Hello,
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I bought a Focus 10 3" to upgrade my topcon GTS-4A. Now I am playing around with it and have a few questions.
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Does anyone have the English version of the Spectra CU? i found one in Russian that I translated but some of the instructions come back as utter gibberish (attached)
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Is there a common fix for the 2.4gz radio? the one i have shows no activity when given 12 volts. Or is there anyone who repairs them?
Is there a good way for me to ditch the geo radio and use the Parani? I know this is supposedly a Trimble 5603 painted blue but on my laptop, i have a new demo version of Survey Pro and i can not for the life of me get the gun connected over serial and get useful info out. any potential pointers there?
related to the above, if I can't get software for a Windows tablet what should i look into as far as a data collector goes? This is basically just a hobby for me where i map out my house and property for detailed documentation so as long as i can get some basic info into Autocad/civil3D it does not have to be that fancy. also stake out mode is a must
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That is a focus 30 manual in English. I'm not sure how similar the instruments are but this might help.
I am not familiar with this data collector, but based on the the PDF it appears to run off of the the old Geodimeter interface. Spectra Precision bought Geodimeter and Terramodel back around 2001. I hope that helps.
Made some progress on this.
As far as a datasheet goes no progress seems the Russian-translated one is my best option.
The geo radio's 12v to 5v regulator circuit was somehow messed up... parts shortages mean replacement parts cost $10 and $20 to ship for a single chip which I do not know if is the problem.
the power circuit is also exceedingly complex with enables and flip flops inverters ext ext. way over my head.
-- i simply removed the 12-5v regulator (no silk screen marking so the ic next to the large inductor on the back) soldered on a lead for 5v and powered the board up. still, no activity on the status led so I clipped the leg on the 3.3v/5v monitor chip which pulls the reset line of the atmega low until both 3.3 % 5v are above their respective threshold. I have not looked into this much and there's a chance that taking that ic out of the circuit could cause erratic behavior or brick the atmega.
I found a demo of carlson survpc 2.5 which did connect on the serial port but was rather laggy and did not implement any collimation routines. did record data thought but very finicky with the exact order of operations to get the station into remote mode.
radio mode seems to work better but i dont want to rely on
surveypro, on the other hand, has been great, the one absolutely agonizing and just terrible UI and general design is when connecting you are given the option to choose what com port your serial port is on but the prompt continuously says connecting on com1 which lead me to believe it was trying to connect to COM1 of the instrument odd but ive seen weirder. Nope. its actually just trying to connect on COM1 of the data collector. god knows why the drop-down menu says what your serial port does.... just changed my USB serial port to com1 and it connected right up.
Now apparently the internal battery expired in 2014... looks like it's time to do open heart surgery and solder in a new battery without losing 3.3v supply to the gun. That is if what everyone says about potentially bricking the unit is true if the batteries are removed.
-- Does anyone know if there is a way to reset the internal counter for when the battery expiration date is? From my reading it seems like it was internal software/hardware to Trimble and they do not service this unit anymore
"Does anyone know if there is a way to reset the internal counter for when the battery expiration date is? From my reading it seems like it was internal software/hardware to Trimble and they do not service this unit anymore."
Do *not* remove the battery. The unit will only be useful as a boat anchor. You seem handy with a soldering iron. Just know that you can bork the unit.
I believe Sieler in the USA still does it. If you are not afraid to fry it (read some of the comments on how to properly ground yourself, but I'm guessing you already know that), the video above shows you how to (basically) wire up a battery in parallel to keep the settings. It's for a different unit, but the concept remains the same.
If you are super handy, you can solder it so that in the future, you can supply the voltage while you replace the battery again. I think I saw one chap who cut in a voltage meter into the side of his TS, but I have long lost the saved pic. He said he always had the battery error, but he just looked at what the voltage was and changed when needed.
