I was asked to topo inside two new, large (16-22 million gallons) fuel tanks. It is noisy, hot, and dark. The first one had a "floating ceiling" that was suspended 6'-7' above our heads, but below the roof height of 40-50'. We were using a Trimble S6 with TSC3 data collector and a 360 degree prism. Everything worked fine and we collected over 300 shots.
The next day we go into the 22 million gallon tank using the same equipment and the same procedure. This tank did not have the floating ceiling. It is just one large, open structure with a few columns and a roof height of 40-50'. The data collector says "radio link down" and will not connect unless the data collector is 6 inches from the robot. The equipment works as soon as we take everything outside. Even if we leave the robot just outside the doorway and shoot inside, it will not work. I am guessing that the radio signal is bouncing off of the walls and ceiling and causing problems. Anyone have experience with this?
The floor in the tank is flexible enough that it does not allow someone to stand and operate the robot, or level without throwing the instrument out of level. It has reached the point where the contractor wants us to lay out the grid, and then shoot everything with a (cringe) rotary laser that he has on site.
Can you leave the DC at the gun and turn on time interval or distance interval recording?
Get a 3' X 3' piece of sheet metal and suspend it over the instrument. Use 2" X 2" 8' long lumber, replicate the other tank as far as the instrument thinks, should block radio signals bouncing right back to the gun especially is you suspend the sheet metal on a small slope. Give it test to see if it helps by hand holding the sheet over the gun, might help to ground it back to the tank. Other way would be to build a stable ring around the gun for an operator to work from, the contractor could probably help you with that.
jud
Can one guy use a cord from DC long enough to not disturb the instrument. Or is the gun so advanced it only radios?
I was going to suggest the same thing. With all the robots I've used, you can plug the DC right into the instrument and run in a "servo" or "autolock" mode, and not use the radios. Of course, that's a two man operation. So if this was intended to be solo, you might have to get another guy out there.
Does your S6 support a blue tooth connection from the DC to gun? I checked and some S6's have bluetooth onboard. I Perhaps you set it up in "autolock" mode and have the I-man stand away from the gun and store data via a bluetooth connection.
Believe you are having mutli-path interference. In the tank with the floating overhead it was minimized because the high overhead reflections did not happen and the remainder were bouncing around losing their intensity, with the high overhead you are probably getting direct reflections back into your radio's. Won't take much to experiment to find out if a shield will help, might take 2, one on each end of the radio circuit.
jud