(I’m aware the survey pole has standard threading, I’m choosing to post here on the RS3 Hardware category for better visibility)
So our team purchased Emlid Survey Poles along with our RS3’s and while they’re good quality, I’d like to ask Emlid to add markings at each extension clamp.
Recently as we were starting a project in the field, I saw a co-worker had their RS3 setup, connected to our CORS network, and was ready to go. But something didn’t look right…
I asked to take a look and upon inspection, one of the sections wasn’t fully extended, making the pole less than the 1.8m that it should be AND that we have set in our data collection app. This could have been a costly error: all our points would have had incorrect heights, meaning our processed datasets would have all be bad.
If Emlid could make a mark on each section to show that it is full extended (or even modify it to have a “snapping” or “locking in”, it would be very much appreciated. Having a pole that can collapse is great especially with all the gear we lug around, but if this kind of error had gone unnoticed it really would have been a mess.
Thank you for sharing your good experience with our products and for sharing a detailed explanation of your experience with the survey pole and the challenges you faced in the field.
Your suggestion to add markings or implement a snapping/locking mechanism to ensure the pole is fully extended sounds like a practical and valuable improvement. I’ll add it to our feature request list and pass it along to our development team. Let me know if you have any other ideas or questions! If you have any other ideas or feedback, feel free to share.
yeah, this is exactly what I’m talking about. Having at minimum the etched lines is important, but something that is more “mechanical” in locking the fully extended pole would be best. It’s too risky to think there wouldn’t be user error, and it would be impossible to know by how much your points were off vertically, or even if the error was for all of them. The only solution to realizing you had an improper height set, is to redo all measurements, and that could be costly.
Ideally it could have an internal mechanical detent in each of the clamps. E.g. the clamp internally locks into a hole in the inner tubes once they had slid out.
For Emlid: If for aesthetic or other reasons the pole was fixed for 1.8m only - with the hole in each section only just emerging at full extension and therefore remaining hidden under each of the clamps - I would be happy. Or maybe a hybrid approach with mechanical detent at 1.8m, and variable shorter lengths friction clamped at user discretion
This is a very good suggestion. I make sure to have an Allen wrench to be able to tighten the clamps because I have had issues with the pole maintaining the full height. If I were a full-time surveyor, I would not use the Emlid pole for this reason. As it is, I find myself checking the pole frequently to ensure it is fully extended.
