Leica BLK360 - Have We Wasted Our Money With It?

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Re: Leica BLK360 - Have We Wasted Our Money With It?

Post by Felix_the_Cat »

Slewis33 wrote:I initially did not care for the BLK360 but recently completed the below task and hit 9 total station located control points. 7 within .03', 1 at .043', and 1 that I new would be bad at .06'. IMHO Recap sucks and I do not bother using it, also make sure your firmware is up to date.

The point cloud was registered cloud to cloud with Register360 first then positioned on to the 9 control points. I was genuinely impressed.
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I would like to take this opportunity to +1 on recap sucks. It really does. The biggest, maybe only positive from my BLK experience is Register360. It appears to be a quantum shift for Leica. So also +1 on that being pretty damn good. Surprisingly so. So I'm not just here to bash Leica.

Also, just a general pppffffffttttt to anyone chucking the Pollyanna in here and suggestions that we are either not resourceful or smart enough to use it right, and if we just hugged it out everything would be fine. People spend money based on what we say here. Stick to the facts jack. (Or Jill)


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Re: Leica BLK360 - Have We Wasted Our Money With It?

Post by pburrows145 »

I find his thread really interesting.

The BLK360 has been hugely popular (I cannot disclose the number of units sold, but it a big number!). For scanning "professionals", those who are legacy users, I think you might have some issues, for sure - and likely because you want/expect it to work like your existing scanning equipment.

For those people completely new to the game, then they might not know any difference - I see a lot of comparisons being made to the P-series - but that is a product which costs 3-4 times as much... a Fiat 500 will get you from A to B, but it wont get you there as fast as a Bugatti... and it will most certainly have less bells and whistles.

Yes, I would love to see a USB port and a data cable for the BLK360 - it would be amazing - but realistically, people are not using the BLK360 the way the designers perhaps envisaged it. By this, mean people are doing 100's of positions a day (like you would a P-series or the RTC360), as opposed to a small number of scans... I stress, perhaps.

The BLK360 Data Manager is great, and there is a new version coming shortly (which has an updated battery indicator, for one). I've hosted several online sessions with customers in Europe and everyone is impressed with Cyclone REGISTER 360 for processing BLK360 data. I see a shift as more people tend to use the product in standalone mode, just to speed things up in the field. Is this a trend?

If there was a means to create a batch process which imported via BLK360 Data Manager and then directly into a Cyclone/REG360 Project (Rather than connecting the BLK360 within Cyclone REG360 directly) - who would use that?
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Re: Leica BLK360 - Have We Wasted Our Money With It?

Post by sudo_ki »

If there was a means to create a batch process which imported via BLK360 Data Manager and then directly into a Cyclone/REG360 Project (Rather than connecting the BLK360 within Cyclone REG360 directly) - who would use that?
What would be the purpose of this?
By this, mean people are doing 100's of positions a day
We average around 45 medium density scans for a single measured building survey, a job I believe is ideally suited to the BLK; we would never consider a P series for this kind of task.

We still have issues...once we have a reasonable solution for data recovery, we may start singing some praises for the BLK
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Re: Leica BLK360 - Have We Wasted Our Money With It?

Post by pburrows145 »

Current options

1. Open REG360 or Cyclone whilst connected to BLK360 Wi-fi and directly import from the BLK360 into a database - requires connection for the whole import duration

2. Use the BLK60 Data Manager, download the files into *.blk files, open Cyclone/REG360 and import into a database (Oonly requires wifi for the download/onversion to *.blk).

3. (Proposed) Open BLK360 Data Manager, Choose files to download, files would download, connection to scanner closed on completion, PC connects back to local network, *.blk files are converted into database (in your choice of Cyclone or REG360), and sends email when done... just a thought?
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Re: Leica BLK360 - Have We Wasted Our Money With It?

Post by pburrows145 »

sudo_ki wrote: Tue Aug 14, 2018 11:53 am
We average around 45 medium density scans for a single measured building survey, a job I believe is ideally suited to the BLK; we would never consider a P series for this kind of task.
I said, perhaps... :)

Do you own a P-series? Interested to understand how you choose to deploy which unit? What is the criteria: size of job, number of scans, survey control required etc...?
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Re: Leica BLK360 - Have We Wasted Our Money With It?

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pburrows145 wrote: If there was a means to create a batch process which imported via BLK360 Data Manager and then directly into a Cyclone/REG360 Project (Rather than connecting the BLK360 within Cyclone REG360 directly) - who would use that?
Sure, that's mostly what I do now, minus the batch.

Security issues mixed with the usual Leica wifi hijinks mean I can't connect both to the license server and BLK wifi at the same time, so my only avenue to get data from the BLK is with the data manager.

Also I can haul ass in cyclone while I'm still a bit pokey with the Register360. And, like recap register360 is too iPhone-like, it is inefficient for me to be immutably wedged into someone else's workflow when I know perfectly well where I'm going. It's like being forced to be OCD, which is frustrating when you are trying to get your speed on.

Now to respond to your post - I find the logic that says, hey, you paid less, you get what you paid for to be bad in this case. I expected the quality of the scans to be what they are, fuzzy, "just so" scans that are useful for gross dimension work. The real issue is that under certain circumstances the unit fails to perform, for unknown reasons. Unacceptable in a unit marketed to people who depend on their tools for their livelihood.


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Re: Leica BLK360 - Have We Wasted Our Money With It?

Post by sudo_ki »

Do you own a P-series?
No, if we need one, we hire.

As for deployment of the BLK, the MBS' I refer to would normally be residential address of 4 bedrooms let say.
3. (Proposed) Open BLK360 Data Manager, Choose files to download, files would download, connection to scanner closed on completion, PC connects back to local network, *.blk files are converted into database (in your choice of Cyclone or REG360), and sends email when done... just a thought?
Sounds good to me.
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Re: Leica BLK360 - Have We Wasted Our Money With It?

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Felix_the_Cat wrote: Tue Aug 14, 2018 12:19 pm Now to respond to your post - I find the logic that says, hey, you paid less, you get what you paid for to be bad in this case. I expected the quality of the scans to be what they are, fuzzy, "just so" scans that are useful for gross dimension work. The real issue is that under certain circumstances the unit fails to perform, for unknown reasons. Unacceptable in a unit marketed to people who depend on their tools for their livelihood.

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Having never experience such failures in all my time using the BLK360, I can only empathise. I assume you have been through the relevant support procedures to ensure your unit is working as intended?
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Re: Leica BLK360 - Have We Wasted Our Money With It?

Post by Joon »

You know BLK360 isn't a high-end laser scanner at all, but a favorable laser scanner. And, you know the 3-D cameras on the current market, e.g. Mantis, Kinect, HoloLens, RealSense, Tango, Apple, Meta, Magic Leap, PMD, Astra, ZEB, etc. are not a laser scanner.

Since Mid 1990, I have been working on optical 3-D measurement techniques including photogrammetry, 3-D camera, and 3-D point cloud processing:
Academic: https://scholar.google.co.kr/citations? ... zMAAAAJ&hl
Photogrammetric: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs ... 868X.00138
Current: https://www.youtube.com/CurvSurf and https://developers.curvsurf.com

I'm looking forward to seeing some contacting points between laser scanner and 3-D camera.

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Re: Leica BLK360 - Have We Wasted Our Money With It?

Post by david.marty »

Hi

I bought the BLK and I am also a little disappointed in the connection. We use it for small projects and for the big ones we take the P40.

For me, it is not the BLK that is bad in the measures but the calibration. Do not blindly trust the software and look carefully at the different sections to see if there is a discrepancy.

I had a lot of trouble with Register 360 and I went to Cyclone. For me this software is not successful enough and does not allow to perform good registration by mixing points and control the cloud to cloud. With Cyclone we can put everything in it and it compensates for everything and we can more easily analyze.

So BLK or RTC it is absolutely necessary to improve Registrer 360!

David
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