First Test of the Triumph-LS Plus: Real World Productivity Increased by 310%

Matt Johnson

Matt Johnson

Well-Known Member
5PLS
John Evers and I had the first opportunity to conduct a test of a Triumph-LS Plus on Saturday. We used a GNSS antenna splitter with an external GNSS antenna connected to a Triumph-LS and a new Triumph-LS Plus so that the two receivers were receiving and processing exactly the same signals. The external antenna was setup in the woods under a tree with dense branches.

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The test lasted just under 5 hours. The default Boundary profile which resets the RTK engines with the RTK Verification and Validation processes and requires observations to be at least 180 seconds was used on both units. The Triumph-LS Plus collected 70 points using all 4 constellation (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou) while the LS with 6 engine GPS and GLONASS firmware collected 17 points. With the increased processing power in the Triumph-LS Plus and the addition of Galileo and BeiDou, the real world productivity was increased by 310%! The Triumph-LS took an average of 17 minutes to collect a point while the Triumph-LS Plus average 4 minutes per point.

Many BeiDou satellites were being tracked and used by the Triumph-LS Plus, 12 as seen in this screenshot.

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The 4th RTK engine was configured to only use BeiDou and seemed to be rapidly and reliably acquiring fixes.

Based on results of this test, purchasing or upgrading to a Triumph-LS Plus with a base that tracks all 4 constellation (Triumph-1M or the new Triumph-3) will be a great investment that will be sure to increase your productivity in challenging environments under tree canopy.
 
Steve Douty

Steve Douty

Well-Known Member
That is great. However, as I read it, there is not yet a comparison of the LS to the LS Plus using a T-3, M-1 or LS as a base and the same settings (using all 4 constellation (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and BeiDou) and the same profiles) on both the LS and the LS Plus.

What I am trying to ask is; How does the LS compare to the LS Plus? The test you ran appears to give great results but it looks to me like you handicaped the LS and set it up so that the LS Plus was guaranteed to win.

I just ordered a T-3 and want to know what the performance jump would be if I upgrade my LS to an LS Plus. And it looks like James is asking what is the difference between an LS to LS setup verses an LS Plus to LS Plus setup verses an LS to LS Plus setup?
 
Darren Clemons

Darren Clemons

Well-Known Member
Javad said:
Stay tuned! Yet another major advancement to be announced for the TLS plus.
Click to expand...
I, for one, would rather get notified when I can send off and get the LS+ upgrade before I get very excited about the “next thing” so we can finally see some benefit of having Galileo and BeiDou. Basically, none of us have seen virtually ANY increase in performance of the LS since the upgrade to allow it to use Galileo and Beidou. The multi constellation 6 engine firmware we never used after trying it a few times. It didn’t work well at all in canopy. The 2 engine multiple constellation firmware showed promise at the start but after a couple weeks we abandoned it as well as it bogs down the current processor too much. We’ve been back on the old “standard” 6 engine GPS/Glonass for some time now so we’re not enjoying any benefits for our upgrades in our T1M bases to use the other two constellations.
 
Javad

Javad

Administrator
Staff member
JAVAD GNSS
5PLS
Darren, why don't you contact Michael to add you to our weekly video conference call to update you and discuss details. We can add to some limit to others who are interested.
 
Darren Clemons

Darren Clemons

Well-Known Member
Javad said:
Darren, why don't you contact Michael to add you to our weekly video conference call to update you and discuss details. We can add to some limit to others who are interested.
Click to expand...
Thanks Javad. I’ve been staying in contact with Michael via email and I know things are “getting close”. None of us ever dreamed we’d be dealing with what we have for the past month. I’m certain getting much out at the production level has been extremely limited.
Sorry to get off topic on the thread!
 
Nate The Surveyor

Nate The Surveyor

Well-Known Member
Reducing this subject to numbers:
Start with the absolute numbers, or coords, via a total station. Direct, and reverse.
Something to get high confidence, turning angles off a long backsite, inst point, and then a sideshot to a point in the open, then a sideshots to the "difficult gps point" total of 4 or 5 coords.
Then, observe these same 4-5 points with rtk. So that we get:
Absolute difference, between rtk, and total sta.
And how long it takes.
Using a signal splitter, and remote gps antenna is great.
Ultimately,
We want to know
1.) Difference between rtk shot, and where it actually was.
2.) How much faster.
That's all we really need to know.
All our clients want is good data.
All we want is super fast.
That's all.
N
 
Steve Douty

Steve Douty

Well-Known Member
Darren,

We have three TLS units. As a test we ran an LS as a base and one LS as a rover with full (all 4) constellations with a second LS rover setting beside it (within three feet) using only GPS/Glonass. Then switched the rovers and repeated the exercise. We found that the full constellation unit was much faster than the GPS/Glonass unit. We were in a nasty spot - Using the 6 engine firmware with the full constellation LS; just the GNSS/Glonass options on the other LS rover and the boundary profile with both LS units. We got good fix with the full constellations unit as a rover within 250 seconds several times - repeated and run to accept. With the LS GPS/Glonass only unit we did not have a fix/accept solution within 15 minutes.

When we did that field comparison I came back to the office and ordered the T-3 that day. If the T-3 had not been an option I would have ordered another LS. We have been running one system LS rover and LS base; and a second system T-2 base and LS rover. I can't wait to get the T-3. We are convinced it will pay for itself within the first month. (12 points per hour in canopy verses 4 points per hour.)
 
Darren Clemons

Darren Clemons

Well-Known Member
Steve Douty said:
Darren,

We have three TLS units. As a test we ran an LS as a base and one LS as a rover with full (all 4) constellations with a second LS rover setting beside it (within three feet) using only GPS/Glonass. Then switched the rovers and repeated the exercise. We found that the full constellation unit was much faster than the GPS/Glonass unit. We were in a nasty spot - Using the 6 engine firmware with the full constellation LS; just the GNSS/Glonass options on the other LS rover and the boundary profile with both LS units. We got good fix with the full constellations unit as a rover within 250 seconds several times - repeated and run to accept. With the LS GPS/Glonass only unit we did not have a fix/accept solution within 15 minutes.

When we did that field comparison I came back to the office and ordered the T-3 that day. If the T-3 had not been an option I would have ordered another LS. We have been running one system LS rover and LS base; and a second system T-2 base and LS rover. I can't wait to get the T-3. We are convinced it will pay for itself within the first month. (12 points per hour in canopy verses 4 points per hour.)
Click to expand...
Steve, we did several similar tests as well, but didn’t quite see as good a results as you did. We’ve got the T1M bases with all 4 constellations enabled. The 6 engine multiple constellation firmware just never performed very well in our experience. It is very “dialed down” with only using 2 of 4 constellations in any particular engine and only 2 signals from those two specific constellations. For instance, if, whatever time you “happen” to be in the bad spot any specific constellation (especially the Galileo or BeiDou) were “thin”, then that basically killed off 2 of the 6 engines trying to get a fix - leaving only 4 with, still, limited signals. We also saw it collect significantly more “bad shots” in our standard boundary profile.
As I mentioned before, my first experiences with the 2 engine 4 constellation firmware were very, very good. We had some tests where we had rovers set side by side and the 2 engine firmware collected about 3:1 in amount of shots. What we found however, was in the run of a day, once the LS started getting bogged down, we were spending and wasting more time than we were saving, switching, rebooting and wondering “which one to use”, so we just chucked it and went back to the “standard” firmware.

If I’m out with the LS myself, I still do use the 2 engine firmware on some spots (won’t use the 6 engine multi constellation firmware at all) but I instructed my crews to all stay on the standard GPS/Glonass.

There’s probably no doubt the new T3 and an LS plus should take us all to a level we never thought we’d get to, but with my heavy testing and results, the current setup of multiple firmwares just didn’t get us that big of a jump.
 
Matthew D. Sibole

Matthew D. Sibole

Well-Known Member
5PLS
Today’s test was 3 hours 12 minutes.

I used Adams settings for the 2 engine firmware.

240 sec
1 engine
0 consistency
2 epochs
2 confidence
180 min phase 1 duration
1 RTK engine

LS+ 34 points stored. No bad shots.
All points fall within 0.186’ or 0.093’ radius.
Average of 5 min 28 seconds per shot.

Old LS with 2 engine firmware stored 16 shots. No bad shots stored. All shots fall within 0.162’ or a radius of 0.081’
Average of 11 minutes 13 seconds per shot.
 
Shawn Billings

Shawn Billings

Shawn Billings
5PLS
Matthew D. Sibole said:
Today’s test was 3 hours 12 minutes.

I used Adams settings for the 2 engine firmware.

240 sec
1 engine
0 consistency
2 epochs
2 confidence
180 min phase 1 duration
1 RTK engine

LS+ 34 points stored. No bad shots.
All points fall within 0.186’ or 0.093’ radius.
Average of 5 min 28 seconds per shot.

Old LS with 2 engine firmware stored 16 shots. No bad shots stored. All shots fall within 0.162’ or a radius of 0.081’
Average of 11 minutes 13 seconds per shot.
Click to expand...

That's fantastic. The 2 engine multi-constellation is already faster than GPS + GLO, so this is a huge leap.

Regarding your statistics, is this from the review screen or the cluster average screen? The review screen statistics are not good and only show the radius based on zoom level. Cluster average gives good spreads.
 
Javad

Javad

Administrator
Staff member
JAVAD GNSS
5PLS
The review screen is very good and reliable. It shows the spread visually and numerically. Zoom out until you see most of the points are in the square and view the peak to peak.
 
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