I'm a undergrad at Michigan State University doing research for a professor. We want to do tillage demonstrations and draft calculations. However, our current setup does not work. We have a hydraulic cylinder with a pressure transducer attached which goes into a Omega strain gage which out puts the force on a little screen and through a serial cable. We want to be able to stream data point of position and force simultaneously preferably at 5-10Hz. We are using a Trimble Ranger with TerraSync software, but that does not work. Currently we are using a Trimble proXT receiver, but plan on upgrading soon to something with a faster update rate. It will not take position and force readings just streaming only if you manually take points which is not applicable for our application. If anyone has any ideas for different software, or any other things we might try it would be greatly appreciated. Also if you have any other questions fell free to ask.

Thanks for your time and any help

Did your Trimble rep have any input on their range? Or perhaps an extesion for the TerraSync software?

I've used one of the Trimble field devices in the field quite a bit, but it was for geospatial acquisition and we didn't use any other data input. I guess I assumed it could read from a sensor whilst walking a line that was being digitised but never looked into it.

Our application was mapping of a rainforest restoration project, so we were mapping sample data points (things like bird survey points, insect traps), plantation boundaries, roads, paths, and buildings.


Richard