Abstract:
The BC Ministry of Forests operates two Global Positioning System
(GPS) Differential Base Stations at the Cowichan Lake Research Station
at Mesachie Lake. Trained staff are not available on site to monitor
and maintain the operation of these stations and these stations must
be available 7x24. The receivers are a Trimble proXR which is responsible
for delivering both real-time wireless corrections as well as archiving
corrections for post processing. The Ashtec GG archives corrections
from both NavStar and Glonass satellites. Each receiver has it’s own
computer which uses the vendors software on an NT 4.0 operating system
to collect and archive the differential data locally.
Many events can cause the systems to crash or go offline. Operation
outages must be minimal and be brought back up quickly. An automated
system monitoring program was created to diagnose and remedy common
malfunctions. Each computer can monitor the other and bring it back
up from a hard /soft boot as necessary, notify Victoria staff of problems
when they occur and log such events as well as permit remote viewing
of the base station operation in a GUI environment.
Furthermore, the data is periodically archived to larger storage systems
located in Victoria. This data is provided to any user by using a user friendly interface over an interactive
website. |