Sintrones VDB-810DR u-blox M9V Dead Reckoning GNSS Mini PCIe Card

Tunnels, multi-storey car parks and dense urban streets all interrupt a satellite fix, and a tracking computer that simply loses position there leaves gaps in the record. The Sintrones VDB-810DR is a GNSS card built for that problem: a full-size Mini PCIe card with a u-blox NEO-M9V receiver and UDR dead reckoning, which uses a second accelerometer on the card to help carry the position through an outage.

The NEO-M9V-20B receiver on the VDB-810DR has 92 channels and tracks GPS L1 C/A, QZSS, GLONASS, BeiDou B1I and Galileo E1B/C, with SBAS from EGNOS, GAGAN, MSAS and WAAS. Navigation updates run at up to 50 Hz with four constellations. Accuracy is 1.5 m CEP with SBAS or 2.0 m without, with 3 m vertical accuracy, and Sintrones quotes a 24 s cold start, 3 s aided start and 2 s hot start. Tracking sensitivity is -159 dBm and cold-start sensitivity -147 dBm.

The receiver connects to the host over USB 2.0, and the second accelerometer, an ADI ADXL346, uses I2C; because dead reckoning relies on it, we check that the host’s Mini PCIe slot carries I2C as part of the build. One MHF I connector supports an active antenna, and output is NMEA 4.11 by default, with NMEA 4.10, 4.0, 2.3 and 2.1 and UBX also available. The VDB-811DR-M2 puts the same receiver on M.2 2242 Key B and adds ADR, and the VDB-810 is the u-blox M8 card without dead reckoning.

Power is 3.3 V DC ±10% from the slot. The VDB-810DR is rated from -40 °C to 85 °C with 0.6 m/s airflow, stores across the same range and handles 10 to 90% non-condensing humidity, with CE, FCC Class A and UKCA compliance. It measures 30 x 51 x 10 mm. It suits Sintrones computers with a free full-size Mini PCIe slot, and we fit and test it in the host computer as part of the build, with the antenna cabling routed to the enclosure.