Good day,
We are testing Emlid Reach RS2 for measuring utilities. So far our surveyors used Trimble but we are looking to involve more people into the survey process by letting them use Arcgis Collector and some external GNSS device. Our choice for external GNSS receiver was Reach RS2. However, there are some issues that we observe with a new workflow.
First of all, out tests using ReachView native app showed very nice results both in horizontal and vertical accuracy. Recently added vertical datum for our region (Iceland) works very well and all height values are in accordance to the National Land Survey data. However, when same locations are measured in Arcgis Collector, the altitude always varies and sometimes the variations are up to 0.5 - 1 m. I did several tests and all of them showed stable altitude in Reachview app but ranging values in Collector. I wonder what might cause these variations. Has anyone experienced the same issues using external GNSS (particularly Reach RS2) with Arcgis Collector?
Cheers
Hello mykola,
We have a similar problem with measuring height in Field Maps/Collector in Germany. I'm not familiar with the icelandic datum, so I can't say, that it is exactly the same problem. Field Maps and Collector seem to have a problem with interpreting the data, the GNSS Apps are providing. If I understood everything right, this is only a problem outside of the US, because there they are measureing the Height above Ellipsoid. I collected everything I know here:
Measure the orthometric height in Field Maps - Esri Community
My hope is, that we can find more people with this Problem, so esri has a reason to fix/implement this.
Good Luck and Cheers!
Hegik,
Thanks you for the provided link. I haven´t found anything on this topic online so I decided to ask the community. From the link it seems that more people have some issues with heights in esri apps. I hope Esri takes a look into this issue otherwise the use of external GNSS might not be as reliable as we would like it to be.
I am also experiencing a similar issue here in Canada while using the Emlid Reach RS2 and ArcGIS Field Maps. The value that is stored in Fields is the height above ellipsoid. After converting to orthometric height and comparing to reported values, the accuracies I am seeing are quite good. I have inquired with ESRI and it is my understanding that this fix will not be coming for a while yet.
What was the reply you got from Esri? I am not familiar with Emlid but Field Maps has to connect directly to Trimble and Leica receivers and not via mock location as integrated provider. Via mock location FM can only read lat long and HAE. I am interested in knowing how you connect FM to Emlid. Thanks
Sincerely
2026 and this is still an issue. I’m using an Emlid rs2+. Orthmetric heights are fine in Emlid flow but .5 m too high in FM. Only solution is to adjust antenna. This makes no sense to me.
Is it always 0.5m? I wonder if you have set different height value in the antenna settings in field maps. Also, FM does not compensate for the phase center height so you need to add 0.13 to the pole height (fm takes only two decimal points so you can't put 0.134 as should be). We are solving the height issue buy post processing the data and correcting using the geoid model. Too complicated and not user friendly at all. But my conclusion is that it is Esri problem and not Emlid problem.
Thanks for the information. I'll adjust the antenna settings in field maps in the future.
To answer your question the features are 0.4467m off from one another and it is consistent.
Attached is a screenshot of two features averaged over 15 min, one collected in FM and sent through portal to a SDE and the other is a .shp exported out of Emlid Flow.
The altitudes are nearly identical (from GNSS) but of course the Geometry is where things get wonky. For the record the Ortho HT in the attribute table for the fieldmaps feature (red) is derived using Attribute Rules (and converted to feet in another field).
Are you doing the post processing in Arcgis or something else? I'd love to know how others are getting past this mess.
Thanks again
Interesting.. I was expecting the problems with Z but not with XY like in your case. Really hard to say what can be the reason but here are my guesses.
1. Is your basemap in FM in the same coordinate system as your RTK service? It should be.
2. Do you create location profile in menu -> location profile? Create the one you are using for you map and RTK service so it maps correctly. If not set correctly, you wouldn't be able even to open the service (errors says something like location profile error, don't remember).
3. Antenna height should be set in the FM as pole height+0.13 for emlid.
4. Important! Once you press "+" to collect the point in FM, you are capturing the coordinates of the location where you pressed "+". Even if you move your receiver, it still captures and sends the coordinates where you pressed "+". My rule of thumb is ALWAYS press "Update point" before submitting. Could this be the reason for mismatch in horizontal in your case?
4. FM uses global EGM96 geoid model and I always get slightly different values for ortho height compared to the local geoid model even though my RTK receives the correct height from the base. I wish field maps have the option to select custom geoid.
In general, we use custom python script to convert and calculate the ortho height by using the ellipsoidal height from the receiver and the local geoid data. It is pain in the *ss but we do not have another option yet.
Do you need to do averaging? If not, 5 sec is enough in our case. Try measuring raw values without any post processing over some known point and compare. If everything is set correctly you should only see a slight difference in vertical and not horizontal. Check if both emlid flow and field maps give the same ellipsoidal height (altitude in FM) and horizontal.
I saw your post here :
I seems like something I was scheming on, thanks for the detailed information!