Not sure if anyone has run into this but I've noticed that on my Leica TS 16, when the tracking is enabled, that the cross hairs frequently do not hit the center of the 360 prism even though the gun says it is locked to target. The distance from the center is never consistent and never in the same direction, It seems completely random. Has anyone else run into this and do you think its cause for alarm??ÿ
With the 1200 and MS series (I suspect it's the same with the TS 16) the gun doesn't bother centering the cross hairs - it simply calculates the angular difference to the center of the prism based on imaging and applies it on the fly. It's way faster than trying to do it mechanically and reduces the amount of energy consumed in tracking as well as reducing the requirements for the servo capabilities - it's good - test it out.
No alarm required.
Thanks for the response. Do you know of any published literature that I can find more information on this by chance??ÿ
Yes.
From https://globalsurvey.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ATRplus_WP.pdf
ATRplus is based on Leica Geosystems?? existing ATR (Stempfhuber and Kirschner, 2008) . The emitting part of ATRplus consists of a laser source that emits an infrared laser beam (IR) coaxially, with a divergence of 1.5 gon through the telescope. When the laser beam hits a prism, the beam reflect s back into the telescope. A beam splitter, which is located in the optical axis of the telescope, decouples the beam from the optical path and guides the light through an IR band pass filter onto the CMOS sensor. On the CMOS sensor, the reflected laser beam appears as a light spot. Different algorithms evaluate the image data, identify the prism spot, and calculate the pixel coordinates of the spot centre with sub pixel accuracy . With these pixel coordinates, ATRplus calculates the deviations of the spot centre from the centre of the optical axis. Combining the deviations with the angular and inclination sensor values, the final horizontal direction and vertical angle are calculated.
BLJ,
This is normal.?ÿ It really freaked me out when I first saw this on the TCA1800 back in the 1990s.?ÿ It took a lot of testing to convince myself that it was correct.?ÿ I still see it on the MS50.?ÿ AS JK pointed out, the TS does not have to be pointed directly at the target for the ATR to give the correct angles since the CMOS corrects for the offset.?ÿ You can minimize the offset you see as part of the standard field calibrations you should be doing routinely.?ÿ
Also, try to keep the same side of the 360 prism pointed at the gun every time for more consistent distance readings.
