Anyone have one and is it survey quality data . Is it worth the money . Experiences .
Haven't purchased yet but I've evaluated it thoroughly. The data points are absolutely survey quality; the vertical accuracy in particular is amazing.
It has some limitations, several of which will probably be addressed in the very near future (INTERGEO is in two weeks and Trimble Dimensions is in 6). Where I found it particularly useful was on things like pumping stations and electrical substations. I did a pumping station with it - when the owner decided to change the design and requested additional data we didn't have to re-visit the site, we already had everything captured.
It's only really good at relatively short distances, the pixels start getting pretty large as you move out. I haven't gone much beyond 70' with it; depending on what you're trying to measure you could go a lot farther. For instance, transmission towers present a pretty well defined target even at much longer distances. But for fine detail you need to keep it short.
It can dramatically cut down your field time; for a substation I did I spent 5 minutes training a crew to go get 7 shots. For a pumping station I took it out and got 11 shots. The trick is to position the photo stations in such a way that you can see everything from at least two of them. It also helps to put out some targets in case the automatic adjustment fails and you have to do it manually.
Like anything, it's worth the money if you can figure out a way to make money with it. The cost is going to depend on whether you already run Trimble; if you don't already have a tablet, robot, or R10 receiver then you need to buy a lot more than just the V10. I would like to think that Trimble will open it up to work with the TSC3 and R6/R8 at some point.
If you have more specific questions I'll try to answer them.
I had the Trimble salesman around and got the pitch on these V10's. Wow is right. Everyone I tell about what I learned says "yes, but does it work?". So I'm asking anyone (in addition to Lee) with first hand knowledge - does it work half as well as advertised? What was the learning curve?
