which is what we've been using in the past. This piece of equipment requires electronics
and a battery to operate. Additionally it's going to require some advanced leveling to
make sure that everything is calibrated correctly to the surface of the Earth,
and any small adjustments that you might make could affect the leveling of this
instrument. Now I'm going to be demonstrating how to set up a total station using a Sokkia
SX series. It really doesn't matter what you use the procedure is the same so follow along and
look at all the small details that I do in order to set up my total station. Your total station,
no matter what brand it is, will be the exact same procedure. Okay let's get our equipment.
Once our tripod is over the point, we're going to go ahead and pull out
the total station and place it right on top of the tripod.
Once the total station is on top of the tripod,
go ahead and tighten it below, so that it's nice and secure on the tripod.
Now it's important that your instrument is set up right over this point, and when I say right over
I mean quite literally right over that point. Here's how you do it. Every total station has
one of these on the side of it. This site right here on the side allows us to look down on the
bottom and see where the instrument is directly over. When we look now we can see that well it's
not quite over our point, so we're going to need to move it over just a bit. The way I recommend
that you do this take two of the legs in both of your hands look into the sight, lift the tripod
and keep one leg on the ground. That's a loud motorcycle. Once doing so bring the
instrument backward and forward until you find the point. Once you find it,
set it down gently you don't have to be perfect but come close to the center of the point.
Once you've found the point through your viewfinder go ahead and step on the legs
and embed the tripod into the ground. Now I know it's hard to see on this particular brand,
but you'll find that there is a bubble right here and that will help you level out the instrument to
a closer precision. Some brands actually put the bubble in a visible place so if you're lucky and
you have the bubble somewhere visible, go ahead and look at it and try to figure out what you need
to do with the legs to adjust the total station. And being more level I can tell by looking at this
bubble that our total station is leaning forward just a bit too much, so I'm going to lift this
leg up just a little bit so it's a little bit more level. What I'm going to do here is I'm going to
step on the leg so that it doesn't go anywhere. I'm going to loosen the leg and I'm going to
raise the instrument just a bit so that it's more level. Once I'm satisfied I'll tighten up the leg,
when I look at this bubble now it looks to be a bit more in the center. So now we have a much
better foundation to start before we turn on the instrument. All right, we've now leveled the total
station to a point where it's relatively flat with the tripod. It's also relatively close to being
right over the point of occupation. Now we turn it on just going to go and press the power button.
The first thing that pops up is this digital level screen. As you can see, we still have a lot of
leveling to do. Leveling out a total station is extremely critical, it's the difference
between making sure your data is accurate and your data being completely thrown off because
your occupation is off. If your initial setup is incorrect, then everything that you are going to
collect isn't going to be relatively positioned correctly based off the physical location of the
point. What we're really doing is calibrating the equipment to fit into the real world. All right,
let's finish up this leveling process. Now similar to a differential level,
there are three knobs on the bottom to help level out the instrument. When doing two knobs together,
you'll make the instrument move left and right, one knob by itself will move the instrument up
and down with the assistance of the digital level screen I'm able to see which direction my bubble
is going. The slightest adjustments to these knobs can actually influence the bubble quite
drastically. I'm doing some final adjustments here just to make sure that this is coming into
the correct position. Now all that's left is to bring the bubble down just a bit,
bring this bubble into the right --
See when I do that, it goes back, so I have to go back and forth, and the -- the slightest
adjustments make the biggest difference when it comes to leveling a total station
keep that in mind.
We're getting very close here,
some final adjustments. All right, I'm going to go ahead and call that good. Your margin of error
should be below 10 seconds. If you're between 1 and 10 seconds that's relatively acceptable.
All right, the next thing we need to do is look through our viewfinder to see the point below us.
The goal now is to make sure that we are exactly over our point of interest, and then I take a look
here. We're slightly just below where we need to be -- we're close, but we're just below where we
need to be. We want to be right in the center of that dot and that circle. All right, so what I'm
going to do is I'm going to loosen up this little screw, but not all the way. All right, now I have
the ability to slightly move the instrument. What I'm going to do is I'm going to look
through the viewfinder and position myself just over the point. I'm going to move up just a bit
there. Now I'm right over the point. All right, now I'm going to go ahead and lock this back up
and when we look at the screen you'll notice something that's right we're not completely
leveled like we were before, which means we have to readjust again. So I'm gonna move this over
just a bit. Remember the slightest adjustment will make the biggest difference. Then we're gonna go
up and over – okay, there looks good. One more look under make sure we're still over the point