Connecting third-party RTK base stations to DJI drones
Got a lot of questions about this at a conference last week so figured I'd write it up. Yes, you can use non-DJI base stations (Emlid, Trimble, etc.) with DJI drones that support network RTK. Here's how.
The trick is that DJI drones with RTK capability can accept corrections via NTRIP. So you don't connect directly to the base - you connect through an NTRIP caster. Your third-party base broadcasts corrections to the caster, and the DJI drone pulls from the same caster.
What you need:
- A base station capable of outputting RTCM3 corrections (most modern receivers do this)
- An NTRIP caster (SNIP free version works, or use a commercial one)
- Your DJI drone's RTK settings configured to connect to the caster
Setup steps:
- Set up your base on a known point and start broadcasting RTCM3 to your caster
- In DJI Pilot 2, go to RTK settings → Network RTK → Custom
- Enter your caster IP, port, mount point, and credentials
- The drone will pull corrections and should get fix within 30-60 seconds
This works with M350 RTK, M4E, Matrice 30T - basically anything DJI that does network RTK. The D-RTK 2 base station is doing the exact same thing, it's just DJI's version of the workflow.
One caveat - make sure your base and the drone are using the same coordinate reference. If your base is broadcasting WGS84 corrections and you have a localization applied in DJI Terra, it can get confusing fast.