An unexpected day spent on the Trupulse. This morning realized the azimuth readings were not as reliable as I required. 2 degrees of error at 28.4 meters is roughly a meter off! This is way beyond the 20 cm I am shooting for all leaf and climate readings, which matches the airborne waveform LiDAR spatial error of 15 cm.
So my first step was to develop an alternate method for minimizing spatial error during calculation of offset angles. This took me to Hilo Steel where, instead of 200 as Lasertech would have asked, I built one for 5 dollars. See below.
This was pretty great until I realized on the drive home it was made of solid steel. The aluminum I was using originally cracked when we tried to make the 90 degree angle turn in it. Man….
Then I checked the camera tripods we are using to mount the Trupulse and realized they have metal screws, resulting in potential errors of 2 degree if the Laser is placed within 5 cm, unfortunately the location where they are if positioned like a normal camera.
So after all the work at the steel works I ended up ordering the 220$ setup from Trupulse and hopefully it will arrive by Tuesday. This keeps the laser compass at least 10 cm from the tripod and therefore no magnetic errors, so all is well. See a picture below of the mounting equipment just ordered:
Sweet. hopefully this will reduce spatial errors associated with the laser from 40 cm to < 20 cm as hoped.
The beauty of the new system is we won’t have to deal with offset errors when calculated locations at inclinations, with the old system the laser actually offsets itself up to 10 cm, the new one pivots at the laser center point removing this error. :)
