I like dabbling with various GNSS chips and over the years it has been my experience that there are just tons of counterfeit GNSS chipsets out there.
I want to buy a couple cheap modules but want to ensure they are legit.
On the Quectel Distributor page they are not listed.
Hi @JohnEH The Quectel L76K is mainly intended for the China market, and we would not recommend it for your application.
Could you please share more details about your intended application and requirements?
Once we have the information, we can recommend the most suitable GNSS module for your use case.
Best regards.
My intended application is simply to use GPS modules and write about them on my Tech Blog. A small portion of that writing focuses on counterfeit chipsets when applicable. A larger portion of my writing ties in with the Raspberry Pi ecosystem. Doubtful I’d build a base or rover with this board but I’d just slap it on a Linux computer with various softwares and play with it on QGNSS on Windows as well.
Having said all that I am currently building a base/rover setup with Sparkfun boards using the LG290P(03).
I’m really just looking for the authenticity of the Seeed Studio chip used in the L76K.
Hi @JohnEH
Thanks for sharing more details on your use case.
That makes sense, especially for tech blog and evaluation purposes. Regarding the Seeed Studio board with the Quectel L76K, from our side we do not see any indication that the chipset is counterfeit or non-genuine. Can you share us the link for more information.
That said, the L76K is mainly intended for the China market, which is why we normally do not recommend it for new global designs or long-term projects.
For your type of testing — Raspberry Pi integration, Linux tools, QGNSS evaluation, and general GNSS experimentation — modules like the Quectel LG290P or LC29H series would probably give you a better overall experience and broader feature support.
The SparkFun LG290P(03) setup you are currently using is definitely a better platform if you plan to explore RTK base/rover configurations further.
Feel free to share your findings from the testing as well. It’s always interesting to see how these modules behave across different platforms and software environments. We will be glad to support where possible.
Best regards,
Here is a link to the SeeedStudio board.
Also, while I’ve been buying and playing with GNSS modules for years I just now started dabbling with RTK so I’m pretty new at it and learning.
My website is John’s Tech Blog and the last 6 entries have been strictly GPS/GNSS related. A couple of them have Quectel chips in them. I’m getting an RTK Postcard from Sparkfun today so fairly soon in the future I’ll be doing a review on setting up a base station and rover.
Thanks!