I am seeking information on software for the Sokkia Set3030R3, that in the past would be operable via an RS232 cable to a computer. Given that most computers work with USB cables, is there some workaround in order to connect a Sokkia Set3030R3 to a computer with such a cable as well as software that appears to be available via the Sokkia site, but one needs to be registered with them to obtain this.
I am not using this total station for typical surveying, I am looking to use it for the setout and measurement of a sporting complex, its dimensions, contours and spot levels of different features, that possibly can be manipulated via Trimble Sketchup and Vectorworks.
Any information would be greatly appreciated.
With thanks
Ben
Have you looked into the purchase of a dedicated serial port? Desktop computers will have slots called the expansion bus. Notebook computers have a card bus. In either case you snap in a serial port adapter to make things work.
There is also something called a serial bridge, which is basically a wire with a serial port on one end and a USB on the other. I had occaison to try one of these and couldn't find on that work bi-directionally.
Historic boundaries and conservation efforts.
FWIW, I've had good luck connecting to legacy Trimble equipment using a USB-to-serial converter with the FTDI chipset.
I am seeking information on software for the Sokkia Set3030R3, that in the past would be operable via an RS232 cable to a computer. Given that most computers work with USB cables, is there some workaround in order to connect a Sokkia Set3030R3 to a computer with such a cable as well as software that appears to be available via the Sokkia site, but one needs to be registered with them to obtain this.
I am not using this total station for typical surveying, I am looking to use it for the setout and measurement of a sporting complex, its dimensions, contours and spot levels of different features, that possibly can be manipulated via Trimble Sketchup and Vectorworks.
Any information would be greatly appreciated.
With thanks
Ben
It should have a flash drive, you can copy SDR33 files to that and upload into memory and vice versa to share with your PC.
It should have a flash drive, you can copy SDR33 files to that and upload into memory and vice versa to share with your PC.
SDR33 predates USB
It should have a flash drive, you can copy SDR33 files to that and upload into memory and vice versa to share with your PC.
SDR33 predates USB
My bad, I should have made that clearer, the SET3030R3 has a compact flash card reader, so you can generate an SDR33 file using Sokkia Link, get a USB compact flash card reader, copy it to the flash card, then rename the file to have "CRD" as the file type, then read the flash card into memory on the total station. 64MB is the largest size flash card supported. Otherwise use a hardware serial to usb cable and use Sokkia Link to communicate with the total station.
We have three Gyro's with SET3130R3's with the compact flash card we can copy data between the instruments in the field and computers pretty fast.
The idea is with three gyro's we can do a gyro campaign to get our work done in less time. We only have one gyro at this stage the other two are still in the shop getting refurbished.
The cable USB cable for this turned up today, now to get it to work
@pfirmst When I looked at this before, I put in a flash card that was too big - 4Gb no wonder it came back with Çard Error! I had a look back through the specs, saying the largest card would be 128MB, put that in, that part of it seems to work, now to put some files on it and then the CRD side of things and see how that works via the card reader on my desktop. I just got the USB cable today, so issue until I can work that out. Wiil go down the CF card route. Thanks for your suggestions
@pfirmst Hi there, firstly thank you for your help. I tried using your sokkiaLink rar, that you provided, some sort of network error for that.
I went to Sokkia and got the downloads for this, but on attempting to install this, now called Spectrum Link, I received an error message saying that both
Microsoft XML Parser 4.0 Service Pack 2
and
Microsoft Visual C++ Secure Runtime 9.0 ( includes ATL and MFC) Service Pack 1
needed to be installed. Going to Microsoft and seeing a recent update for this, following the link it comes back as not now being available even though the update is dated October 2025. I am going to reach out to Sokkia and see what they have to say.
I was able to get the CF card side of things to work, with a 128MB card, and clear out all the old jobs still in memory by deletion.
With thanks
Ben