Activity Feed › Discussion Forums › Strictly Surveying › Security of Robot or GPS Base Station?
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Jim Frame, post: 418033, member: 10 wrote: My alarms arrived from China today. The first glitch I encountered involves the main battery case: it’s barely big enough to accept a standard 9v battery. It’s a friction fit, and I was afraid that if I inserted the battery connector-first I wouldn’t be able to get it out again. But putting it in connector-last wouldn’t work, as there was no room for the wires to fit next to the battery. A little work with a utility knife solved the latter problem, but it’s still a very tight fit. This can only be described as a design flaw, as there’s no reason they couldn’t have made the battery compartment a mm larger in both directions.
The battery door is too tight as well. Force it in as-is and you’ll be taking it out in pieces when you need to change the battery. Once again, a little work with a knife shaved off just enough from the rails to allow a snug but reversible fit. Another annoyingly unnecessary design flaw.
Problem 3: the remote appears to require an A23 battery. At first I thought it was sized for an N cell, and I haven’t had any of those around since I retired my HP-41CX about 20 years ago. But when I measured the holder I realized that an N wouldn’t fit, and a quick search online turned up the A23 as the likely solution. There’s no documentation pertaining to the remote battery — there’s almost no documentation at all — but the size looks about right, and the A23 appears to be common in remotes. The A23 puts out 12v, so for testing I used a 12v battery pack with some jumper wires.
The default sensitivity is way too high to be useful; just touching the alarm unit with my finger set it off. The sensitivity is described as a adjustable (high, medium or low), but there are no instructions for accomplishing the adjustment. There’s also reference to a 4-digit unlock code, but again no instructions on how to implement that. It looks like a trip to the store for an A23 and some more fooling around is required.
It *is* loud, though. The sound might not stand out on a noisy construction site, but just about anywhere else it’s going to attract attention. And the price is too low not to justify experimentation.
Yes I remember now the tight fit battery issue. Mine was the A, B, C button type, with no remote and to change the sensitivity you held down button C until it chirped: 1=high, 2=mid, 3=low sensitivity. So with the remote version it may be the case of holding down one of the two buttons.
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Jim Frame, post: 418033, member: 10 wrote: the remote appears to require an A23 battery. At first I thought it was sized for an N cell, and I haven’t had any of those around since I retired my HP-41CX about 20 years ago. But when I measured the holder I realized that an N wouldn’t fit, and a quick search online turned up the A23 as the likely solution. There’s no documentation pertaining to the remote battery — there’s almost no documentation at all — but the size looks about right, and the A23 appears to be common in remotes. The A23 puts out 12v, so for testing I used a 12v battery pack with some jumper wires.
I just had to replace the battery in my garage door opener, it is an A23 also, commonly available everywhere it seems once I went on the hunt.
SHG
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I worked for a company in Phoenix years ago that had a base station stolen, the insurance rep that came out
to investigate the theft had a piece of very useful info. the insurance industry had done a study on thefts of total stations
and GPS base stations, the rep informed us of a statistic of all the equipment thefts that has stuck in my head since, and that is if a piece
of equipment is less than 150-200 ft of the roadway you have a better than 80% chance of having it stolen, anything more than that
thieves are too lazy to hike out to get it. Now obviously we live in a evil world and any theft can happen at any time anywhere so we
need to be smart on where that equipment is placed. Locks/cables and horns or bells and whistles can only help deter theft. I also
place a large florescent sign that they can read if they approached the equipment that says “SMILE YOU ARE ON HIDDEN CAMERA”,
its only another deterrent but nobody likes to be on YouTube as a thief. -
JMS66, post: 418421, member: 1425 wrote: Locks/cables and horns or bells and whistles can only help deter theft. I also
place a large florescent sign that they can read if they approached the equipment that says “SMILE YOU ARE ON HIDDEN CAMERA”,
its only another deterrent but nobody likes to be on YouTube as a thief.Here’s our sign (English, Fijian and Hindi):
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JMS66, post: 418421, member: 1425 wrote: ….if a piece of equipment is less than 150-200 ft of the roadway you have a better than 80% chance of having it stolen…
Do you perhaps mean that 80% of thefts are from within 150-200 feet of a road?
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Jim Frame, post: 418033, member: 10 wrote: The sensitivity is described as a adjustable (high, medium or low), but there are no instructions for accomplishing the adjustment.
I got a definitive answer from the seller today: the sensitivity is *not* adjustable on the remote control model. That makes it pretty much worthless to me.
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Mark Mayer, post: 418424, member: 424 wrote: Do you perhaps mean that 80% of thefts are from within 150-200 feet of a road?
From cases I have known, I would say 80% of thefts are within 50′ of a road. Most being curbside grabs, with the one man crew on the other side of the parking lot. You can only run so fast.
In a fair number of cases the instrument is damaged in their haste, usually in the first fast trip down the road without a case to put it in.
Paul in PA
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Larry, never mind that, where did you catch that chromer and what did it take?
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http://www.spytecinc.com/gl-200-real-time-gps-tracker.html
Cost is reasonable if you are in a high risk area.
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My former coworkers at the county had a Leica robot walk off last week. I dont know all the details, but they took the instrument off the tripod and boxed it.
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Daniel Ralph, post: 415644, member: 8817 wrote:
That hanging from the tripod should do the trick.Not funny. The frivolous or false use of the radiation symbol in the US, especially on Federal lands or facilities, and OSHA controlled worksites is “highly frowned upon”). The NRC regulations do not have a specific prohibition against the inappropriate or frivolous use of the radiation symbol/sign, but such misuse is generally discouraged by regulating groups and licensees. Long ago I had a t-shirt confiscated by security at an airport (PSC) because of the radiation symbol silkscreened on it, with the caption “Hanford Worker: In case of power failure stand by me, I glow in the dark.”
In Canada, it’s flat out illegal: “23 No person shall post or keep posted a sign that indicates the presence of radiation, a nuclear substance or prescribed equipment at a place where the radiation, nuclear substance or prescribed equipment indicated on the sign is not present.”
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I use a GPS Network Rover when possible. When I need to use a GPS Base in a sketchy place, I’ll place the base on a magnetic mount on the top middle of my pickup cab. Can’t drive the pickup while using the base, but at least it is pretty safe.
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Gary Hickman, post: 420643, member: 8049 wrote: When I need to use a GPS Base in a sketchy place, I’ll place the base on a magnetic mount on the top middle of my pickup cab. Can’t drive the pickup while using the base, but at least it is pretty safe.
I’ll go along with the “pretty safe” description. I used to think my truck cab was *really* safe, until reading about a colleague in a city a couple of counties over who parked in a shopping center lot for a few minutes only to return to find the side window smashed and his equipment gone.
I keep most of my gear in Weatherguard tool boxes, but I usually carry my data collector on the front seat because the Pelican case is too big to fit in the tool box conveniently. But ever since reading about that smash-and-grab I use a cable looped through the seat frame and padlocked to the Pelican case. The lock and cable are readily visible through the window, so I’m hopeful that the extra layer of protection will keep the window from getting smashed in the first place.
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Daniel Ralph, post: 415644, member: 8817 wrote:
That hanging from the tripod should do the trick.Yeah, we used to do this all the time for city traverses. Most people seem to instinctively skirt around tripods anyway because they don’t know what they are; the radioactive sign adds a hint of danger. Nuclear densometers have the same effect.
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Throw this out to you guys. I have since October been using and testing the Blink security cams. I have 5 at my house, 4 at my hangar, and 5 at my remote cabin. They are small and don’t look like cameras. Take high definition great video on a motion detection, and send a text to you with the video clip real fast (depending on service, within 5 seconds). You do need an internet connection, but use a MiFi box is what I do at my cabin which has 4GLTE cell service. They are cheap and no follow on fees. You can set up a special ringtone on your phone for the incoming if you get a lot of texts. These things work great! They now have a fully waterproof one with night infared.
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At my old company we used to use a pair cinder blocks and length of chain, with idea to would be a hassle run down the street with it. If we were really concerned we’d hire the boss’s deadbeat son to sit in the truck all day.
Of course guess who broke in the equipment room 2 years later and cleaned us out….. Got it all back though; the damn fool only went 2 towns over to pawn it.
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