Possible reasons for issues related to connections to total stations

There are a multitude of possible reasons why the connection to a total station instrument may fail or get lost. The following list may help you finding and eliminating the reason of failure.

Note - This list provides an overview over some of the main issues that may appear when connecting a total station to Trimble 4D Control Server. Trimble does not guarantee in any way for the list to be complete.

Issues related to the instrument

• Instrument has no power
• Instrument is not leveled (no tilt)
• Power port / COM port: Mismatching cables
• Identification issues: PUK needs to be entered / PIN erroneous / others

Issues related to the cable (hardware)

• Loose contact
• Broken cable
• With a serial connection: wrong cable type (null modem) in use
• Broken port at computer (especially the serial port is often instable)
• USB to serial converter (some converters seem to work worse compared to a real serial port)
• USB Hubs - if a hub is used, all instrument should be connected to this hub (due to Trimble optical position communication components)

Issues related to the cable (software)

• Wrong version of the Trimble optical position communication components
• Different versions of the Trimble optical position communication components/ versions too old
• Data Collector module configuration: Wrong COM port selected (serial connection type only)
• Port blocked by a different application (serial connection type only)

Issues related to the radio (hardware)

• Radio has no power/ battery is empty
• Mismatch of radio settings at Trimble 4D Control Server / radio
• Radio is not connected / connected to wrong port
• Instrument is out of range
• Too many instruments (up to 5 are allowed) with same configuration
• Radio LED is off

Issues related to the radio (software)

• Wrong version of Trimble optical position communication components
• Different versions of Trimble optical position communication components / versions too old
• Data Collector module configuration: Wrong COM port selected
• Port blocked by a different application
• Instrument is not in the Monitoring mode (Survey mode is not allowed)