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Running Trimble R8S on external battery
Posted by tonyduky on September 8, 2022 at 8:22 amHello,
Im having trouble powering up my trimble R8S unit just on the external 12v battery.
According to the manual, this unit can run on the external battery for power.
For some reason i cant power it up if there is no small li-on battery inside.
Is this normal? Is there something to setup in the receiver config to be able to draw power from port 1?
Thx a lot guys
tonyduky replied 1 year, 6 months ago 7 Members · 13 Replies- 13 Replies
Nope, pretty sure you need the little battery regardless. You can get a cheap knock-off battery on the amazon.
Is your serial port fried? Did you check the fuse on your SAE cable? Some people will put a larger value fuse in the line because the fuse keeps popping. Then bad things happen when the larger value fuse doesn’t pop and they’ve fried the receiver.
Especially if you hook up a 35w radio that starts drawing some real power.
Do your cables have the right pin alignments with respect to the receiver port?
The last Y-Cable we bought from a reputable survey dealer was ~$400. Don’t buy cheap knock-off junk from Amazon. You get what you pay for.
Seems to me the archaeologist should call a surveyor, and then you can focus on digging.
- Posted by: @michigan-left
Seems to me the archaeologist should call a surveyor, and then you can focus on digging.
I’ve watched archaeologists use a total station. It isn’t anything like boundary or construction work where a surveyor can come in, make some measurements, and leave. They want the 3-D coordinates of each artifact found – perhaps each end of a longer item. So the surveying measurements happen all throughout the day, every day.
With proper F2F-like coding, they can take the data back to the office and easily plot distributions of each type of artifact at each vertical level to map out how the areas of a site were used in which periods.
. That may be true, and I’m not opposed to it, but this is not that…
This is the same “archaelologist” from Belgium that is headed to Saudi Arabia for “Big uas mapping gcp and terrain” surveying (70km^2 of ground control for aerial mapping):
https://surveyorconnect.com/community/gnss-geodesy/big-uas-mapping-gcp-and-terrain
Yeah, you gotta have a license to operate a GNSS receiver… ????
What external battery?
@stlsurveyor We have normal li-on trimble batteries but it’s weird that you can’t just power up the R8S without them. Anyway thanks for your quick reply!
@robertusa we normally use powersonic lead acid batteries 12 volt 12 amp Hr (PS12122F2) but I’ll be using a 12 volt car battery for a big job soon.
Happened to me this morning. Fired up a R8s for a base that was hooked up to an external battery. No go. Put the little battery in, all good.
Is your serial port fried? Did you check the fuse on your SAE cable? Some people will put a larger value fuse in the line because the fuse keeps popping. Then bad things happen when the larger value fuse doesn’t pop and they’ve fried the receiver.
Unit is brand new. I’m not using the serial port (does not accept power in or out on R8s btw), I’m using the lemo 7 pin (port 1). We dont put larger fuses on any cables. If you have any recommended amperage for those fuses, I can check if my company uses the right ones.
Especially if you hook up a 35w radio that starts drawing some real power.
Do your cables have the right pin alignments with respect to the receiver port?
We are using official trimble Y lemo cables from our usual Trimble dealer.
The last Y-Cable we bought from a reputable survey dealer was ~$400. Don’t buy cheap knock-off junk from Amazon. You get what you pay for.
I’m not buying things on amazon. If I would it would be related on shipping delay times of our trimble dealer.
Seems to me the archaeologist should call a surveyor, and then you can focus on digging.
Thanks for that idea but archaeology budgets are not the same as big construction companies and what not. We have to learn everyting by ourselves, we can’t afford surveyors and we are paid with peanuts…
That being said thanks for your help!
- Posted by: @tonyduky
Unit is brand new. I’m not using the serial port (does not accept power in or out on R8s btw), I’m using the lemo 7 pin (port 1).
Well, according to this Trimble R8s datasheet, the unit is capable: https://geospatial.trimble.com/sites/geospatial.trimble.com/files/2019-03/Datasheet%20-%20Trimble%20R8s%20GNSS%20System%20-%20English%20USL%20-%20Screen.pdf
ELECTRICAL
? Power 10.5 V DC to 28 V DC external power input with over-voltage protection on Port
1 (7-pin Lemo)COMMUNICATIONS AND DATA STORAGE
? Serial: 3-wire serial (7-pin Lemo) on Port 1; full RS-232 serial (Dsub 9 pin) on Port 2 I can’t seem to edit my last post, but if you go into the receiver WebUI, under: Receiver Configuration>General there should be some drop downs for “Autobase”, “Operation Mode”, and “Internal Battery UPS“. Every Trimble receiver I’ve seen seems to have that “Disable” by default. If you switch it to “Enable”, your receiver will run off an external power source until that source is terminated, and then the internal battery will take over.
I’ve not had problems with any receivers with “proper” external power sources only, starting with 4000 model receivers.
@michigan-left thanks this is exactly what i was looking for!
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