Is this a good deal for a Trimble R8 VRS setup?

> Do you think this is legit and is a good deal?

Legit? Probably. A good deal? Hard to say until the auction closes. The current bid often bears little relation to the closing price, especially since the seller has set a reserve price.

If it's something you really want to acquire, determine what it's worth to you, bid accordingly and see how it comes out. As soon as you find yourself emotionally attached to the idea of winning a particular auction, you're treading on shaky business ground.

Well, new that setup probably costs about 24K.
I'd say it's a steal.

Actually I was wrong. I don't think this receiver has GLONASS only GPS, and the data collector is a previous model. So I don't know what it would be worth. It would probably be good for OPUS points, but don't know about RTK.

TSCe data collector: $0 value (but will do the job until its first serious problem)

The R8 unit itself should give a few more years of service.

I doubt the seller will sale for less than fair market value, somewhere around the reserve amount I would suspect.

Main problem with those units is a lack of service parts. TSCe is completely dead, you can't even get the blue caps anymore unless you find some dealers old stock. The R8 is hitting end of service life at the end of this month, after Sept. 1st no more parts will be available from Trimble.
You are probably better off investing a little more into some newer equipment that still has service parts available.

> Do you think this is legit and is a good deal? The seller said he would throw in the phone for connecting to the VRS also.

I'm not sure but I don't think you can load the latest versions of TSC on the TSCe controller, and without the latest updates you may have trouble hooking up to your local flavor of VRS.

Same with the receiver. Should work if you have the firmware updated, which will cost you if it hasn't been done lately.

We just spend $3000 repairing a R8 GNSS unit.

This whole deal is a freaking racket.

^^^ what Tommy said.

You can buy older units that still function for less than the price of a repair on a newer one. 4700 and 5800 units that don't have GNSS work just fine. If you can track 8 GPS sats that is really all you need for most applications including RTK. GNSS is way over-rated and actually causes some recievers to not fix when using a reference network. A trick I use with mine is to disable all GNSS sats to aquire a faster fix. I won't name the brand but it won't process all the data very well. Jim

sold for 5500. if you have other equipment to match, it may be a good deal for whomever bought it.
btw - I just signed up here today, found the site while searching for info regarding the differences between the R8 model 2 and 3. nice forum, and I like the format compared to the way the other survey forum has changed. have a good day folks.
Joe

Thanks, Joe! We're happy to have you here. 🙂

Just what we need......Another "joe Surveyor"

Joe Ferg