"The other day we were scrolling through r/meshtastic and someone asks: "Why does my device show 10+ satellites in view while my buddy's barely sees 8?" Good question. Really good question, actually. And it's about to take us down a rabbit hole that involves atomic clocks, Cold War competition, European independence, and why your Meshtastic node cares about all of this."
"Most people call it "GPS" because that's what we grew up with. But here's the thing: GPS is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle called GNSS. It's like how people say "Google it" when they mean "search the web", GPS became the catch-all term for satellite navigation, even though there are now six different systems orbiting Earth doing the exact same thing."
"Let's start with the basics. You know when you're shopping for a Meshtastic device and the vendor specs say something like: "GPS/GLONASS/Galileo/BeiDou/NavIC/QZSS support" That's not marketing fluff. Those are six different satellite constellation systems orbiting Earth right now, and if you want to use your device as a serious tracker or care about fast GPS locks and accuracy, you should absolutely look for this in the specs."
Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) encompasses multiple independent constellations — GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BeiDou, NavIC, and QZSS — that collectively provide positioning signals. Devices that support multiple constellations see more satellites, achieve faster time-to-first-fix, and maintain stronger, more accurate location estimates than GPS-only units. Receiver hardware and firmware differences, such as chipsets from u-blox versus MediaTek and the quality of timing references, influence satellite visibility and lock speed. Precise time synchronization via atomic clocks on satellites underpins accurate trilateration. Multi-constellation support enhances off-grid tracking performance and robustness for mesh networks.
Read at Adrelien | Meshtastic, IoT & Off-Grid Tech Guides
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]