IStar and Leica C10 What Additional Equipment is Handy?

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IStar and Leica C10 What Additional Equipment is Handy?

Post by PDXBPA »

I have lucked out and my City of Portland micro grant to fund the addition of an IStar Fusion camera to support our Leica C10 for Crime Scene Documentation is near approval.

Other IStar users out there.. What additional equipment do you recommend including with the package?


1. Leica C10 Extension TriBrac adaptor (Obviously)
2. Case? (Is it worth the cost? I'm assuming a pelican could be substituted in pretty easily.)
3. Extra battery?
4. Some high speed SD Cards? (Will card speed affect the HDR Capture time at all?)
5. A second matching TriBrac base to operate a two tripod work flow?
6. Software? Kolor Auto Pano Giga? (Is the IStar plug worth the cost of this software to accompany Kolor Auto Pano Tour Pro to export Pano Tours of crime scenes or site survey image capture only?
7. (A phone to operate the shutter release? etc.)

Other Important Stuff you wish you had to make the system complete?

Goal is increasing the speed of on scene capture / documentation.

All suggestions appreciated!
Ken Jones
Portland Police Bureau
Portland, Oregon USA.
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Re: IStar and Leica C10 What Additional Equipment is Handy?

Post by 3DForensics »

Hi Ken,

Just my two cents, (although I cannot comment directly on C10 or software as I use the iStar mainly for recolouring the Focus scans), but in terms of extra hardware, I would recommend:

1. Case: or a similar one that is rugged.
2. Extra battery. I don't know how many times the extra battery on my scanner has save my butt.
3. At least one additional card. It's unlikely you'll take that many photos in one session to fill the card, but when a card goes bad or you forget one, it's good to have another on hand.

I wouldn't bother with the extra tribrach base, but others might suggest it for the C10 depending on how long it takes to setup. During daytime conditions, the photo capture is quite fast. At night and with full HDR, then it might make sense. However, working two tripods at once can get rather inefficient and I prefer to stay focused.

I imagine that once you recolour the point clouds, you could get TrueView to work? Otherwise, Kolor might be an option.

Cheers,

Eugene
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Re: IStar and Leica C10 What Additional Equipment is Handy?

Post by colhum1 »

PDXBPA wrote:I have lucked out and my City of Portland micro grant to fund the addition of an IStar Fusion camera to support our Leica C10 for Crime Scene Documentation is near approval.

Other IStar users out there.. What additional equipment do you recommend including with the package?


1. Leica C10 Extension TriBrac adaptor (Obviously)
2. Case? (Is it worth the cost? I'm assuming a pelican could be substituted in pretty easily.)
3. Extra battery?
4. Some high speed SD Cards? (Will card speed affect the HDR Capture time at all?)
5. A second matching TriBrac base to operate a two tripod work flow?
6. Software? Kolor Auto Pano Giga? (Is the IStar plug worth the cost of this software to accompany Kolor Auto Pano Tour Pro to export Pano Tours of crime scenes or site survey image capture only?
7. (A phone to operate the shutter release? etc.)

Other Important Stuff you wish you had to make the system complete?

Goal is increasing the speed of on scene capture / documentation.

All suggestions appreciated!
Ken Jones
Portland Police Bureau
Portland, Oregon USA.
Hi Ken,
from my limited experience of using iSTAR & C10 :lol:

Tribrach extension is a must but speak to NCTech and that should come together with the iSTAR in a small peli case, along with its charger etc.

My unit came with a spare battery, however I invested in a Tracer battery pack, which is fantastic. Lasts for ages and with spare leads also does my iPhone and iPad too.

Additional tribrach..? Save your $$ and don't bother.

The software that comes with iSTAR is now very good with virtually no stitch errors.

When you process your images, you'll get an option to export out pano images as well as bundle them together with a copy of Immersive viewer which allows you to drop them onto a CD or SD card for easy distribution.

Of course the huge advantage of iSTAR is that with NCTech's free ColourCloud you colour your C10 scans in a few mouse clicks.

We also use Pano2VR pro. This allows us to make a pano tour of the crime or RTC scene, so users can walk around from setup to setup and I've used this a few times now in our Crown Courts. Incidentally we've found that insurance companies like it too and having a copy at an early stage gives them an opportunity to perhaps settle a claim quickly.

iSTAR has built in wifi and connects to windows iOS and android phones tablets and laptops.

Hi speed SD cards help but I've never filled my 32gb one yet..!

The fastest way I've found to use both bits of kit at a scene is:

Set up tripod with tribrach and level.
Have iSTAR mounted on its extension and place on the tripod and using 'walk around mode' take your image.
Swap it then for the C10 and either do a Low res scan or med res scan.

Hit std setup on the C10, now move to your next station and repeat.

Back in the office run cyclone and import your C10 data.
Copy the all iSTAR data (iSTAR puts each into its own folder) from the SD to your computer but into a new folder.
Tidy each individual scan and export as e57 straight into the relevant iSTAR folder.
Now drag the whole folder containing the iSTAR data into ColourCloud.
New coloured e57 files are produced...return to cyclone and right click on the project..import ...
navigate to your coloured e57s...click cntrl+select these and batch import and register.

Quite painless....there are different ways to do it but this is the way that suits me...you can register then export out if you prefer which can be handy if you've used targets.

If you want speed in the field then I suggest forget targets as these can literally add an hour or more to your total time at the scene. A strategically placed big red Leica C10 box (with lid up if not wet or windy ) will give you plenty to go at during registration :D

Hope that helps...

Colin
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Re: IStar and Leica C10 What Additional Equipment is Handy?

Post by Jamesrye »

Hi Ken,

We are using an iSTAR with a C10 - an extra battery is a must as well as a spare SD card, as they fill up pretty quick.

The pain is that there is no batch exporter for Cyclone, so you have to export the scans one at a time for ColorCloud. So when you're working on a huge project with 100's of scans, you might prefer to export the scans all at once to .e57 and then import the data into Scene or use Recap to batch export the individual scans. I urge every iSTAR user to complain about this to Leica - as people have been asking for a batch export function for ages.

It can also be troublesome to know which scan goes with which image - as it's often faster on site to image at the next scan location whilst the scanner is doing it's thing.

The other slight downside is that you're truviews will have 'black skies' at the moment.

Istar and ColorCloud are brilliant though - stitching is great and the video-fly through's that we can produce for clients are excellent.
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Re: IStar and Leica C10 What Additional Equipment is Handy?

Post by PDXBPA »

Eugene, James and Colin,

Great work flows. Thank you very much! I will check on the spare battery options! We have a dedicated IPad fro the C10. Having a charger for that could be handy when in the sticks.

Looking forward to some actual color data on low light scenes (outdoors in the inner city, strip clubs, one light bulb trailers and the like....)

We have eight people scanning so I'm hopeful we can figure a way to ensure we get accurate notes or digitally mark the IStar file names to the appropriate ScanWorld.
I do find the lack of non scanned Areas going black (Or assigning The background x color in The TruView ) to potentially be a pain the rear. We don't have a lot of time to spend cube mapping 7-10 scan stations then using Cyclone to map the image to the cloud just for a TruView. I have noted the distance is contextually important beyond the reach of the scanner. Line of sight, back drop questions show buildings and hills that are not captured by scan data. Hopefully Leica oe 3rd party software will resolve this in time along with the batch import function.

Has anyone used Arena 4D and it's TruView integration links yet?
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Re: IStar and Leica C10 What Additional Equipment is Handy?

Post by LeicaUK_RC »

Jamesrye wrote:The other slight downside is that you're truviews will have 'black skies' at the moment.
James,

You can get the imagery back into Cyclone if you use the cube map creator (I can send you this program) and add using the images texture map browser in Cyclone. I know its a real pain for each ScanWorld but at least it can be done nether the less.
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Re: IStar and Leica C10 What Additional Equipment is Handy?

Post by pburrows145 »

I have to say I was very impressed with ColourCloud when I last saw it. Certainly helps add great colour to older units such as the C10. P20/16/30/40 now have HDR so it's less vital, but the sheer speed of the iStar is great for faster onsite workflow. I look forward to some (hopefully non-gruesome) posts of the data you capture with the C10 + Fusion.
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Re: IStar and Leica C10 What Additional Equipment is Handy?

Post by Jamesrye »

Paul,

Time to capture HDR with P20/16/30/40 depends on lighting conditions but can be 5-6 mins. Istar capture time is a mere 60 seconds or so - it's also much easier to stay out of the camera image. No more scanner-dance.

ColorCloud perfectly applies the RGB to the point cloud in my experience.

I am tendering for a large job overseas where the client want's quality imagery applied to the point cloud. They also want me to deliver the point cloud data in country, so I can't spend ages out there colourising the cloud. The lack of a batch exporter function in Cyclone precludes my using a Leica scanner for the job. The long image capture time on the internal cameras on the P20/16/30/40 means that I will probably end up hiring a Faro X330 as it's internal camera only takes 2mins and 30 seconds to acquire imagery. Though I guess that I could use the istar coupled with a Faro scanner as SCENE supports batch exporting.

Phil,

Thanks for the solution regarding the 'black skies', I have used a cube map creator to solve the issue myself, but on a project with hundreds of scans, it's not really a viable option.

Regards,

James.
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