{"id":4185,"date":"2025-08-13T00:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T00:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"\/kb\/?post_type=ht_kb&p=4185"},"modified":"2025-08-13T15:06:36","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T15:06:36","slug":"introducing-pfat","status":"publish","type":"ht_kb","link":"https:\/\/www.use-snip.com\/kb\/knowledge-base\/introducing-pfat\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing PFAT"},"content":{"rendered":"

From release 1.12 and onward, the the P.F.A.T.<\/strong> control system originally only present in the Enterprise<\/strong><\/em><\/span> editions of SNIP<\/strong><\/span> has been moved to the Pro<\/strong><\/em><\/span>, and Basic<\/strong><\/em><\/span> editions.\u00a0 Lite<\/strong><\/em><\/span> copies of SNIP<\/strong><\/span> share the same code base, but many of these innovative features are disabled in the freely available Lite<\/strong> <\/em><\/span>edition (but you can test them in the Evaluation<\/strong> <\/em>edition).<\/p>\n

What is P.F.A.T.\u00a0<\/strong> (or PFAT)<\/h3>\n

PFAT™<\/strong> is a control system used to operate on each data stream present in your SNIP<\/strong><\/span> Caster.\u00a0 The PFAT<\/strong> concept is unique to the SNIP<\/strong><\/span> Caster design, making it much more flexible than competitor products.\u00a0 The acronym is made of four letters which reflect the processing stages of all data in SNIP<\/strong><\/span> as follows:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0Parse<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/a>
\n— Parse and Decode the data stream into individual messages for further processing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Filter<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>
\n<\/em><\/span>— Remove any unwanted message content in the data stream.<\/p>\n

\"\" Add\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>
\n<\/em><\/span>— Add wanted but missing data content to the data stream.<\/p>\n

\"\" Translate\u00a0<\/a><\/strong>
\n<\/em><\/span>— Translate the contents of messages to align them to common needs (often a common datum translation<\/a>) and express the messages themselves into alternative formats and packaging (including MSM, J2735, RTCM 2.4, RTCM 3.x private messages, Translating 1004 to 1002 types, etc.).<\/p>\n

Each of these steps can be enabled or disabled as required.\u00a0 Until the 2.x release, the “FAT” part of this process has been unavailable to most SNIP<\/strong><\/span> users.\u00a0 In the new release each stream is associated with its own “recipe” that describes the PFAT operations to be performed on it.<\/p>\n

Why you should care<\/h3>\n

Many users today depend on the default Parse<\/strong> <\/em>and Filter<\/strong> <\/em>ability of SNIP<\/strong><\/span> to remove non-RTCM3 data (such as NMEA-183) from the data stream they send.\u00a0 PFAT<\/strong> significantly further expands this ability so you can change the messages in the data stream itself.\u00a0 Other brands of NTRIP Casters simply can not do this, it is a feature unique the the SNIP<\/strong><\/span> Caster.<\/p>\n

Here are a few illustrative use cases where PFAT<\/strong> is of value to SNIP<\/strong><\/span> operators.<\/p>\n