Using UNI-Collect for the first time

Welcome to UNI-Collect!

Welcome to the easy to use, affordable and complete surveying app UNI-Collect! Within UNI-Collect you are able to measure anything you want, from gardens to plotboundaries to pipes and cables, to anything you can image. You can use your phone or tablet to measure, or to get a centimeter acurate location, the UNI-GRx or an external GNSS receiver with bluetooth.

Wether you are an experienced surveyor or a first time user, you will be able to start measuring within a few minutes and make full use of all features! Within this article, you will get a short walkthrough to measuring your first point in your first project, so let's get started!

Creating your UNI-Cloud account

To measure within UNI-Collect, you will need a UNI-Cloud account. This account will link the data you measure or create in UNI-Collect to our cloud environment, ensuring all your data is stored safely and is accessible from any device at any time.

Create a trial account and get 30-days of free access to try the app and the cloud for yourself. You can create your account here. After creating your account, you are able to download the app from either the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store. You can now use your newly created credentials to log into UNI-Collect.

Steps to measuring your first point

It's finally time to create your first project and measure your first point! The app will help us set up the first project and will show us the steps that we need to fulfill.

To create your first project, press the "add project" button in the middle of the app. This will bring us to the list of tasks to create your first project;

Creating accurate projectsettings

Here we will create the settings that we will link to your first project. These settings set the minimum accuracy that you would need to measure a point, the minimal solution needed to measure that point, the poleheight of your surveyingpole and the measuring time.

At the top of the screen you can fill in the name of the setting you are currently creating, this can be anything you want it to be! In this situation we suggest calling it something like "test settings", just to specify that these were used during your test.

Next you see 3 options regarding the minimal solution needed to measure a point;

• RTK Fix, when you use a UNI-GRx or a different GNSS receiver that is able to receive data corrections then this is the solution for the highest accuracy
• RTK Float, when you use a UNI-GRx or a different GNSS receiver that is able to receive data corrections this setting can be used when centimeter accuracy is not necessary, but an accuracy of, for example, 50 centimeter would also be enough.
• Single, this can be used by either your tablet or any GNSS receiver, it will solely use the GNSS chips of your chosen device without the use of data corrections.

For the sake of testing and measuring your first point, we will select Single.

The minimal accuracy sets the maximum deviation with which you can measure. If you want to measure with a maximum deviation of for example 5 centimeter, you can enter 5. For this example we want more "wiggleroom" and we are going to measure using the tablet's internal GPS chip, so we will enter 1000 (10 meters).

The time you want to measure can greatly improve the accuracy of your measurements. The time you enter here is the time it takes the UNI-Collect app to store your point. During that time it will continuously gather GNSS data and it will create an average position based on that data, getting your more accurate results. For now, we can leave that on 1 second.

Last, we can enter the height at which the tablet or GNSS receiver is from the ground. The measured height will automatically be corrected with the height you enter here. Most surveying poles are 2 meters from the ground, but in our testcase we will leave it at 0 centimeter. The final checkbox is specified when using a UNI-GRx on a surveying pole and compensates the small height difference between pole, adapter and GNSS antenna.

When you have entered all the requested information, you can press the save button on the bottomleft. This brings you back to the steps to create a project and as you can see, we just checked off one of the boxes, great job!

Creating Layers

Layers are used to group and identify your measurements. For example, if you are measuring pipes and cables, you can create a layer for a specific cable type or specific material. When you measure a point, the app will ask you in which layer you want to store it and will give it the colour that you have decided for the layer.

First, we will give our layer a name. This can be anything you want, but keeping our above example alive, we will name this layer trench (but it can be anything you like).

Below that, you can give the layer a description, this step is optional. If there are specific circumstances to use this layer, you can mention that here. Or maybe provide additional information regarding the layer or specify who created the layer, it's fully up to you!

The layer colour is pretty self-explanatory, this is the colour that the layer has when you measure a point or line. I feel like a trench should have a a brownish colour, so that is what I will choose, but you are the artist so you can choose the colour!

The last part are the attributes, these are the options or text that you want to add to your layer. For example, if you measure a cable in the layer "cable", you might want to specify what kind of cable you are measuring. You can add options so the person measuring can choose the appropriate option or you can add a text field so the person measuring can type it themself. Every attribute you create can be made mandatory to fill in, but if it's not necessary to have it filled in everywhere or everytime, you can turn mandatory off and leave it blank if you want.

That's the final step, you have just created your first layer. To save the layer, you press the save button on the bottomleft of the screen and now you can see that we have just completed step 2. Now we're cooking!

Creating your first project

It is time to set up your first project, finally!

First we have to give our project a name, this can be anything you want. Maybe you have a specific projectnumber that you use to identify projects or an address where you are doing your surveying. For now, we will keep it simple and name it "Test project", since that's what we're doing. After that you can give a projectdescription this step is optional. If you have a small addition to the projectname or want to link specific information, you can enter that there, but we will keep it empty for now.

Now we have to enter which Coördinate Reference System (CRS) we want to use. the UNI-Collect app automatically converts the measurements to the correct coördinates. The Coördinate Reference Systems are grouped per country, since different countries often use different coördinate systems or use more than one. First search for your country and select it, then you can choose which Coördinate Reference System you want to use. Since we are located in the Netherlands, we will choose the Netherlands in the country selector and use our local Coördinate Reference System, which is "Amersfoort / RD NAP 2018).

Last, we will select our projectsettings which we created earlier. Here we have specified the minimum requirements to measure a point and ensures that everything within this project is measured within a specific accuracy. You get a drop-down menu of all created projectsettings, but for now we will use our "test" projectsetting.

Now we can press the save button again and our first project is ready to go!

Connecting to the UNI-GRx or external GNSS receiver

The next step is to connect to the UNI-GRx or external GNSS receiver. When you press on the next step you get 3 options, UNI (which is a UNI-GRx), the tablet (SM-T860 in our case) or bluetooth. When you select the UNI, the tablet will scan for nearby WiFi signals from a UNI-GRx. If there is one in range, it will be shown in the list and, when you select it, it will forward you to the WiFi settings of the tablet to connect to the UNI-GRx's WiFi. The password for the UNI-GRx's WiFi is always "marxact-uni" (all lower case). When you select bluetooth, you get the request from the UNI-Collect app to gain access to the bluetooth information of the tablet. Then it will search for nearby bluetooth devices and you can select your GNSS receiver from the list. Can't find it in the list, double check if your GNSS receiver has it's bluetooth turned on and that it's visible. Finally, when you select the tablet, it will use it's internal location to measure within your project. In our case, we will use the tablet for now. When you select the tablet, you will directly see that next step is done and you are ready to measure your first point!

Measuring your first point!

When you press that step, you will be forwarded into the project and you will get a few pointers of what you can see on your screen. First you will see a map where you can see your location. If the screen appears blue or if your locationmarker is not visible, you can press the button above the plus on the bottomright if your screen, this will bring you to your location. If that still doesn't show your location, it might be that the location is not coming through, take a step outside or put it close to a window to provide the tablet with a location.

In the top right we can see the current accuracy, the deviation and the amount of satelites in sight. If you have an accuracy of 10 meters or lower, you are within the minimal requirements to measure and the plus button on the bottomright is pressable, if the deviation is higher than 10 meters, you are not able to press that plus button.

When you press that plus button, you will measure your first point. The app will then ask you for a name, maybe a unique identifier for the object you are measuring or anything else that can help you identify the point, but that is entirely optional. Next you can select the layer in which you want to store your point, here we can select our newly created layer "Trench" and we can save the point. You will see that the point becomes your selected colour and it will be assigned to your chosen layer. That's all there is to it, yes it is that easy, you just measured your first point!

Exporting your project

Now that you have measured your first point, you might want to use this information in your software of choice, for example Autocad, Sketchup or Vectorworks or you want to have your data provided in an excelformat (CSV). To do this, we press the 3 dots on the bottom of the screen, this will give us extra options. In these options, you see the option "export", when you press this you can select the cloud and export to a DWG/DXF file which are commonly used for different technical drawing software or as a CSV. When you choose either, you can export the project to our cloud environment and download your exported project from you computer or workstation.

Synchronize your project

Finally, to fully back-up your project and make it accessible from your computer or workstation, we want to also synchronize your project to the UNI cloud. To do this, we close our project by pressing the arrow on the topleft of the screen, this brings us to our projectoverview. To synchronize the data with the cloud, you press the cloud icon on the top left and press "start synchronisation" and after a few seconds all information is send to the cloud and you are completely up-to-date with all projects! You can log into the UNI-Cloud here.

There is so much more!

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the possibilities of UNI-Collect and surveying with the UNI-GRx.

We haven't even discussed the importing of Klic or importing drawings or CSV's. Not even mentioning calculating volume, offsetting points or calculating square footage. Correct, but we have now covered that basics to start surveying with UNI-Collect. We encourage you to play around within the app and find all the different possibilities.

Do you think surveying might be something for you and would you like to start surveying with centimeter accuracy, check out our UNI-Complete package to start off right away. You can request a demonstration on sight and one of our colleagues will show you all the in's and out's of the UNI-GRx and all the possibilities of UNI-Collect!