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Total Open Station on the OpenMoko FreeRunner

Wed, 2008-06-11 09:26 — steko

Joseph Reeves has showed us something that wasn't even planned when we started the Total Open Station project.

He had our “helper” application running on the OpenMoko FreeRunner. A few words from his blog post are enough to get the (beatiful) idea:

The FreeRunner has a USB host port; you simply plug your phone into the Total Station, download the data and send it over the mobile network to our survey database in the office.

And if you don't feel like using a smart phone because it's too small, just replace FreeRunner with Asus EeePC or One Laptop Per Child.

Free mobile archaeology.

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Fri, 2008-09-12 00:34 — Gary (not verified)

Total open station

Would you be able to plot data from a totalstation straight on to gvSIG on the Freerunner? This would allow you to see what you are plotting and potentially cut down on post-processing time.

Fri, 2008-09-12 12:09 — steko

Gary, this kind of feature

Gary, this kind of feature isn't yet available. Consider that on total stations I can work with, the download procedure is usually quite time-consuming (i.e. quit the “record” menu, enter the “data transfer” menu, start the program on your PC, start the download from the device), even though I think that with newer total stations there is some chance of “remote” operation. However at the moment it is beyond our plans.
If you could provide more information about your device and you're willing do to do some tests, we can look a bit further. Feel free to contact us, find the mailing list address at http://totalopenstation.sharesource.org/