Faro Focus S further development

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Re: Faro Focus S further development

Post by Scott »

jedfrechette wrote: Fri Aug 10, 2018 2:25 am My local Faro rep happened to be visiting yesterday and I asked the exact same question about accessories. The answer I got was that Faro wants the S series to have a life of at least another 5 years and they plan to do that by developing accessories. I guess time will tell if that pans out.
Nice thread!
The FARO S series is built quite well and will last for years if treated well. The electronics may have some issues, however, so I hope replacement parts will be available for at least five more years. Why purchase anything but a robust, precise, flexible task scanner that will perform for decades?

I'm pleased to see improvements from third party software developers -see the updated filtering and clipping box tools for Scene from Taglabs:viewtopic.php?f=89&t=13497 . I think software has room to evolve -even for older, well made gear such as the S series.
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Re: Faro Focus S further development

Post by jedfrechette »

TommyMaddox wrote: Fri Aug 10, 2018 4:45 pmAll of these materials and so much more are on our awesome but often grossly underutilized Knowledge Base.
I has definitely been improving, but I'm not sure "awesome" is the first work I would use to describe it. ;)
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Re: Faro Focus S further development

Post by TommyMaddox »

jedfrechette wrote: Fri Aug 10, 2018 9:46 pm
TommyMaddox wrote: Fri Aug 10, 2018 4:45 pmAll of these materials and so much more are on our awesome but often grossly underutilized Knowledge Base.
I has definitely been improving, but I'm not sure "awesome" is the first work I would use to describe it. ;)
There has been a considerable amount of ongoing consolidation efforts there, I would just check in every now and then to see what is new. It may not give you the quite the level of expertise you find here sometimes, but it is still a valuable resource.
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Re: Faro Focus S further development

Post by jedfrechette »

I am really appreciative of this effort. It's not that long ago that it was a much less useful resource.

Back on the topic of accessories, it seems like a basic mounting plate with a 1/4"-20 screw would be a good foundation. It looks like it might be a little difficult to make a secure physical connection so I'm not sure I'd want to put Nodal Ninja and a big DSLR up there but a scew mount would be good for lot's of other smaller things.
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Re: Faro Focus S further development

Post by Oliver Buerkler »

Hello Community.

Thanks for kicking off this pretty thrilling discussion!

What I extracted from this wish list so far:
1) External camera + Flash light
2) External thermal camera
3) Make the S series competitive to the latest product on the market

It would help us tremendously to better understand the underlying needs behind and more details of your requirements.
(Product Managers always ask those funny questions... :o )
For example:
1) What do you intend to achieve with an external camera? What distance would a flash light need to illuminate?...
2) What temperature ranges would you need to capture? Which field of view is needed? Thermal cameras often have pretty low resolution - what would be your needs in terms of this aspect? What would be the final result / into which workflow would you want to feed the resulting data?...
3) Where do you see the Focus S fall short behind competition? What would be your most prioritized aspect when considering the complete field-to-finish workflow?...

The better we understand your needs, the higher the likelihood that our products will satisfy you.

PS:
While I am not allowed to publish any details or dates, we have our engineers constantly work on great new things.
Looking at FAROs track record and cadence of innovation there is always good reason to keep watching.

Best regards,
Oliver Bürkler
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Re: Faro Focus S further development

Post by Brett »

Oliver Buerkler wrote: Mon Aug 13, 2018 9:03 am PS:
While I am not allowed to publish any details or dates, we have our engineers constantly work on great new things.
Looking at FAROs track record and cadence of innovation there is always good reason to keep watching.
Nice and cryptic. :)

Would you say its worth coming to your stand at Intergeo this year, or leave it till the evening when you guys have had several beers and we bump into you all to get an update? :lol:
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Re: Faro Focus S further development

Post by Bartoloman »

Thanks everyone for the great response. It's a topic that many of us on the field have questions about.
To Oliver.
I want to understand the policy of Faro not giving any updates on further developments, but on the other hand customers are feeling a bit left behind not knowing what's going to come and therefore not be able to plan in the future. Especially when you see other parties like Leica that are releasing new products that tick more boxes like the RTC360. Other features like reduced 'scantimes', intuitive on site registration, 'higher image quality that can cope with high dynamic light situations, the possibility to retouch the images, 'deghosting', ... together with the high accuracy demand are things that matter on the field.
Why release scanners with an accessory bay and don't give the possibility to add accessories ? Why keep hard investing customers in the dark about further developments ? This is not very customer friendly and works counterproductive. There's a lot of frustration about that.
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Re: Faro Focus S further development

Post by sheartab »

I would love to see an external camera that could take pictures at the same time as the scan, then use those pictures to colorize the point clouds, thus eliminating the additional time to take color readings.
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Re: Faro Focus S further development

Post by Nick M »

Just subscribing to this thread to see how this develops. Really thought we would have seem something already for the S series by now

When I first saw the mounts my initial low hanging fruit thoughts were an external camera (though parallax errors are something to be concerned about there) or a lighting system for photos in dark environments but those have been covered already.

Some other thoughts are systems to assist with on site registration like a smaller version of the localiser or other inertial/VIS type solutions. Even some extra processing capability to allow onboard processing instead of relying on an external device.
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Re: Faro Focus S further development

Post by Mortum »

Nick M wrote: Mon Aug 20, 2018 12:43 am Even some extra processing capability to allow onboard processing instead of relying on an external device.
+1

For camera I simply think a cam with decent resolution would be awesome, something like a beefed up 360 camera that looks like a handle (straight over the mirror on top with lenses in the middle)

You lose a couple of degree on top, but being able to take 1 picture and have all color info you need will save time!


What I also really would like to have is a quick mountable rain cover or umbrella.. (I really hate cleaning the mirror, especially since we can't send it for service anymore)
Lets just say the weather in the Netherlands can be quite chaotic at times, and i don't want to stand with a shopping bag next to our scanner anymore :P Also I am often asked to scan at environments where there is the possibility of drippage (water + rust/dust/dirt particles), I'd really love to have something simple that keeps the mirror clean and doesnt influence the scanning capabilitys.

I did one time duct-tape a umbrella to our photon to get the job done :mrgreen:
Sincerely, Robin van der Molen

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