Javad

It's probably best to speak with someone, Drill. I believe the Javad receivers do perform better in harsh environments. I use RTK in places I never thought RTK would go and do so without much hesitation.

Javad does have receivers that work in a traditional receiver head/ data collector configuration. The Triumph-1M would be the top shelf receiver for this (it has the same receiver board as the flagship Triumph-LS).

If you go with the Triumph-1M, then the workflow will largely be dictated by your choice of data collector. Most commonly this is Carlson.

I would recommend that you do not dismiss the all-in-one Triumph-LS without at least some consideration. It poses some significant advantages over the separate DC/Receiver configuration. There are several methods that can be employed to work the Triumph-LS in a mobile scenario - external antenna, external receiver, external controller (using a tablet or smartphone to mirror the LS screen).

The ability to work in really bad places is due to three things:
1. Great hardware. The Triumph-1M and Triumph-LS have 864 channel receivers. Each L1 signal is assigned five channels. It's like having five ears listening to the same faint whisper in a noisy room. The signals are combined to come up with a better signal than anyone one channel would provide on it's own. It also assigns 100 channels to listening to everything but GNSS signals to remove in band interference (improving signal reception). And it has six processing engines working with the same data in different ways to resolve the integer ambiguities (get a fix).
2. Great firmware. The development team continues to make improvements to the receiver's firmware to improve tracking and processing. Firmware updates are free for life.
3. Great software. I like the Triumph-1M, but without the J-Field software you really miss out a significant reason that we can work where few, if any, can - verification. Every good surveyor working with RTK in canopy knows to take a shot, get a new fix and shoot the point again. This is either done by stake out or by collecting a second point and inversing. If the two don't agree, you get a third. If the three don't agree you may try again or give up in futility. Each time you have to manually perform some operation to see if the second agreed with the first. Javad's software does all of this in front of you, automatically. It's an incredibly fast process that you simply watch. The fix is obtained, a coordinate stored and a "bucket" is created. The fix is then intentionally lost and regained. The coordinate from the new fix is stored and compared to the first bucket. If the new coordinate fits in the bucket agree, then the bucket grows by 1. This continues until the bucket reaches the user specified number of independent fixes (I usually have mine set to 10 or 20). If a coordinate falls outside the bucket then a new bucket is produced. The software continues the process until one of the buckets reaches the desired number of fixes. Once the number of fixes have been met, the receiver is left to average a position. The coordinates are continually compared to the winning bucket, allowed to be averaged into the position if they are in spec, rejected if not. If too many epochs are rejected, the process starts again from the beginning. At the conclusion of the shot, the receiver resets the engines one last time. A new fix is obtained and the coordinates from this last fix are compared to the bucket. If the last fix agrees with the bucket, the point passes and you are presented with an accept or reject. All of this is done in front of you, automatically. By the time you store the point, you may have 15-30 independent fixes that the software obtained on its own. Finally, while all of this is taking place, raw data is stored that you can post-process directly in the receiver (after the base is downloaded) for added verification. To my knowledge NO ONE has this. And it's all free.

With the all-in-one, stake out using the internal compass gives you ahead/back and left/right directions to a target point. It's just like staking from a total station. You don't need to know where North is to get to your target. You can also turn the receiver and watch the arrow display until it indicates you are pointed at the target and take off.

The software isn't like anyone else's, so there is a bit of a learning curve. But I think for those who are committed to becoming efficient, it's not a bad ride.

With the Triumph-1M, working in a conventional setup, you still get the really great hardware and firmware, which will provide performance gains over a lot of others (I can't say "all" because I haven't compared it to all) in a familiar traditional form factor. But you miss out on the software.

Feel free to message me and we can talk more.

Check out Javad Forum, users post pictures and feedback every day. JAVADGNSS.COM scroll down to forums.

OMG wait till Nate sees this.....

Drilldo,

I would need to know the style of your company, and the data collector and office software you are using before I recommend the LS. Contact one of the Javad team members for a chat.

The Javad T1M is an incredible receiver, it is just that the Javad LS is more capable due to the integration.

In my opinion, Javad has built the best GPS for use in harsh environments.

3 things.

1.) Confidence (reliable data)
2.) Inovation (many new ideas, and methods, un-thought of, thus far, including mechanism to weed out bad initilizations)
3.) listens to their customers ideas, and suggestions.

Here is something I used just the other day.
Survey Points (field gps shots) and Design Points, (office derived computed points) are kept in separate piles.
You can delete ALL design points, with a few steps.
Then, you can reload the whole file, and tell it SKIP existing points. This is super handy.
You don't have to keep track of which points in the office file were modified.
No fretting about keeping up with which points got modified.
I'm amazed every time, I get it in the field, and use it.

I am vey impressed with the Javad LS. I agree with Nate, confidence is at the top of my list of what I like about it. Service is awesome and help is always just a call away. I couldn't be happier with it.

I am not sure where you are located but any number of the 5PLS team would be more than happy to give you a demonstration if the drive is within reason.

Thanks for the detailed replies.

Quite simply all we use RTK for is staking out points for geological testing. I build predesigned grids in the office and we stake them out on the ground, surveying the elevations as we go. Elevations are very important to us which is the only reason we use RTK. If it wasn't for the elevation a GIS grade GPS would likely work for us.

Many times a bulldozer cuts a path through the woods for us and we have to survey our points on this path and there is a ton of canopy left which makes getting a fixed solution difficult. Sometimes we have to sit in a spot for 15+ minutes waiting on initializing.

Our accuracy tolerance is very loose compared to what most you guys work with with. We are more than happy with sub-foot and sub-meter probably wouldn't be the end of the world.

One type of work we do has a tighter toloerance maybe 4" and we use a rover rod for it but the bulk of our surveying is done with the receiver mounted on a vehicle of some sort.

The R8's work good for us in most places except for the heavy trees. It only takes us about 2 minutes to do what we need to do at each location and when we are waiting fifteen minutes on a GPS fix it becomes a huge bottleneck. A normal day we stake out 2-300 points.

We are located in the Texas panhandle, but most the tough tree areas we encounter are either in Oklahoma or SE Texas.

We are currently using TSC-2's with survey controller 12.49 I think and for office software I have TBC but don't really use it. All I do is generate CSV files of my stake points, load them into the data collector, stake them out, and export an as staked CSV. I view all this data in something similar to ArcView.

What version R8 are you using? We recently purchased an R10 base/rover set up after a 8 year hiatus of being away from everyday surveying. I've been more than pleased with its ability to give us good repeatable data in the heavy canopy of the piney woods of east Texas. I've never waited 15 minutes for a fix and I've only had 2 occasions where I didn't get good shots and came back later, or broke out the gun. I bought it used at really fair price in my opinion. For what you are doing you might consider using a 12-15 ft rover pole, to get that receiver up higher.
The Javad guys are coming out with some really interesting concepts but i knew after looking at how dissorganized their ads were in trade magazines I didn't even want to attempt to learn their workflow on their software so I didn't research them very long

We are using the R8 model 2's with Glonass.

The extendable poles might work but most the time we are in the trees is when we are using vehicle mounted receivers.

The stuff we do with traditional rover rod is out in the desert. No problems there.

Nate The Surveyor, post: 401096, member: 291 wrote: Here is something I used just the other day.
Survey Points (field gps shots) and Design Points, (office derived computed points) are kept in separate piles.
You can delete ALL design points, with a few steps.
Then, you can reload the whole file, and tell it SKIP existing points. This is super handy.
You don't have to keep track of which points in the office file were modified.
No fretting about keeping up with which points got modified.
I'm amazed every time, I get it in the field, and use it.

How often do you run into a shot in the woods that you just can't get with the LS?

Well Mr. Plumb Bill,
The answer to your question is not quite so direct.
I got one last wk, that i could not physically occupy, with the LS. I wound up doing a 3 way resection, by distance. (the LS has that built in) complete with residuals.
Later, I got one that I considered impossible, although I was able to place the LS on it, plumb. I set it up, and walked away, to dig out more old corners. I returned about 48 minutes later, and told it to store what it had, even though it did not fully verify. I restarted it, and dug out another corner, buried in a tree root. 15 min later, I stored what it had, even though it too was giving me a low confidence reading.
I got home, and post processed it.
Rtk, and post processed agreed by 0.01'.
1st shot, post processed, and 2nd shot post processed also agreed by 0.015'.
This is all from memory... But it's very close. I can post screen shots later. I could. Not believe it myself.

The Javad message board that Adam mentioned above has a thread about Where have you been with your Triumph LS. Lots of pictures from users and stories about where users have pushed the LS.

There are places RTK won't work or is not as efficient as other technologies, but even here in East Texas, I'm doing well in excess of 80% with RTK. I think it's been a little more than a month since I used my total station.

Here ya go!
https://support.javad.com/index.php?threads/post-pics-of-difficult-shots.1643/
Also, my long shot above, 48 minutes, is just a recent story. Nobody in their right mind, would even try a shot there. I needed to dig out pins, and might as well "try it and see".
It did not lie to me. That's the point.

Unfortunately it appears that one can't see any of those photos without registering as a user. I do hope they approve me. :innocent: