Leica BLK2Go

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blazaj
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Re: Leica BLK2Go

Post by blazaj »

The sample data doesn't look too bad to me at a first glance. I like the colour and it seems not to have that much noise. I'm not Geoslam user I cannot compare. It is not level, but I guess it can't be achieved by the instrument alone?
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Re: Leica BLK2Go

Post by blazaj »

..any chance to have the same space scanned and published as a sample dataset with BLK360 and RTC360??
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Re: Leica BLK2Go

Post by GeorgSchroth »

I would be very interested to understand how everybody here is evaluating the quality of a point cloud.
Since there are quite a few ways to look at a point cloud (absolute & relative accuracy, resolution of details (what size of objects can I model), coloring to recognize non-geometric features, spray points on edges, noise level), I would like to better understand what is most important for you and your business and what you check out first.

Especially for mobile mapping devices the drift error (how does the error grow over the distance in a long corridor) is quite important, I assume?
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Re: Leica BLK2Go

Post by landmeterbeuckx »

I went to a vip event in Brussels yesterday where the Blk2go was presented. I'm not in the Leica space and have some reservations about their productline and marketing strategies but am intriged about this blk2go so i went.

After the regular chitchat we got an introduction where this device stands in the other mobile mapping solutions. It was clearly stated that the device is not a replacement for other scanner solutions but an add-on and for specific use the perfect solution.

Then there was a demo how it works and how you start a measurement from scratch with the connection of a phone to track progres. This was very fluent and in comparison with a geoslam a fast approach. Also you only need to hold one device without cabling and a rucksack makes it very handy. Thet demonstrated some features as a picture in HD as you walk to take details. One button operation is definitely the way to go, no settings only the ring light to indicate what is happening. The operator went into some rooms (lobby of a hotel chain) and it tracked fine.

The data taken was not shown on pc but some exemples of data taken from the blk2go compared with rtc360 data of 2 houses, a graveyard, a park with a building and a sports complex with lots of dressing rooms.

The differences in distances where shown and for the interior of the houses it was max 2cm from front to back. Outside with lots of references around it went to a couple of cm's but the situation of the park had some differences outside of 10cm. They did show the times taken with blk2go and the rtc and it was a factor 5 till 10.

Everyone who knows pointcloud data expects points to be seen, with the blk2go there were stripes instead of points but the rooms were good to recognize. They also showed which lod could be generated from this data and it was said lod300 but i'm thinking moire of lod250.

It looks like a good device for indoors and the accuracy of say 2cm to be kept in mind. For outside use i would use this data maybe for landscaping purposes but not compared with stuff done from the known static scanners.

There will be some more changes in software they said because now you do the measurement and it comes out the instrument (wifi or ucb-c) as is. Nop changes or corrections to be made, will change in the future they said.

All in all a good product for its use but the pricetag is high, especially if like me you have no other Leica software. I also asked if it would be possible to extract for exemple the pano pics for use in a different virtual tour software but they or didn't know or didn't want to say it wasn't possible.

Had some other contacts as weel so all in all a good afternoon spent.
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Re: Leica BLK2Go

Post by designmule »

Thanks for the detailed write up Lieven. BLK2Go has struck me as a tool (albeit an expensive one) in a tool kit, which your experience seems to reinforce.

This question isn't directed toward you but I wonder how it handles metal? We scan a lot of commercial kitchens and have realized that the BLK360 returns very little data from the stainless steel surfaces. RTC360 & Faro S series do well. BLK2Go uses (I believe) the same wavelength laser as the BLK360 so I have to guess that it performs similarly to the BLK360 but I'd like to know. These kitchens (and coolers/freezers) take a long time to scan using a terrestrial scanner but do offer a lot of closed loop opportunities which are particularly beneficial or necessary for SLAM solutions.
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Re: Leica BLK2Go

Post by landmeterbeuckx »

designmule wrote: Thu Jan 23, 2020 2:16 am
This question isn't directed toward you but I wonder how it handles metal? We scan a lot of commercial kitchens and have realized that the BLK360 returns very little data from the stainless steel surfaces. RTC360 & Faro S series do well. BLK2Go uses (I believe) the same wavelength laser as the BLK360 so I have to guess that it performs similarly to the BLK360 but I'd like to know. These kitchens (and coolers/freezers) take a long time to scan using a terrestrial scanner but do offer a lot of closed loop opportunities which are particularly beneficial or necessary for SLAM solutions.
I wouldn't know. All i've seen and the test were in classic environements without a lot of shiny objects. In your case i would ask a rep to come out to a kitchen and do a demo there with the results on a laptop for you to evaluate.
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Re: Leica BLK2Go

Post by Oxbow »

blazaj wrote: Tue Jan 21, 2020 10:51 am The sample data doesn't look too bad to me at a first glance. I like the colour and it seems not to have that much noise. I'm not Geoslam user I cannot compare. It is not level, but I guess it can't be achieved by the instrument alone?

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ohh, looks that pointcab software works also well with BLK2GO data.
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Re: Leica BLK2Go

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Re: Leica BLK2Go

Post by smacl »

blazaj wrote: Tue Jan 21, 2020 10:51 am The sample data doesn't look too bad to me at a first glance. I like the colour and it seems not to have that much noise. I'm not Geoslam user I cannot compare. It is not level, but I guess it can't be achieved by the instrument alone?

Clipboard03.jpg
I just had a first look at the sample BLK2Go data yesterday and put together a short article on it on LinkedIn here; https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/first-im ... claughlin/ Comparing it to some similar ZEB Revo data the noise levels seem lower, with about 25mm of range on a flat wall leading to good automated section extraction fitting lines and arcs at 10mm tolerance (we use 1-2mm on P40 by comparison and 12-15mm on ZEB Revo).

A couple of questions for Paul Burrows or anyone else with an inside track on Leica;
  • Can the registration be used in conjunction with targets or any other form of external control to constrain absolute accuracy?
  • Does the unit have to be held vertically? Parallel vertical scan profile lines lead to poor point distribution for both horizontal and vertical sections, 45 degrees would give much better point distribution for these purposes and allow for finer sections.
  • Can the oriented images be provided with data, either embedded in the E57 or better still as external files in the same format as the Pegasus back-back?
I captured some video here which may be of interest, which looks at the BLK2Go point-cloud in more gnarly up close detail rather than the more aesthetically appealing zoomed out view. While it looks a bit noisy, I think the data is really good for this type of SLAM solution. Hoping to get some real world user data shortly to get a more in-depth feel for this.


youtu.be/SXF_bgCuB94
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Re: Leica BLK2Go

Post by dhirota »

Happy Easter for those that are celebrating. The Easter Bunny has brought me a "borrowed" BLK2GO since I was unable to test it several months ago. Because of the CORONAVirus and the local politicians, everything is shutdown, so we can not scan some of the more interesting locations in HNL. The only two locations are Hawaii Loa Ridge (HLR, where I live) and my office in downtown HNL.

For those folks that have not visited me, we are at an elevation of 751 feet above the Pacific Ocean, 4 doors from the HLR park, shown below.

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I will be posting this information twice, since there are some that are interested in the system benchmarking with the details, whereas it does not seem that anyone on this thread is that interested in posting any detail.

https://www.laserscanningforum.com/foru ... 0&start=30
Carbix wrote: Fri Mar 27, 2020 5:58 pm That’s sweet!!
Here are the basics: 3 scans. I did 5, but since this is the first significant try (I actually did a self-test on Friday), which needed improvement, 2 scans messed up. I used the most recent version of Register360 (2020.0.0), BLK2GO without VIS and no paper target recognition.

LESSON LEARNED: Multiple scans are better to get maximum coverage, since if you have maximum overlap, you hopefully will not miss anything if scans mess up.
Walk 7=44.746 Mpts, Raw data=1.474 GB
Walk 10=34.168 Mpts, Raw data=1.295 GB
Walk 11=20.165 Mpts, Raw data=0.825 GB file format *.b2g TOTAL point cloud=99Mpts.

Way Point spacing (they say default is 10m), I used 20m for the outdoors and trees, maybe 10 is better for outside as well.

LESSON LEARNED: The Register360 import processing totally sucks for BLK2GO. The import uses virtually no CPU or RAM If you are trying to figure out how long this process will take. It took 21min:30sec on a 64-core, 256GB RAM processor, with the CPU at 4% and RAM at 4 to 6GB. The processing output looked significantly better than earlier point clouds on planes and walls that I have seen which looked like vertical spaghetti. There are other filtering tools in Register360 that I did not use because of time constraints (I can do it later).

LESSON LEARNED: Be sure to save raw data sets, so if you need to process it with other datasets, so you will not get stuck having your BLK2GO glued by a USB-C cable to your processor.

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