Leica - Complaints about Hardware and Software

STM,

First, I wanted to say that anyone with Leica gear is
fortunate to have someone with your background on this
site. I have noticed how you have always tried to
help out on any posts regarding Leica and helped get
them on track when they had a problem - not to mention
your experience as a tech support agent for Leica - that
translates into a definite plus for this site and I, for
one, want to thank you for the responses you take the time
to make.

It seems to me that what's going on is that you might have
someone migrating to Leica from conventional equipment to a
robotic and they were used to using a software that had all
the wrinkles ironed out long ago. I have used SMI for what
seems like forever. The beauty of SMI was that the creator
was 1) a surveyor 2) a math teacher 3) an all around nice guy
and 4) a Southerner = hands on mechanically gifted charisma?
that they seem to have down there. The manual that came with
the software started with the very basics - and then slowly
gave hands on examples that had you learning by doing (here you
see his teaching ability shining through.) It was a big manual
and you could sit down and go through the examples in manual mode
at the kitchen table before ever going out in the field and if you
got in trouble you called and more times than not the developer
was the one that took your call. Well, those "was the good ole days."
So, when someone complains it may be that they are comparing the
steep learning curve with what they had taken for granted in the past.

I think the Leica software has advanced from the earlier versions which
may have suffered from being written by really smart engineering type
people that were able to cover all the bases with kind of a flow chart
programming ability that was more difficult to implement in day to day
work in the field - especially if you were used to something like SMI.

Coady,

I 100% agree about software being written by surveyors. Stanley Trent at SMI is a great example of this situation. The guys at C and G are another great example of surveyors writing software for surveyors.

Anytime you change form one system to another... be it any vendor... there is a definite learning curve. Without support and training this can be a nightmare and you will loose allot of money and become quite frustrated.. If you are coming from another package to Leica ... especially when it comes to data flow from field to office or office to field you must know the details and all of the options. If Leica is falling short of this with direct support from dealers or from their organization then yes... Leica is hard.... but so would any other vendor. Leica has dozens of possibilities for data flow but maybe the flow of information to users is falling way short of what I think it is. Maybe this is the reason for some of the negative comments.

I appreciate you comments. Support and Service after the sale is paramount. Enough said on that point.

Once bitten, twice shy

>"Leica is too complicated"
You have to admit that for many year Lieca/Wild software had a very long learning curve, and Lieca Corporate had a very bad attitude about it (Zee softvare ist gut! You are zee dumbkopf!). The current Viva software has gone a long way to fix that, but you can't expect people to drop generational attitudes overnight. Surveyors are people with long memories.

>"It will not fix GPS under canopy".
Not my experience. The GS15 fixes very well in suboptimal conditions. But the old system 300 seemed to break every time we got it out of the closet. Again, you may be dealing with long held attitudes.

>"Leica sucks"
I like Lieca. I would buy it. The company I work for is buying it, replacing it's array of Topcons and Trimbles currently in stock. But I've had a negative experience that disturbs me. Maybe you can whisper in the right ear for me.

I'm a long time user of StarNet. So long that once upon a time Ron Sawyer called me to ask a question! Well, as you know, Ron sold out to Microsurvey, and Hexagon or Lieca or whatever bought Microsurvey. So now StarNet and Fieldgenius and Lieca are under the same corporate umbrella and should "talk" to each other, right? Wrong. Microsurvey can't get "the codes" from Lieca so that they can transfer covariance data from the reciever to the Fieldgenius raw data. And therefore it isn't in the StarNet data. They do have "the codes" from Trimble and from Topcon, no problem. Am I to marry my future to a company that is so back-a$$ed twisted that they can't talk to themselves?

I should stress here that during a previous marriage to Trimble/TDS I witnessed similar BS when Trimble bought out TDS. TDS employees actually denied - to my face - that there was a relationship. It took me 15 seconds to make their robot freeze up in the convention hall.

Surveythemark,

I have to wonder if you would be such a dedicated fan of Leica if you did not make your living from being a Leica dealer. It seems from some of your posts that it is hard for you to understand that maybe Leica gets so many negative comments because they deserve them? It seems from some of your posts that you don’t believe unsatisfied Leica customers that post their experiences on this site. It seems from some of your posts that you believe negative Leica comments have nothing to do with actual issues and that it is a brand loyalty or something unrelated to quality of equipment.

It would make sense to me that if you took an average of all the surveyors here, and all of their experiences and education that you would have a good average surveyor GPS customer to target as a manufacturer. If a company continually receives negative comments from its target user group than they probably should change something or risk a loss of business. You can only convince people of something through talk for so long.
I appreciate and respect you for helping people with Leica problems but I think you’re doing a disservice trying to make it sound like everyone that has a problem with Leica has other issues, and ” it’s not Leica fault”

Once bitten, twice shy

Norman Oklahoma,

First point made.... Yes up until System1200 Leica had great hardware but the data flow and the field software was usable if you struggled but overall you needed to hook up a data collector to it to make it really sing. So for the TPS1000 and before and the TPS1100 series you needed a data collector....

And this for the next post... is my direct knowledge because I cam up from a rodman and used allot of different equipment and work under allot of great party chiefs and surveyors.

So the hardware was good but the software was non-usable.

In the early days with GPS everyone had their own GPS software and no one ever complained about it.

Second point...

Yes the System300 will break because it stopped production in 1995... nothing last forever. Not trying to be smart@@@ about it but everything wears out

Third point...

It always comes down to price, sales presence, and steady work by the salesmen if a company is wanting to switch from what I have seen.

MicroSurvey did buy StarNEt before Hexagon ever bought MicroSurvey. The MicroSurvey guys are great and want to hold to the original format of StarNet but add some graphically bells and whistles. I understand about the extra cost for importers for each data type but Ron had the same thing set up. It would be nice just to buy StarNet and have all of the importers available but this would probably raise the price of the package. The people at MicroSurvey are great and might entertain this idea of including all of the importers.

Unfortunately I think that all three top vendors will buy everyone out and you will have only three flavors to choose form and then even so certain products will only work with certain software. This may be an unfortunate market trend for our profession.

Bear Bait,

I started in our profession in 1987... I worked from a rodman up to a PLS and yes my state requires that I have a 4 year degree to sit for the exam. So I worked up through the ranks and used allot of gear including Leica. I went to work for Leica in 2005 and left for family reasons to move back home in late 2011. I am a Leica dealer but I am a surveyor first and will let everyone know what is bad and what is good. I get very tired of my passion for the Leica products being brushed off by "You are just a Leica dealer". Nope.... If it does not met standards then it just does not meet standards and I will be the first to say it.

My only reason for this thread is that I would like to hear specifics about complaints.
The post are generic in that the just say basically "Leica is to hard" or "Leica sucks". No explanation or backup. I just want to hear specifics. Everyone had some form of brand loyalty in one way or another. Maybe some people only come down to pricing when it comes time to purchase even though the have to change data flow completely. I am not sure. You said if a company continually has negative response they should ask. Well... that is what I am doing.

Now on the last line "It's not Leica's fault". One of you post was raised all the way to Leica's President and he want to know what is the problem with your last Leica purchase. What went wrong and why is it that Leica needs to do to "make it right". I know most of the story behind it but if you will email me with a short timeline and what happened I will personally make sure it hits the correct channels. Will something happen??? I am not sure but we can try. I have no financial stakes in this matter... only your dealer in Alaska would have any financial gains. Please email me and I will talk to you on the phone and we can then draft some correspondence to Leica management to see if anything can be done. No BS. Let me know.

That is all we can do at this point.

I think the biggest complaint I hear is that Leica's software is not very intuitive and workflows are difficult to master. I also found that there were some overpriced and easily broken attachments on the early GPS gear. The actual GPS/Robotics gear has always been top-notch but some of the rod attachments etc were poorly designed and the software has always been less than user friendly...just my 2 cents, and to be fair, I havent demoed leica in 10 years.

Once bitten, twice shy

> Yes the System300 will break because it stopped production in 1995... nothing last forever. Not trying to be smart@@@ about it but everything wears out
My experience with the 300 ran from '97 to '00. It was fragile. You had to carry it around on a satin pillow.

> MicroSurvey did buy StarNEt before Hexagon ever bought MicroSurvey. The MicroSurvey guys are great and want to hold to the original format of StarNet but add some graphically bells and whistles. I understand about the extra cost for importers for each data type but Ron had the same thing set up. It would be nice just to buy StarNet and have all of the importers available but this would probably raise the price of the package. The people at MicroSurvey are great and might entertain this idea of including all of the importers.
I don't have problem buying importers. Why won't Lieca release "the codes" to a developer it owns? That's my issue.

Maybe Hexagon wants to bury StarNet and make us all buy LGO (at about quadruple the price of StarNet). This issue is really with FieldGenius. The covariance isn't getting to FieldGenius. Once it's in the FieldGenius raw file, it's simple text. Child's play to extract. So if Hexagon didn't buy Microsurvey to get hooks in FieldGenius, what did they buy it for?

> Unfortunately I think that all three top vendors will buy everyone out and you will have only three flavors to choose from...
Three is probably just enough. While on that subject, Topcon has a long history as "Slopcon", but the stuff Topcon is putting out now is far better than what it had a decade or two ago. Topcon salesmen are finding those perceptions are hard to break through, not least because Trimble and Lieca salesmen use powerful propaganda to reinforce the notion.

You have a great product to sell. So do the other guys.

I'd want to second Coady's comments, that your constant help on Leica issues is appreciated. I get to use Leica equipment, and am thankful for the quality.
I cursed the Viva system at first, but now realize it posesses a great deal of power and
it will take some time before I will utilize it to it's fullest potential.
Very powerful stuff.

I get very tired of my passion for the Leica products being brushed off by "You are just a Leica dealer". Nope.... If it does not met standards then it just does not meet standards and I will be the first to say it.

You have stated this as a response in previous posts. I am glad you are a surveyor, I too am a surveyor and have been doing this since 1980. I also get weary of my passion for surveying being marginalized because I make my living from it. I do however realize that this is how the world works, if you happen to find a place that money doesn’t have any effect on things than I would like to know about it.
I simply think you should state that you are dealer in every post that defends negative comments about Leica because I have a question in my mind if you would respond the way you do and as frequently about Leica products if you were not a Leica dealer? If this is the case than you truely do have a passion for Leica.

Now on the last line "It's not Leica's fault". One of you post was raised all the way to Leica's President and he want to know what is the problem with your last Leica purchase. What went wrong and why is it that Leica needs to do to "make it right". I know most of the story behind it but if you will email me with a short timeline and what happened I will personally make sure it hits the correct channels. Will something happen??? I am not sure but we can try.

I had to laugh at this typical Leica response, I have spent many hours trying to solve my Leica problems and I am done pursuing Leica about my equipment issues. My Leica product does not work as advertised. Leica acknowledges the problems and will not fix or replace. If the equipment were the only problem than I might understand but the real problem I found with Leica was the response to issues. That’s where the “Not Leica’s fault” reared its ugly head.
If you know my problems and Leica knows my problem than why do you ask me to repeat what I have been telling Leica for years. Consult Shannon Hickson if you need any info. Otherwise you call me if Leica intends to do anything, but like I said I’m done wasting my time trying to get Leica to stand behind their product.

I am sorry that my relaying my experiences with Leica bothers you so much, I am fairly confident that they have bothered me more though.

I have had very little experience with Leica equipment. I agree with the observation you made that there is a learning curve associated with whatever vendor is chosen, and migrating from one vendor to another would likely prove profitable only in the case where the products/software/support of the vendor you're moving to is far superior to the competition.

That said, I have a few impressions. I own a Disto D8. Great piece of hardware. Amazing functionality. The manual explains what can be done, and if I search the manual, usually I can figure it out. The problem is, I can't remember the keystrokes long enough to be able to repeat it in the field. And so, the functionality of the device is reduced to that of its lesser cousins, i.e. slope distance, etc. This goes to the comments about "intuitiveness" expressed by others.

I have been impressed by various white papers that I have read issued by Leica. I have an impression that Leica equipment meets or exceeds the specifications stated by its advertisements. I have an impression that Leica equipment is considerably more expensive than some of the competition, that it plays well within the Leica brand umbrella.

> I have an impression that Leica equipment is considerably more expensive than some of the competition

I don't think this is the case any longer. Leica seems to have shifted gears a couple of years ago, deciding to become more competitive on price. I expect it's related to the whole Hexagon thing.

> That said, I have a few impressions. I own a Disto D8. Great piece of hardware. Amazing functionality. The manual explains what can be done, and if I search the manual, usually I can figure it out. The problem is, I can't remember the keystrokes long enough to be able to repeat it in the field.

Yeah, I think that's a profound critique of much of what passes for software and operating system design these days. My gold standard consists of the products that Zeiss used to sell in the US which were logically designed to the point that a once-over in the manual was enough. I just don't see why any of the major instrument manufacturers turn the design of the user interface over to either the Rotary Club or the Cub Scouts. It may be a German (not a Swiss Miss) thing, but the Zeiss stuff just worked and didn't require endless navel gazing.

Once bitten, twice shy

> I don't have problem buying importers. Why won't Lieca release "the codes" to a developer it owns? That's my issue.

Yeah, that's exactly the reason I'd never buy Leica anything until they recognize that the rest of the universe uses other software and is, among other things, going to want to import data from their stuff into Star*Net and other capable programs for adjustment. The fact that Leica owns Star*Net, if indirectly, and doesn't support it is one major red flag. Life is short, why spend money with folks who can't get their act together?

I mean, software fixes have to be ridiculously cheap compared to the cost of developing hardware. So, if you spend the mountain of money getting the product to market, but haven't bothered to actually have the software interfaces (the means to import measurements into other software than your own proprietary efforts), why do you think you even merit a second glance? This stuff matters. Surveying 101.

Aren't your own multi-repeated "I am not brand bashing..." statements you have been posting regarding Trimble and Topcon in this forum similar to what you are complaining about in this thread? You are challenging others to demonstrate their problems with Leica, but......I have copied and pasted below some of the stuff you posted in a thread earlier in this forum. Reversing roles, my question is: Are you absolutely positive Trimble does not correct for this? Do you know the offset of the camera from the center of line of sight? Have you calculated the error at various ranges to determine if it is significant? Have you tried it on a Trimble to see if it is significant? I'd appreciate seeing your computations or your math for demonstrating what you said about Trimble. Please just post the ones that you did in ADVANCE of your thread posting below. I will have that much better sense of confidence in buying Leica if you can provide this information. Or instead you could send of your field measurements you took to demonstrate what you are saying. This stuff works both ways.

by surveythemark , Louisiana, Thursday, January 17, 2013, 12:44 (159 days ago) @ CSS
Both Leica and Trimble record orientation parameters for the images taken so that if you have a desire to do some terrestrial photogrammetry you will be able to do so. The implementation of imaging is great with any total station that has it. Imagining opens up more data possibilities and the interface adds allot when doing robotics. All of these benefits come with any brand.

- See more at: http://beerleg.com/index.php?mode=thread&id=187138#p187197

Zeiss -there are some of the best optics I have ever seen.

The on-board data collection system was numeric and had little software expansion ability.

Of course, if you attach a data collector, you get much more capability in the field.

I agree that the Viva software is hard to master and the menus are non-intuitive even with the favorite button. I have had the opportunity to train field crews in the use of the Trimble R8 using the TSC2 survey controller software now a TSC3 with access software and the Leica Viva receiver and controller for conventional RTK and RTN.

I recently wrote up a cheat sheet for both to connect to the Florida Permanent Reference Network (FPRN). The Leica cheat sheet was five pages the Trimble one page.

After initial setup both systems perform equally well in the field, however when switching between bases the Leica is cumbersome even though the FPRN is running the Leica Spider network. The same goes if the data connection is lost the crews have a harder time reconnecting with the Leica. I get way more help calls from crews using the Leica and they sit in the office more than the Trimble Units. We do use the Trimble units with the VRS-now as well as the FPRN. I have not setup the Leica unit to connect to the VRS-Now to compare yet.

We have older Topcon GTS series and newer Leica TS06’s total stations. The Leica's are very nice total stations the non-locking motions take a little getting used to we use TDS rangers but, I plan to setup the viva controllers soon.

The only complaints about the TS06 is that it takes two hands to operate because the horizontal and vertical motions are on opposite sides of the total station causing you to need two free hands to operate no holding a field book or a data collector. The Hz collimation and Vertical Index routines are difficult for the crews to understand and execute causing us to have several instances of bad zenith closures on multiple angle sets.

It also appears that the Viva controller does not support the DNA level which is unbelievable. The cameras on both controllers are ok they both will assign the media file to a point but, the Leica allows you to write on the picture the Trimble does not.

I agree that the manufactures are heading down the proprietary path maybe that’s why there are no second party iOS or Android applications to collect data. Trimble has stepped up and released a SDK for Access but any application developed will still need to run inside of the Access program.

Once bitten, twice shy

Kent and Norman,

I agree 100% with the inclusion of the Leica Data into StarNet... it makes sense. Maybe that will happen and now that you mention it it should happen. If StarNet is a now a MicroSurvey/Hexagon/Leica product they should want their data flow to be the easiest to import and work with at no extra fees. Maybe this has just not been considered in their planning but it should be.

Rambleon,

I should have specifically ask and name the thread... What are the Technical issues with Leica. Yes if it has been 1o years since you have seen it you would have seen only pre System1200 interfaces.

Thanks for the feedback.