1) I saw a commercial this morning concerning the newest Samsung Phone and it stated that the phone was gonna have 1 Terabyte of memory so I began to wonder if that phone could be used as a data collector? Being a smart phone it is wifi, internet and hotspot capable.
2) And also, I have 2 regular tablets that I do not use and I was wondering instead of spending boatloads of money on the normal rugged use type of collectors if these tablets wouldcould work as a collector, maybe as a backup spare??ÿ Both are Wi-Fi, Internet and hotspot capable.
What say you?
Months ago someone that writes Android Apps stated he could do that if the demand was there.
In other words, show them the money and it will happen.
They were talking in megabucks.
I think Trimble Has a smart phone based application to do just that, with a subscription service of course.....
I don't think that the lack of DC apps is based on current storage capacities but rather, as others have said, on return on investment.?ÿ Most DCs don't have much more that a gig of storage.?ÿ Hell, my laptop only has 512 GB and my server has 2 TB.
I am sure to show my complete ignorance of some aspects of technology here but I was actually thinking more along the line of having one of the common programs say Leica Viva, Carlson SurvCE or SurvPC or Trimble on a SIMM card that could be moved to a different device as needed.
Can a program like Carlson SurvPC be loaded on a SIMM card and would it work on a phone such as the Samsung mentioned above or even a tablet purchased from Walmart for $200. That would sure break the stranglehold these manufacturers have over us with their $3000 data collector.
What say you?
No, you can't save Carlson SurCE to an sd card, and expect it to work in an Android. It will not load, invalid operating system. The entire program code needs to be rewritten and ported to another Operating system. This requires a lot time and testing. Same reason why you don't see a lot same software apps?ÿ for both iOS and Windows PC.?ÿ
Hi,
Running an application on Android is not the big issue which you can see for instance by checking out the Android application X-Pad from GeoMax.
This will run happily on most phones and tablets in the market today.
What everyone seems to forget is that we mostly use Bluetooth communications to talk to our equipment.
Now, this is where the problems could start with certain mobile phones and tablets because there could be (and will be) incompatibility issues between the 2 Bluetooth modules used in all the different kind of units.
Even if the Bluetooth modules are communicating okay, then the implementation of the Bluetooth divers could be buggy and implemented differently.
The reason why manufacturers stick to certain PDA's, Tablets, Handhelds is because they are tested and verified... and are tested again for every firmware/software release.
As soon as you go to the mobile phone platforms.. it is simply impossible to verify the software and firmware on all of them.
Another reason is that the mobile phone market is very dynamic and totally different from year to year and keeping up with this trend would require a massive amount of resources.
Support in general is more complicated.. because if communication problems arise, who do you call??ÿ
Do you call Samsung?
Or do you call your robotic total station supplier?
How is your dealer going to reproduce your problem? or your TS manufacturer?
Will you expect them to purchase the same phone as you have to try and solve your issue?
As you can see, it's not that simple "just" running an application on Android....
Another reason is that most manufacturers want to same application onboard the instrument.. and at the gun...
However, using the Android OS in your GNSS receiver or robotic total station is not really an option simply because Android is not a real-time operating system.
For sure, you might see this happening in the future.. but then it will only be handling the user-interface.. and there would be another OS running in the background. (More battery consumption.)
Anyway,.. exciting times ahead.. and for sure there will be more Android based applications coming out everywhere and shown at InterGeo this year.
Can't wait to have a look at them!
Greetz,
Floris
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