SURVEY PRO ON CELLPHONE?

HELLO THERE I HAD AN IDEA TO DEVELOP AN ANDROID OR IPHONE APP THAT DO THE SAME AS SURVEY PRO DOES OR CARLSON SURVCE. THE REASON FOR DOING THIS IS BECAUSE DATA COLLECTORS ARE TOO PRICEY (UP TO $1K). THEY ARE GIVEN TOO MUCH CREDIT. RIGHT NOW A CELLPHONE HAS THE CAPABILITY TO DO 1GHZ 1.2GHZ DUAL CORE 8+GB OF STORAGE AND MORE THAN 512MB OF RAM. RUGGED DATA COLLECTORS DONT MATCH THE PROCESSOR POWER OF THE CELLPHONES. THEY COST $200 AND WE ALL USE THEM NECESARY. I HAD THE IDEA TO BUILD THE SOFTWARE BUT A SOFTWARE CONSULTANT TOLD ME THAT IT COULD BE $20k PLUS TO DEVELOP, BECAUSE OF ALL OF THE ALGORITHMS IT WILL NEED. REALLY WOULD LIKE TO SEE SOMEONE ON KNOWLEDGE OF THIS TO DEVELOP IT. WE WOULD NO LONGER NEED DATA COLLECTORS (WELL ONLY IF WE WANT TO WORK ON RAIN JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE RUGGERIZED) A CELLPHONE BATTERY RIGHT NOW LAST UP TO 6 HOURS.

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WHAT DO YOU THINK?

You should definitely do that.  Spend 3 or 4 thousand hours (and the mentioned $20K for other expenses) getting everything working just right with the myriad of instruments available to surveyors then charge $20 for the software.  If you get really lucky you might make enough money to buy a couple of 6 packs of beer.

OR, and I am just thinking outside the box here, you could see a real data collector as an investment that serious professionals need to make.  They are serious tools for serious people.  They are tools that can help make you many thousands of dollars each year.  When viewed in that way, $1,500 to $2,500 doesn't seem like all that much to pay.

Larry P

There are already folks working on data collection apps for Smart Phones. GIS people are leading the parade right now, but it is but a matter of time before such devices for surveyors will come on line.
http://www.esri.com/software/smartphones.html

One of the big differences with using cell phone apps is everything is on the web and/or the cloud which of course will require "bars" to use. All of these apps will most likely be marketed as subscription services. So it remains to be seen whether or not the end user will realize a significant savings or not.

When you develop for this environment another thing you must consider is licensing. Even if you can make it, you will still have to get licensed by the patent and frequency owners. The idea has merit, but you need to be prepared to capitalize such a venture.
MLB

That's probably what the field book people said to the guy that first started developing electronic data collectors!!

That's probably what the field book people said to the guy that first started developing electronic data collectors!!

Actually it is more like what the field book people said to the guys wanting to use nothing but tobacco juice and tree bark because that pencil and paper stuff was just too darn expensive.

The appropriate response being ... go ahead, build a far cheaper much less useful tool that ultimately will end up costing the supposed professional far more money than going ahead and doing things right the first time.

As a group surveyors are too quick to try and save 50 cents or a dollar at the cost of $15 or $20 dollars. 

And we wonder why some of our clients are cheap. 

Larry P

 

Easy Cousin Larry! Let's try to keep in mind that beauty is still in the eye of the beholder. There is nothing wrong with working on the development of newer and perhaps better solutions for our workplace. The market will ultimately decide. It always does. I started trying to cobble my own data collector together back in the early 1980's. It wasn't long until I just purchased one. Since then I've used dozens, some better than others.

As we all know there are factors other than price that enter into the equation. Price usually wins. But environment is another very significan factor. I'm sure you saw the demo of the "real time" field/office data collection/edit session at The Summit. Attractive yes, but not always required. It is often difficult to make judgements about another person's market. But most of us who have been around a while know what works for us.

When someone does build a demonstratively better mousetrap most eventually migrate over. I generally don't like to shoot messengers. I like to see what the message is about before I lock and load.
MLB

Fair enough Cousin Mike.

At first blush all I saw was "DATA COLLECTORS ARE TOO PRICEY ".  My prospective is even at twice the price complained about data collectors are one of the biggest bargains in the business.

Larry P

It would be pretty tough to compete on a proposal like this getting in from the ground floor. So many software outfits already have dc systems coded. But perhaps somebody like TDS, Carlson, or xyzworks might port their systems to a smartphone operating system.  My business partner already has a HP48 emulator on his Droid, so why not?

FWIW, virtually every smartphone has bluetooth built in so I doubt there would be any need for some piggybacked dongle-like add on contraption.

Larry P:
OR, and I am just thinking outside the box here, you could see a real data collector as an investment that serious professionals need to make.  They are serious tools for serious people.  They are tools that can help make you many thousands of dollars each year.  When viewed in that way, $1,500 to $2,500 doesn't seem like all that much to pay.

You have to be very careful with that line of thought.  Remember, the data collector is a tool.

A nice air hammer is a great tool, and I'd definitely want one if I were building a house.  But just because I can use an air hammer to help build a $1M dollar house, I won't want to pay thousands of dollars for an air hammer.

If our data collectors were that underpriced, we would have chucked our old ones and upgraded them to TSC3's already.  The price is important.

That said, I agree with many of the comments here.  I think it would be far easier for someone like Carslon to port their software to a smart phone, but I see no way that they could do that for $20,000 in development costs.  Starting from scratch would be much tougher and far more expensive.  That $20K estimate seems completely out to lunch to me.

Oops...  hit the wrong button.

"...I HAD AN IDEA TO DEVELOP AN ANDROID OR IPHONE APP THAT DO THE SAME AS SURVEY PRO DOES OR CARLSON SURVCE ..."

My Droid Thunderbolt has horrible battery life, touchy screen buttons and weak outdoor display. I wonder how that would work for a crew chief.

Now if the Droid could use something like Dragon speech recognition software for the data collector function that could make life easier.

there are always critics about Total Stations and GPS and yet you use them ;)

Mike Falk:

"...I HAD AN IDEA TO DEVELOP AN ANDROID OR IPHONE APP THAT DO THE SAME AS SURVEY PRO DOES OR CARLSON SURVCE ..."

My Droid Thunderbolt has horrible battery life, touchy screen buttons and weak outdoor display. I wonder how that would work for a crew chief.

Now if the Droid could use something like Dragon speech recognition software for the data collector function that could make life easier.



There are plans right know for NVIDIA CHIPSETS for smartphone to a better CPU and GPU @ 2012 they are projected to be @ Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5Ghz let see what happens... as for the touchy screen buttons outdoor display  try SAMSUNG for instance.....battery life are right now to 6 hours + do research before comments ....

Larry P:

That's probably what the field book people said to the guy that first started developing electronic data collectors!!

Actually it is more like what the field book people said to the guys wanting to use nothing but tobacco juice and tree bark because that pencil and paper stuff was just too darn expensive.

The appropriate response being ... go ahead, build a far cheaper much less useful tool that ultimately will end up costing the supposed professional far more money than going ahead and doing things right the first time.

As a group surveyors are too quick to try and save 50 cents or a dollar at the cost of $15 or $20 dollars. 

And we wonder why some of our clients are cheap. 

Larry P

 

Thats why some people like RECON over NOMAD and over RANGER and all of those variants of data collectors... CLIENTS are too cheap because we are not united in this profession that why "JOhn Doe" charge $1,200 for something and "Yogui" charges $500....hard times I know! but come on !! dont get me wrong Larry but your comments seems a little bit disrespectful ....why I am not been serious about this?  I am not a serious person like you? I work as hard as you.  You are being to conservative try to be a little more visionary. 

 

MLB:
There are already folks working on data collection apps for Smart Phones. GIS people are leading the parade right now, but it is but a matter of time before such devices for surveyors will come on line.
http://www.esri.com/software/smartphones.html

One of the big differences with using cell phone apps is everything is on the web and/or the cloud which of course will require "bars" to use. All of these apps will most likely be marketed as subscription services. So it remains to be seen whether or not the end user will realize a significant savings or not.

When you develop for this environment another thing you must consider is licensing. Even if you can make it, you will still have to get licensed by the patent and frequency owners. The idea has merit, but you need to be prepared to capitalize such a venture.
MLB

The idea to develop a BRAND NEW PROGRAM says it all...no need for licensing because this are just formulas we use all. I did not say hack or emulate SURVEY PRO..the idea was to develop a brand new program that does the same. Companys can not sue other people because they did a program that sums 2+2 and gives the same result as they do. The programs can be done via offline methods but they will do it online to get capital from it. Thanks for the info MLB.

Richard Sincovec:

Larry P:
OR, and I am just thinking outside the box here, you could see a real data collector as an investment that serious professionals need to make.  They are serious tools for serious people.  They are tools that can help make you many thousands of dollars each year.  When viewed in that way, $1,500 to $2,500 doesn't seem like all that much to pay.

You have to be very careful with that line of thought.  Remember, the data collector is a tool.

A nice air hammer is a great tool, and I'd definitely want one if I were building a house.  But just because I can use an air hammer to help build a $1M dollar house, I won't want to pay thousands of dollars for an air hammer.

If our data collectors were that underpriced, we would have chucked our old ones and upgraded them to TSC3's already.  The price is important.

That said, I agree with many of the comments here.  I think it would be far easier for someone like Carslon to port their software to a smart phone, but I see no way that they could do that for $20,000 in development costs.  Starting from scratch would be much tougher and far more expensive.  That $20K estimate seems completely out to lunch to me.



Would really like to see Carlson do something like this. I like Carlson Software a lot. 

jrebollo

Check our website www.falk-pli.com, out and let me know if I need to adapt to new ways. :)

Full size data collectors are more useful than phones or calculator data collectors to people who wear gloves to perform their work. Many also require ruggedness in their collectors.

Also if you check battery life for example the Ranger, cell phone battery life is not even close.

Check it out.

Richard Sincovec:
 I think it would be far easier for someone like Carslon to port their software to a smart phone, but I see no way that they could do that for $20,000 in development costs.  Starting from scratch would be much tougher and far more expensive.  That $20K estimate seems completely out to lunch to me.

$20K isn't just out to lunch, it won't even get you a menu.  The average starting salary for programmers out of school is around $50K.  You're going to need a team of them and you'll want them to have some experience (more $$).  Plus you'll need a project manager, designer, testers, graphics, writers, marketing, sales,....

And it's already been done by at least a couple of companies.  Trouble is cell phones are a faster moving target than rugged devices, and survey software tends to be a good deal bigger than most cell phone apps - meaning it takes longer (and more $$) to move from one platform to another.