SP-Base

Web UI and REST API for configuring and monitoring a u-blox GPS RTK base station and its RTCM correction data relay.

SP-Base wraps the sp-rtk-base-relay engine with a browser-based operator console, adds full u-blox device configuration (survey-in, fixed base, GNSS constellations, RTCM message selection), a centimetre-level Corrected survey-in from an NTRIP Correction source, and exposes everything through a REST API — all from a phone, tablet, or desktop browser.

Features

Relay Control

• Dashboard — real-time relay status, input metrics, throughput stats, GPS device summary, live event log
• Destination Management — add/edit/delete/hot-toggle SurePath, NTRIP, and TCP Server outputs (zero-downtime)
• Input Sources — configure TCP, serial, or Bluetooth RTCM input (serial port auto-detect with GPS flagging, Bluetooth scan + pair + test-connection)
• Config Import/Export — YAML download/upload with validation

GPS Device Management (u-blox)

• Connect / Disconnect — serial port auto-detect (u-blox / FTDI / Prolific / Silicon Labs flagged with ⭐), driver selector, MON-VER device info
• Survey-In — configure duration + accuracy target, live convergence chart (ECharts), auto-promote to fixed base on completion + save-to-flash; on a receiver without a survey-in of its own, the station averages the position itself
• Corrected Survey-In — survey in as an RTK rover against a saved NTRIP Correction source: the station pulls the source's RTCM 3 through its own Relay instance, feeds it to the receiver, averages only settled RTK Fixed solutions on fresh corrections, and commits a centimetre-level fixed base. Live RTK status, correction age, source state and Fixed time; clear failure rules (stall abort, Fixed-jump restart) and no silent fallback
• Correction Sources & Verify — save NTRIP sources (v1/v2, TLS, write-only password) and Verify one Stage by Stage (connect → caster → auth → mountpoint → data) before surveying
• Signal Quality — Good / Marginal / Poor from L1/L2 band strength and usable satellites, from the receiver during survey-in or from the Relay's MSM while it runs
• Fixed Base — read-back current config, edit/commit coordinates, save-to-flash
• Named Position Profiles — save surveyed or manual base positions to YAML, restore them directly to device RAM + flash
• Live Position — NAV-PVT display (fix type, RTK status, lat/lon/alt, accuracy, satellites, speed, heading, PDOP) auto-polled every 2 s
• GNSS Constellation Selection — toggle GPS / GLONASS / Galileo / BeiDou / SBAS / QZSS
• RTCM Message Selection — per-port RTCM3 message enable/disable
• Save to Flash — persist any configuration change for reboot survival
• Device → Relay Handoff — disconnect device and start the relay on the same serial port with one click

Monitoring & API

• REST API — full programmatic control (relay, destinations, settings, events, device, config)
• Prometheus Metrics — GET /metrics endpoint for Grafana / Prometheus monitoring
• WebSocket Events — real-time event streaming at WS /api/events/ws
• Responsive UI — mobile-first layout, 44 px touch targets, tablet/desktop breakpoints

Quick Start

sp-rtk-base is published on PyPI — install it the way that fits your host best.

Production deploy on a Raspberry Pi (or any Debian host)

One-shot installer creates a sp-rtk-base system user, an isolated venv at /opt/sp-rtk-base/, config in /etc/sp-rtk-base/, state in /var/lib/sp-rtk-base/, and a hardened systemd service.

Deployment modes

The installer requires an explicit --mode — it never guesses, because guessing wrong is destructive (seizing wlan0 on a box something else manages, or shipping a device with no way to join a network):

# Dedicated appliance — full network takeover, fixed setup-AP
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rodenj1/sp-rtk-base/main/deploy/install.sh \
    | sudo bash -s -- --mode appliance

# Managed host — app only, host network stack untouched
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rodenj1/sp-rtk-base/main/deploy/install.sh \
    | sudo bash -s -- --mode managed-host

In appliance mode, if AP_PASSWORD isn't set the installer falls back to a fixed fleet default (sp-rtk-base1234!) and prints a warning — override it per fleet in production:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rodenj1/sp-rtk-base/main/deploy/install.sh \
    | sudo AP_PASSWORD='your-sticker-password' bash -s -- --mode appliance

A bare re-run with no --mode preserves whichever mode is already recorded in config.yaml, so version-bump re-runs don't need the flag repeated. A future container mode (app-only, published image) is planned but not yet built — see docs/deployment-pi.md for details, the full behavior matrix, and how to switch modes on an existing install.

Open http://<pi-ip>:8080 in your browser when it finishes.

sudo systemctl status sp-rtk-base       # service status
sudo journalctl -u sp-rtk-base -f       # live logs
sudo ./deploy/upgrade.sh                # later: upgrade in place

See docs/deployment-pi.md for the full runbook (layout, nginx reverse proxy, backup/restore, troubleshooting, fleet management).

Single-user install on your workstation

If you just want to try it out locally:

pipx install sp-rtk-base
sp-rtk-base

Or with uv:

uv tool install sp-rtk-base
sp-rtk-base

Open http://localhost:8080 in your browser.

From source (developers only)

git clone https://github.com/rodenj1/sp-rtk-base.git
cd sp-rtk-base
uv sync
uv run sp-rtk-base

Demo Mode

Run with a simulated RTCM source and mock destinations (no hardware needed):

uv run python tools/demo_with_simulator.py

This starts:

• TCP source simulator — streams synthetic RTCM3 data on port 19800
• Mock NTRIP caster — accepts NTRIP v1.0 connections (ephemeral port)
• SP-Base — pre-configured with TCP input, a tcp_server destination on port 19876, and an NTRIP destination pointing to the mock caster

The relay auto-starts on launch. Open http://localhost:8080 and you'll see live data flowing on the Dashboard immediately.

Local NTRIP Caster (Dev / Testing)

A lightweight Python asyncio NTRIP caster is included for developing and testing NTRIP v1.0 and v2.0 destinations without depending on a public caster:

cd docker/ntrip-caster
docker compose up

See docs/local-ntrip-caster.md for auth, mountpoint, and protocol details.

CLI Utilities

In addition to the main sp-rtk-base server, the package installs:

• sp-rtk-base-gps-audit — non-destructive audit tool for ZED-F9P (u-blox Gen9) receivers. Reads the current RAM configuration and the factory defaults via CFG-VALGET, then prints every setting that differs from default. Read-only — never writes to the receiver.

  sp-rtk-base-gps-audit --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --baud 57600
  # or from a source checkout:
  uv run sp-rtk-base-gps-audit --port /dev/ttyUSB0
  

UI Pages

API Endpoints

Health

Relay

Destinations

Settings

Events

Correction Sources

Metrics & Config

GPS Device (u-blox)

Prometheus Integration

SP-Base serves Prometheus metrics at GET /metrics on the same port (8080).

Example prometheus.yml scrape config:

scrape_configs:
  - job_name: "sp-rtk-base"
    scrape_interval: 10s
    static_configs:
      - targets: ["localhost:8080"]

Key metrics include:

• sp_rtk_base_relay_running — relay engine state (1/0)
• sp_rtk_base_relay_uptime_seconds — engine uptime
• sp_rtk_base_input_connected — input source connection state
• sp_rtk_base_input_bytes_received — total bytes from input
• sp_rtk_base_active_destinations / sp_rtk_base_total_destinations
• sp_rtk_base_dest_connected{destination="name"} — per-destination status
• sp_rtk_base_dest_bytes_sent{destination="name"} — per-destination throughput

Development

Run Tests

Default pytest runs the unit suite only — integration and e2e suites are excluded via norecursedirs in pyproject.toml and must be invoked explicitly. The default unit run enforces --cov-fail-under=90.

# Unit tests (default — fast, mocked, coverage-gated)
uv run pytest

# Integration tests — real relay engine + TCP simulator
uv run pytest tests/integration/ --no-cov

# End-to-end tests — Playwright browser suites (requires Chromium)
uv run pytest tests/e2e --no-cov

Type Checking

uv run pyright src/

Quality Snapshot

• Unit tests: 554 passing across 32 test files
• Integration tests: 3 suites (end-to-end + destination management + NTRIP)
• E2E tests: 12 Playwright browser suites
• Coverage: ≥90% gate on measured code (NiceGUI UI pages, shared layout/components, and cli/config_audit.py excluded — they can't be meaningfully unit-tested and are covered by e2e instead)
• Pyright (strict): 0 errors, 0 warnings
• Python: 3.10+ with modern type hints (dict, list, X | None)

Project Structure

sp-rtk-base/
├── src/sp_rtk_base/
│   ├── api/              # FastAPI REST endpoints
│   │   ├── config.py        # YAML import/export
│   │   ├── destinations.py  # Destination CRUD
│   │   ├── device.py        # GPS device endpoints
│   │   ├── events.py        # Events + WebSocket
│   │   ├── health.py
│   │   ├── metrics.py       # Prometheus
│   │   ├── relay.py
│   │   └── settings.py
│   ├── models/           # Pydantic config, device & API models
│   ├── services/         # Business logic
│   │   ├── config_service.py
│   │   ├── device_service.py
│   │   ├── metrics_service.py
│   │   ├── relay_events.py  # live relay events, one stream per client
│   │   ├── relay_service.py
│   │   └── drivers/         # GPS driver layer
│   │       ├── base.py      # GpsReceiverDriver ABC
│   │       └── ublox.py     # u-blox driver (PyUBX2)
│   └── ui/               # NiceGUI browser UI
│       ├── layout.py        # Shared navigation layout
│       ├── validators.py    # Shared form validators
│       ├── components/      # Reusable UI components
│       └── pages/           # Dashboard, Input, Outputs, Survey, Settings, GPS Config
├── tests/
│   ├── unit/             # Fast unit tests with mocks
│   ├── integration/      # End-to-end tests with real relay
│   ├── e2e/              # Playwright browser suites
│   └── fixtures/         # TCP simulators, mock NTRIP caster, test helpers
├── docker/
│   └── ntrip-caster/     # Local NTRIP caster for dev/testing
├── docs/                 # Architecture, planning, device config reference
└── tools/                # Demo and hardware test scripts

Architecture

SP-Base is built on FastAPI (REST API + WebSocket) and NiceGUI (browser UI) sharing a single ASGI server on port 8080. Core components:

• sp-rtk-base-relay — RTCM relay engine with TCP / serial / Bluetooth inputs and SurePath / NTRIP / TCP Server outputs, hot destination management, and in-process event bus
• GPS driver layer — abstract GpsReceiverDriver base with a u-blox implementation via PyUBX2 (UBX-MON-VER, CFG-VALSET/VALGET, NAV-PVT, NAV-SVIN, CFG-GNSS, survey-in, fixed-base, RTCM selection, save-to-flash)
• Services — async orchestrators bridging the synchronous relay engine and GPS driver to FastAPI's event loop via asyncio.to_thread() and daemon-thread event queues
• Operator console — 6-page workflow (Dashboard → Input → Outputs → Survey-In → Settings → Advanced GPS) driven by a shared navigation layout; the browser renders status and requests actions, while authoritative runtime state lives in the relay engine and backend services

Graceful shutdown is wired through app.on_shutdown so Ctrl+C cleanly stops the event bridge, relay engine, destination threads, and any active GPS connection before uvicorn exits.

License

MIT