to triangulate a reliable position and the more you can access, the more accurate the system becomes. Perhaps she means one constallation. ie. either the US GPS system, EU's Galileo, Russian GLONASS, Chinese BeiDou, Indian IRNSS or Japanese QZSS.

 

[Hippyty79]

Sorry, pocket posted before I could finish writing.
The quote was from an article a year ago, I couldn’t read the NY times article without joining and came across this article.
https://amp.smh.com.au/national/far...tractors-grind-to-a-halt-20230418-p5d1de.html

 

[Northeast]

I can't imagine how that could possibly work

Mmm, it does seem strange.

My cousin has the 2cm guidance stuff on our old farm and they calibrate the exact position of 3 base stations and then everything works off them - not working live off an actual satellite in the sky. I assumed that is how all 2cm guidance stuff worked on farms as I thought 2cm accuracy would be impossible from a satellite/s??

The Pivotel network recently died as apparently that runs off just the 1 satellite that sits over Asia/Australia. Satellite 1 died a few years ago, satellite 2 was decommissioned and they were currently using satellite 3 with plans for satellite 4 next year. Unfortunately sat 3 had a fatal error on board that can't be fixed. Whole system is down. Anyone feel free to correct any of that as I was told second hand

 

[Northeast]

I think I can correct myself

Just Thuraya. Apparently Pivotel look after multiple satellite systems. And from Hippy's article it also seems like ag equipment is directly guided from the sky.
https://www.pivotel.com.au/knowledge-base/outages/current-outages.html

 

[Hippyty79]

It seem like they use Inmarsat for 2 way communication and global coverage. https://orchardandvine.net/news/john-deere-‘kill-switch’-renders-stolen-tractors-useless/

 

[Bora68]

Not sure if that is right ,most GPS units lock onto a whole set of satellites to get their accuracy. Can't be done with just one is my understanding.