ILRIS HD ER Issues

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Georg
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ILRIS HD ER Issues

Post by Georg »

Hello. I'm new to the forum and wanted to describe some issues my co-workers and I experienced with our ILRIS HD with ER mode. The Scanner was delivered in summer 2012 and was used about 12 times for outcrop data collection (about 1 - 10 days each) and some tests in the field. We had always good/perfect weather conditions (cloudy and/or sunny days).

First thing is that we saw sometime from the beginning on (summer 2012) an effect in some point clouds. Some horizontal scanlines were much darker than the rest of the scan. Here is an example of a point cloud we took in June 2012 and showed the effect the first time (link from my dropbox): https://www.dropbox.com/s/2f2c5v3e0ab9v1w/Scan01.jpg

The point clouds taken right before this scan to the left side and right after to the right side have exactly the same scan setting and did not show this effect at all. We suggest that it is related to a change of brightness/light intensity during the scan when for example a cloud flies by during a sunny day. Anyone experienced the effect before?

The second thing is a relative big problem we experienced. The distances for our scans we had before were about 400 m maximum. About 2 weeks ago we went for data acquisition with colleges from another university because they needed a scanner that can scan for more than 800 m.
Our IRLIS HD with ER mode is listed with 1800 m with 80% reflectivity. We tried to scan first from about 1600 m but the scanner didn't recognize anything. We than tried it from 800 m, which didn't work either. And finally from 600 m.
The outcrop we tried to scan has multiple levels with different distances. The scanner was able to produce a low quality point cloud with lot of information gaps up to 650 m. After that it just couldn't get any data. Example here (link from my dropbox): https://www.dropbox.com/s/ogwflrlcqn8hbhr/Scan02.jpg

We tried to scan with cloudy and sunny weather conditions. We worked with the enhanced range (ER) mode and also tried a precision mode of 8 (we usually scan with 2). It all didn't change anything.
We than scanned from a different position with a range of 450 m and the scans worked out fine but we couldn't get the important information from that position we need.

This is a pretty big problem for us since the scanner was bought also for bigger distances. We wrote an e-mail to our costumer service about two weeks ago but didn't get any response to this problem so far.

So my question to this community is: Has anyone any experience with an ILRIS HD and experienced this problem so far or has someone some idea what the problem could be? We would be very thankful!

King Regards,
Georg
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Re: ILRIS HD ER Issues

Post by jedfrechette »

Hi Georg,

I've used various iterations of the ILRIS for quite a few projects over the years and based on your symptoms I would strongly suspect a hardware problem(s). You're unit will probably need to be sent back to the factory for repair.

I've never seen the intensity banding like in your image but I think it's highly unlikely that it is related to the ambient light levels. Light levels can affect the ILRIS data but the effect is extremely small and mostly just changes the noise level in the data without having a big impact on the absolute values returned. I've only had one set of scans where I could actually see the effect and that was an somewhat unique case, even then the differences were so small as to be insignificant.

I have experienced a similar range limiting problem. In our case it turned out that the filter used to decrease the laser output power when operating in "Normal" mode was stuck and not properly being removed from the light path when entering "ER" mode. Even without "ER" mode, however, you should be getting good data well beyond 650 m so I suspect you may have other things going on as well.

It seems a bit out of character that support hasn't responded to you. Maybe it's a regional difference or I've just been lucky but I've consistently received the best support from Optech of any company I've ever dealt with, either professionally or privately. Regardless, I think you will definitely need to keep pestering them as I don't think these are issues you will be able to fix on your own.

Good luck.
Jed
Georg
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Re: ILRIS HD ER Issues

Post by Georg »

Hello Jed and thank you for your quick anser and information.

What you suggest doesn't sound very good for us. We now just wrote an e-mail directly to the ILRIS customer support in Canada since we didn't get any answer from our regional support so far.

It's interesting that you have never seen such intensity banding since it appeared right after the delivery of the new scanner.

About the range problem: We also tried to scan without the ER mode and it didn't improve the quality and/or range.

Now we can just wait and hope for some answers from the support.

Kind Regards,
Georg
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Re: ILRIS HD ER Issues

Post by jedfrechette »

Georg wrote:We now just wrote an e-mail directly to the ILRIS customer support in Canada since we didn't get any answer from our regional support so far.
Let me know if you still don't get a response and I'll put you in touch with one of the people I know.
Jed
Georg
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Re: ILRIS HD ER Issues

Post by Georg »

Hi Jed,

we got a fast response from the optech support service in Canada yesterday and are now in touch with them. Thank you very much for your offer.

Best Regards,
Georg
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