Had a 5601. Old CU face plate. It was non robotic. Heavy but did what we needed. Used to triangulate obstructions and some geodetic traverses. Dumb box we needed everything recorded in a certain way to run through a program for computing 3d computations. No state plane or utm All wgs84 . Had some tight tolerances. Now they probably shoot reflector-less. Good. Piece of equipment. Prior to the service i used itd predecessor geodometer and spectra. The 606 and a couple others.
"I’d be happy to read some evidence about Topcon being lower quality…."
I'm basing my statements on first hand experience. The Topcon simply doesn't track as well as either the Trimble or the Leica. It's routines for finding the glass once lost are more cumbersome and take longer to acquire. And the Topcon does not maintain its collimation settings for more than a day or two, resulting in much larger splits when doubling angles, and less precise measurements when not. Unless you want to collimate daily.
Other than than those specific things the Topcon is OK, but those things are very fundamental. The price differences, big picture, are not so great that any additional money you might spend on Trimble or Leica cannot be recouped, many times over, through increased efficiency over the operating life.
At any point in your career have you used a Trimble or a Leica robot routinely, let's say for six months to a year?
Not that it matters much these days, particularly with a robot, but Leica glass is right up there with Swarovski. Look at the cost of Leica binoculars, rifle scopes, and spotting glasses. The optics market is incredibly competitive, you can't get $3.3K for a set of 10x42 binoculars based on name recognition.
you pay premium at Trimble and Leica to support their whole marketing department to let people buy all stuff they don’t need to start with.
Uh, I guess, if by "marketing" you mean "research and development" and by "stuff they don't need" you mean "stuff that quite a few people use very effectively"...
If you buy a superbike and ride it like a bicycle, it's going to seem like a bad deal.
If you buy a total station with lots of features, but insist on using Survey Basic and point staking, refuse to use the advanced coding and attribution features, forbid people from running GNSS and conventional in the same job, force your crews to turn off the IMU tilt functions ("I don't trust it"), neglect cloud transfer/management, and never touch the post-processing software in favor of CSV point dumps.......and still try to charge the same price you would when using a basic budget model, it's the same concept.
We're a decently sized firm, and despite a lot more bureaucracy and overhead in addition to paying for the "overpriced" gear, we make good money with it, using only a handful of the "stuff we don't need" features. As a community of practice lead and technical SME, I'm constantly pushing management to implement improved workflows, and even with what I perceive to be a slow rate of progress we do very well.
I'd get budget gear if I were starting out going solo, but as soon as I could afford it I'd go for the top-shelf solution. The clients would pay for that extra efficiency, and I'd make more money as a result.
I’m basing my statements on first hand experience. The Topcon simply doesn’t track as well as either the Trimble or the Leica. It’s routines for finding the glass once lost are more cumbersome and take longer to acquire. And the Topcon does not maintain its collimation settings for more than a day or two, resulting in much larger splits when doubling angles, and less precise measurements when not. Unless you want to collimate daily.
I've seen the same thing, albeit about ~8 years ago for the total station side. I've seen it on the GNSS side in the past 5-6 years. Worked with a government agency to set and observe targets for airborne LiDAR in some pretty gnarly terrain with lots of canopy. Open areas for targets were few and far between, had to chainsaw to get even halfway decent sky. Had late-model flagship Topcon receivers and they were choking when it came to processing time. Switched them out for flagship Trimble receivers, and tore through the job in no time, just due to the cleaner static data and better processing algorithms in the office. We eventually figured out that we probably could have cut the observation times by 20% and still gotten quality results.
Yeah, some of that high purchase price goes to R&D. I don't know why that is considered a negative. Maybe in the past, when theodolites and top-mount EDMs were the norm, before the digital revolution and the cloud and the remote sensing explosion, that argument might have made sense.
I have to agree with your first few statements. I've bashed Sokkia before because we got a brand new ix-503 and it had "ultrasonic" motor failure twice in 2 years. Tracking was terrible. I did some research and this was not an isolated issue. It got traded away to Trimble eventually. I did eventually start to like magnet field, especially on the Panasonic FZ-M1 that I used for another couple years after they with fieldgenius and the Leica TCRP1203+.
Now I have a tsc7 and Trimble has a lot more software glitches than magnet did, and batteries last just over half a day and the weight is a problem for a solo user trying to do layout. If you have only used Sokkia and Leica and then you get a Trimble and realize that it doesn't have a proper search function without using integrated mode to get reliable GPS search) it can be a big surprise that you have to use an extremely laggy joystick to get the robot pointed perfectly at you to acquire a lock.
There doesn't seem to be a great all in one solution, but if I had a magic wand I would have a Leica robot, run with a software that was a combination of magnet field and Trimble access, but without all the very odd behavior of access -( tab puts the cursor in the wrong spot, lag that affects the tab keys but not the numbers you start to type is infuriating, not warning you that the point name already exists if you're storing in staking, Trimble engineers that think that behavior is okay, etc) but I really like integrated mode in Trimble with the r12i.
Oh and reflectorless is actually garbage on Trimble. Luckily I got the Leica 1203 to work with access so if I need reflectorless shots I use that. It shoots the corner, instead of the house next door.
The Sokkia gun that Rock had problems with is not the norm. I have been using a Topxon GT1001 for several years with out a single failure. Now I work along side crews with Trimble and I can out perform them 2x in construction layout and asbuilt anchor bolts with double angles on ever shot. I see not problems with Topcon tracking. While the Trimble is slower and still tracks a reflective vets. Working construction where we may climb ten or twenty flights of stairs, I'd much rather have the Topcon GT1001 and FC6000, than any Trimble gear. Not only is there lighter, smaller and faster. The batteries on Trimble last half as long as Topcon controller and TS. Which equates to more weight with Trimble to work all day.
I would like to see a Trimble using active track on a vest. Or any other prism. I remember when the same was said about the old 5600 robots. Oh they chase taillights and anything but the prism. I went to a shootout with 3 manufacturers and gave each competitor a triple prism. And said talk can walk beside me all you want it ain’t locking to them. I had my little 360 turned on. Then when the s series came out with active tracking we did the same thing. In passive mode yes it can lock to something like all can . That was many years ago and they all have improved is my guess. I have used two topcon robots. On only two different occasions. One this past summer as I helped a buddy while back home in MS for the day. Was running the field genius or something. I thought the software itself was not bad easy to learn. Now the tracking or searching made me frustrated as dozers and loaders drove between me and gun. I had to learn to stay put until they passed instead of going to the next point. The other time was doing a layout and it was not fun as the gun was out of adjustment not the guns fault. We grabbed a topcon total station and did the rest as we were squaring up a building. I have not run a sokkia anything since the side 24 or 33 days and the old set 2 and 3 from 90’s. I had no issues back then with them except the end was slow compared to the wild I had ran. But man the technology and power in today’s equipment is unbelievable. I mean we can map stake comp just about anything on the fly very easily and see what we did on a screen vs my comfort zone of a pocket scale and graph paper and a calculator on hood of truck. Which I still do just to keep my brain working. I was a big fan of SMI Construction Vi and C&G. Still miss those. But what a world we live in now where I basically have more capabilities in a data collector as my first cog routine on a computer.
Lee, I'll give you that the Trimble is a load and uses a lot of battery. I wouldn't want to carry it far. Nevertheless, the active tracking simply cannot be beat.
As for Topcon, in the last several years I've used 2 PS103A's and a GT-503 regularly. Now I've got a Leica TS-16. The Leica acquires and tracks much, much better than any of the Topcons did.
River, the Trimble 5600's never tracked taillights or vests or anything other than the diode. That was both its selling point and its drawback.
Trimbles Active prism does track well, but not accurate enough for anchor bolts layout. So it is of no use to me.
Now that I will agree with. It is most definitely not meant for anchor bolts. It’s great for Topo and most construction staking. I would hate to use it for anchor bolts. I did once this year but I had no choice it was all I had. I used a 1 ft rod and steel tape. One of those jobs we got and didn’t have the equipment needed to do it correctly for sure. Thank goodness the contractor had some string so I set up batter boards and such. The last day I had to get the boss out so I could chain everything in and pull diagonals. That was one of those jobs a crew was sent on with no scope or knowhow. Crew chief thank goodness called me and asked for me to comp coordinates. I had not even known about the job. It was close enough to the house I jumped in my truck and headed to the site. Boss calls and said can u help. I was already on site. A building tying into an existing building. Crew chief had no experience doing layout like that his whole career everything has been pre computed . The contractor had already had it about right so I just set myself parallel with building and laid out the column lines and then squared them up to the existing building. We have another one coming up inside an existing building and I have already asked for a new prism. But the higher ups say we have what we have. I will probably have to go help set that one up as well because if you don’t have coordinates it can’t be staked is what I am told LOL. I need to find a roll of piano wire and build a few templates I guess.
That's what the semi-active tracking mode is for. It tracks you in active mode then switches to passive to take the measurement. Semi-active takes a bit longer to take the shot but I've never had it shoot anything but the MT-1000 prism.
We had good results using Geomax's Zoom90 and Zoom95 for the past 5 years. Leica quality and reliability at a lower price. No need to send them in for yearly servicing, just regularly site calibrate them. You can also choose the software you like ( survCE/PC, Fieldgenius or X-Pad) , all very intuitive and easy to use. They use Long Range Bluetooth handles that give you reliable connection to 300m(1000') when paired with the correct class 1 or class 1.5 Bluetooth DC. We have 3 of them used daily without issues.
If it was my money that is what I would buy. And a Panasonic FZ-M1 tablet to go with it.
I did use that for sure. I also made sure the prism was facing directly to gun on all shots as well. All I know we were pulling diagonals with steel tape me and my much older than I LS and where checking pretty well. Now it did take both of us a minute to get steady with the plumb bobs again. The old contractor saw us and asked if we needed more coffee as we were both a little shaky lol. I told him I felt like a squirrel shi!!ing persimmons :). I could most definitely tell I was out of practice. Once we got up to grade it was much easier for us. My LS said good grief it’s been a while. I said I know there was a time when I could tap a plumb bob and get steady pretty quickly but that thing kept dancing on me and I Lee both couldn’t get synchronized for measurements hollering good for a bit.
"And a Panasonic FZ-M1 tablet to go with it"
I have a Panasonic FZ-M1 F (mk2) Windows 10 pro, paired with Parani SD1000 on total station.
With the internal bluetooth module, range is about 15 m.
I made windows updates, change bluetooth drivers, with no luck.
What could I do more to achieve a better range ?
Thank you !
