Equipment World Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/757428
I f you do a lot of work with skid steers, compact track loaders and compact excavators, Trimble has developed a suite of products that will enable you to do many of the same things as contractors running big equipment and GPS machine control with less hardware and at a lower cost. Announced at the company's Dimensions event in Las Vegas in November, the Trimble SCS900 site controller software now has two new capabilities. The EZ Level functions replace traditional laser transmitters with GPS or total stations, making it easy to check elevations when no design is available. And if the traditional GPS base sta- tion is beyond your budget, Trimble's new BaseAnywhere software allows you to set up a Trimble SPS585 smart antenna and use it as a base station anywhere on the site without the need for survey control points. Trimble also redesigned its GCS900 grade control system to work on many skid steer loader attachments and synchronize with the machine's joystick controls for all the benefits of automated earthmoving. SketchUp/HoloLens SketchUp is a low cost 3D com- puterized drawing system used by architects, engineers and many professionals in the building industry. Trimble bought Sketch- Up from Google about four years ago, and now has a new professional- level version that gives teams the ability to collaborate on drawings and view the 3D draw- ings using Microsoft's HoloLens. With the Trimble SketchUp Viewer for Microsoft HoloLens, you can create the design, load it into the HoloLens virtual reality goggles, change the scale of the drawing to life size and virtually walk into the building you just designed – what they're calling the "immersive" de- sign experience. You can also switch to the "tabletop" mode and view the drawing as if it were a model sitting on a desk. Trimble will still make available the free version of SketchUp, which anyone can download and use. The professional version will cost about $500, but includes all the functional- ity mentioned above and gives users the ability to design earthmoving and civil engineering projects and export these to machines to use in GPS automated earthmoving. Catalyst for mobile Earthmoving and surveying applica- tions require GPS signals accurate to a centimeter or so. That requires a base station, rover or machine, and survey control points. But with a subscription to Trimble's new software-defined Catalyst GNSS ser- vice and a small Trimble DA1 digital antennae, you can turn any Android mobile device into a centimeter- level locating device. The antenna is small enough to fit in a backpack or glovebox, and will give a wide range of workers the ability to detect and log precise geoposition coordinates without the upfront investment or complexity of traditional GPS receivers. – Tom Jackson EquipmentWorld.com | December 2016 35 technology | staff report TRIMBLE THINKS SMALL: New technology focuses on compact equipment With Trimble's Catalyst, you can turn any Android device into a GPS rover with centimeter level accuracy. Trimble's new software products lower costs for GPS earthmoving on small machine attachments using fewer hardware components that traditional methods.