We recently purchased a new GR-5 base/rover system. I have only been able to get about 6 hrs or so of battery life out of the system before it has to be recharged. The batteries have been tested and the chargers and batteries seem to be fine. I have been told that I need to change the logging data rate to 2 seconds instead of 1 to get the recommended time of 10-12 hours of use for the system. The reason I have been given is that the new narrowbanding radio requirements of the FCC causes the time to be cut in half by using the 1 second logging data rate instead of 2 second. This does not make sense to me so I thought I would see if others using this system have had the same issues and resolved it the same way or a different way. I am running SURVCE on the data collector. Thanks for any input.
Unless you're doing something that requires a 1 or 2 second epoch rate, change it to 15 or even 30 seconds, but at least 15. That should help quite a bit.
Not constructive input, but I hope someone more electronically inclined provides an answer.
If I correctly read your post the battery life is shortened due to the logging rate for static observations. I do not see how the logging rate should affect the battery charge that much. I do have to change my logging rate to 2 seconds in order to get a full day of observations due to memory constraints, but have never noticed a power issue (Topcon Hiper Lite system).
Don't get me started on Topcon, argh! Our FC200 (slow pos and slower since the dealer upgraded it to topsurv 8 without asking us) just decided to stop loading topsurv yesterday. Thank Gawd I got Friday's very critical work done before that happened. I'm going to make the dealer fix the stupid thing. We have had a lot of trouble with Topcon GPS lately. Their total stations seem to be trouble free though.
They are really slow to fix rtk too. I do very little rtk but when I do I like it to work like Trimble does.
I had one shot to get yesterday so I did a static observation.
The old TSC1 and 4800 combination was great, nearly bullet proof.
David,
I realize that if I am doing static observations that I need to change the input to at least 15 and we usually use 30 second rates. However, the challenge that I am having is just doing RTK work and not logging any data at all while doing so. It just seems to me that a new system should get a longer use during the day than 6 hours. Are you saying that changing the rate will also help my battery life while doing RTK? That is what I am trying to figure out. Thanks.
Yea, I am with others. I do not see how the logging rate would effect anything but how much data you store. It draws no more (or less) power to log at 1 sec than at 15. I guess you could test it and see. I have been proven stupid more than once but this one doesn't make sense to me. Six hours isn't too bad though. Maybe they consider that a "day" in Topcon land?
Hope you figure it out.
Jon,
We have used Hiper Lite and Pro systems for many years and the only reason for changing the logging rate is, as you said, memory constraints. I just feel that we are not getting a proper answer regarding the battery life challenge and wanted to see if others have had the same problems.
We use GR 5's ... and just add an external battery to our base set up and it will go 12 hours plus no prob. I doubt logging rate effects power usage but we do static observations with 10 second intervals. It's not important on the 5 because it has heaps of memory but does come into play on Hiper + or GA.
> We use GR 5's ... and just add an external battery to our base set up and it will go 12 hours plus no prob. I doubt logging rate effects power usage but we do static observations with 10 second intervals. It's not important on the 5 because it has heaps of memory but does come into play on Hiper + or GA.
We use GR3's,but same idea, and same solution. And the base batteries actually charge, then we swap them with rover as needed.
Plus, I find that having plenty of power at the base makes a lot of those minor problems with RTK go away.
I believe you can change radio output power up to a watt as well. And backing it off to 250 mw will save you some battery power... But I would personally prefer cranking it all the way up and hooking it up to an illegal 5000 watt linear amplifier so it can scream its corrections across half of the United States so I don't have to move the base around as much.
Thank you, Daryl!
A few months ago, I was in the market for some new receivers. I was looking at some Hyper II's and Hyper V's. Daryl, you replied to a post of mine, basically saying that the Hypers had a hard time keeping up with the GR-5's in regards to hostile environs. You said they tended to fail structurally after repeated abuse from the cold and brush-bucking. I ended up getting 2 new GR-5's and I would like to thank you for nudging me in the right direction. These things are rugged to say the least.
Regarding battery life: I run them without an external radio at the base most of the time. I run them collecting at 5 sec. intervals always. I get about 6-7 hours out of the batteries at the base and a couple of hours to spare at the rover. If I run them using the external radio (ADL Vantage PRO) broadcasting a 8 watts (8 watts goes as far as I want to go without cooking the radio or using up too much battery), I'll get at least 8-10 hours out of the base.
Perhaps changing the rate at which the correction is sent from the base to rover needs to be changed from 1 second to 2 seconds.
That would be a correction every 2 seconds, not 2 corrections a second.