I am wondering if there commercially exists a Digital Point Description Collector. Modern Data Collector is too complicated to learn for a high school grad.Β Dealing withΒ figure field codes, all the COGO routines, and all the inverse functionsΒ are not generally straightforward tasks for them.
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This idea comes up for a survey crew of 3 or 4. One instrument man, 2 rod men, and 1 recorder. This is the usual setup for a topo project in an area where peace/order/safetyΒ is a concern.Β The idea is to finish the work as fast as possible to greatly reduce survey crew's site exposure. Thus, 1 recorder is allocated for the job. His/her work is the good old days style of jotting down point descriptions in a paper notebook. Providing them the modern data collector does not actually help in this type of scenario. The learning curve is too long for them if not asymptotic.
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For this reason, I am interested for a simple Digital Point Description Collector. Its functionality is just for the notes. Is this commecrcially available? Any ideas?
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Thank you.
Replies
Mmmm I would do this if there is a long description on each point:
Record the description in any digital sound recorder (you know first the point code name, number, then the description) and try a decoder sofware that works transforming the voice into text.
You will get something like a text indexed archive, for example if you say:
point 12 comma corner 44 description blue house north east
point 13 comma top 3 description grass north
sounds like military but if you look carefully that can be transformed into text and then:
12,corner44,blue house north east
13,top3,grass north
take this to excel and you got a database linked with your total station data by number or name.
Try wave to text or voice to text, I have used one of those time ago but canΒ΄t remember which was.
It worked for simple text inside my office, you should try outside with background noise, traffic etc.
Good luck
What I am really interested in is a data collection system for non-techy or non-engineers. Learning the complexities of modern data collection system is too much for them. For this reason, I am wondering if there commercially exists a data recorder that simply records point description.
As a minor alternative: program some other mobile device (palm, ipod, etc) in case that is cheaper or easier than using a mobile phone. Or even use a pocket calculator.
In the early days of data loggers, some programmable calculators were cheaper than data loggers, so were used instead.