cat /dev/total_station > file

This post is one of the “dear lazyweb” ones.

Here at the department we have a Zeiss Elta R55 total station. This device has its own software for downloading recorded data, but, as usual, it’s a Windows-only, non-free application.

Is it possible to download data from such a device using a GNU/Linux machine? Nobody knows. I have asked a number of people and no one has ever tried to do this. 🙁 With some good advice from Frankie, today I made my first test.

With substantial help from Elisa, I recorded 1 point. This point has coordinates:

X    -0.472
Y     1.576
Z     0.004

I downloaded from the device using this simple command (it’s ttyUSB0 because my laptop has no serial port)

cat /dev/ttyUSB0 > data

The total number of points is 7. Points 1-6 contain information about the origin point and other parameters. For now, I’m ignoring them. The resulting data file is binary. You can see it here. I am no expert of binary files, so I used GHex to see its contents. Its dumped form looks like this:

...000.....................
...........................
...........................
...000....................0
S.................0.000.Y..
.......0.000.Z.....0.000...
...0003....................
...........................
....39..03.0...............
...000..P..A...............
...........................
...........................
...0005..NPU...............
.........t..........500.i..
.......0.000...............
...0006..NPU...............
.........t........0.000.i..
.......0.000.Z.....0.000...
...000.....................
.................-0.....Y..
.........5.6.Z.....0.00....
.ND........................
...........................
...........................
...............

Some comments about this first test:

• anything after the ND means there are no more data.
• the recorded point seems to be in the part immediately before ND

If anyone has any other suggestions about this test, please tell me.