We are a smallish firm that doesn't move to quickly with the newest technology. We want to upgrade our instruments from the 1200 series to the TS16, but have been told by Leica salesman that the TS16 won't support the TDS Rangers that we use currently (we use the TS15 and 1200 series with the TDS Ranger...no problem).
Our data collector supplier is vague and unsure if the 2 will "talk"...here is his email "I've been down this road with Trimble / SPNA in the past; they say they don't know, but you can try the TPS driver that is is in Survey Pro. They don't offer much in the way of support to the Leica total station models. It's very possible that the generic Leica TPS driver will work fine but may not offer all feature support."
So I'm hoping someone else has gone down this road and can tell either definitively yes or no?!?!?
Thanks for the help!
Brian
The last time I tried running a newer Leica gun with a Trimble collector it would work but it was far from seamless. Your data collector provider said pretty much the exact same thing I would have - you'll probably be able to get it to work, but you probably won't get 100% support. As far as I know, Trimble / TDS only supports the old GRI (GSI? Whatever it was) data format.So commands like zero set may or may not work.
The Leica salesman is going to tell you it won't work because 1) he doesn't care if it works, 2) he wants to get you into a Leica data collector, and 3) he doesn't want to deal with it. My best advice is to tell him to bring over a TS16 and help you get it going... that is, if he wants to sell you an instrument. Even if you have no intention of buying anything but Leica, he doesn't need to know that.
Leica would be my preference for a non-robotic instrument, but we're all Trimble so I don't ever see that happening.
Lee D,
Thanks for the response. Makes good sense. Was hoping not to be a guinea pig and hoping someone out there has actually gone down this road, but I think if no one has figured this out yet with these specific instrument/data collector configurations the best we can do (as you suggest) is to get the Leica guy down here and try to connect the 2 and if he really wants to sell me an instrument he'll help us figure it out...and yeah we're sorta a Leica only company...at least for now.
Thanks for the feedback...
I think a lot of times it isn't so much that a sales-guy wants to sell you something else, that they're lazy or that they just don't care. If you have a solid relationship with a vendor, they may just know that regardless of it working or not, it may not be a good solution to keep you productive in the field. I would consider it a favor in all honesty.
As a Leica and a Spectra dealer, I have been unable to make the combination work and I have spent a considerable amount of time on it. The older TS15's we have gotten to work as long as the TS15 was equipped with a Geocom code from Leica that allowed it to be used with a third party software. Even then, the only communication that we were able to pair was a data cable, making it more of an Auto-tracking instrument in place of a complete Robotic setup. Again, less productive.
If you are looking to stay within that "3rd party" software realm you may want to consider Carlson SurvCE on the Surveyor 2. It's not Survey Pro but it drives similar and our customers generally have a very small learning curve to jump over.
cwlawley, post: 377114, member: 3114 wrote: As a Leica and a Spectra dealer, I have been unable to make the combination work
There's the answer. As a Leica and a Spectra dealer you're uniquely qualified to comment on this. I didn't mean to paint all vendors with a broad brush; my comments were based on the "the Leica guy said it won't work" comment in the original post. When I was selling and supporting Leica, I'd have taken a gun out there and tried my best to get it to work; if it was a no-go in the end, I'd have to hope that his loyalty to my hardware outweighed his loyalty to Survey Pro.
Edit - And by all means, hopefully be able to suggest a good alternative.
