I just bought a set of locus recivers on ebay, they cam with locus processor V1.2, when I try to install the software, it asks for a serial #, but I cant find one anywere on the disk or the the disk case. any sugestions?

Thanks
Jeff

If the owner sold you the pair that came with the processor program, you should've gotten the serial number(in fact it might be ON the cd . . . but I'm not sure)

Thanks John,

I found the ser# on a card in the middle of the manual as I was reading, software loaded just fine.

Jeff

first thing they'll tell you is that you need to upgrade to Solutions 2.6.

This is NOT a no charge upgrade, I hope you knew that when you bought the receivers.

Is Solutions 2.6. a good upgrade to have? I plan to just use the locus recivers for static.

Solutions 2.6 is definitely a major improvement over the Locus processor 1.1 or 1.2.We had to jump through a few hoops to work out a "grid to ground" coordinate system, and it was pretty much "work with the data you got" kind of deal. With Solutions 2.6 you have all kinds of neat features to "massage" the data. I'd check the firmware of the receivers right off the bat ifin I was you.
Welcome to the gang!

2.6 is more complicated, but well worth the effort. If this is your first attempt at GPS post processing, use v1.2 for a few sessions. It is fully automatic and will give you confidence in the system. Then start using v2.6. It is a little more involved. While v1.2 finds a solution for you (generally the best) 2.6 requires that you change mask angles or delete noisy sv's to make a good solution. The main difference is that in 1.2 you are stuck with what you get, in 2.6 you can play around with various settings and maybe get good results out of seemingly poor data.

Thanks guys,

I have done some post prossesing with big yellow and Leica. I will give V1.2 a try this weekend, and then Look into 2.6, sounds like the options may be worth the upgrade. How do you know what version of firmware the locus units have in them? do I have to read the book? or does it post it in a report somewhere? as far as I can tell these units were made in 2000, and never used.

I read the book and went to ashtech, looks like I have the latest firmware V LAOO. I guess I'll keep reading.

Thanks
Jeff

Ya'll almost make it sound like I would like to have V1.2. I really don't want to massage the data. It would seem some reasonable programing could recognize "good" data and "bad" data and would just spit out the answer.

PM2 data won't work on Locus Processor. It was kind of cool being able to automatically process results, but to say that it came up with the best results would not be accurate. In fact, each time you processed a new variant of solutions would occur. Sometimes perfectly good sessions would solve "float" with no recourse. It was not until near the release of v2.x that I realized I could have reprocessed over and over again looking for the good stuff. Even at that, if you had three vectors, a reprocess would change each one. So if vector 1-2 looked good, but 2-3 didn't and you wanted to reprocess...poof you reprocessed 1-2 as well as 2-3 and 3-1.

As you can see the automatic nature of Locus processor made for some difficult obstacles to overcome.

Having said that, we used it reliably for some time before 2.x came out and the results were very good.

jt

I noticed the term massage used critically and I tend to agree with a poor attitude toward that concept.

My preferred term is data cleaning. Reasonable programming cannot overcome the unreasonable places that people use their GPS tools. The tools in Ashtech Solutions 2.6 provide methods for cleaning up bad data.

Download the Ashtech Solutions 2.6 manual from the ftp server and read the section called Post-Processed Data Analysis. It's less than 20 pages of reading that could save you a trip back to the field.

How do you define a Clear View of the Sky? In my definition if there is something visible from that site that would degrade, block, or reflect a GPS signal that is an obstructed site. Data cleaning tools can often save GPS measurements that were made at obstructed sites.

In the days when I chained distances there were some places where the distances were easier to chain than others. But with the chain it was easy to "spit out the answer".

But you do not have to take advantage of the tools that help in Ashtech Solutions if you don't want to. You can just go back to the field and keep making measurements until you get good answers.