Procedure for Automatically Starting the Survey Program

This procedure is intended to allow a user to configure a project in the HYPACK MAX software and then start recording position data automatically without any user intervention. This is to recover from a loss of power and start logging data as soon as the computer is restarted. It was originally devised for a customer who wanted to set up three RTK-GPS receivers on a building to monitor movement during an earthquake. Because of the risk of loss of power, this procedure necessitated the startup and logging of data within the Survey program as soon as the PC was booted up.

1. The first requirement is that the user has configured a project with the parameters and names for that project. In this demonstration, I named the project Hong Kong. The Geodetic Parameters and Hardware must be configured as you would in any Hypack project.
   1. The project must have a Planned Line file. All you really need is a single short line to automatically log data upon entering Survey. For a stationary GPS, you should create this line as short as possible and as close to the GPS antenna position as possible. In this demonstration, I created a single planned line 20 meters long. The GPS antenna was situated around the centerpoint of the line file as shown below.
      
      
      
   2. Survey's Start Line Gate must be set to a value greater than the distance from the antenna to the line file. In order to log automatically upon entering Survey, the Start Line Gate should be greater than the line length. In this case, the line length is only 20 meters. I set the Start Line Gate to 100. This will allow the program to automatically start logging when the program is started.
   3. To set the Start line gate the user must enter the Survey program and modify the Navigation Parameters. Once this is set the user cannot exit Survey without resetting this to zero because the Survey program will not allow the user to exit without stopping logging. The program will continue to restart the logging function as long as the GPS is within the start line gate distance. The Navigation Parameters are shown below.
      
      
      
   4. Another parameter that should be set is the Log Backup Time. This is also set in the Navigation Parameters. This should be set to an interval consistent with the project requirements. This configures the software to close the datafile after the predetermined period and start a new datafile. You will notice I set the LOG Backup Time to 15. Survey will close a datafile and open a new file every 15 minutes. This keeps files much smaller, and in the case of loss of power, computer crash, etc., only 15 minutes of data would be lost, rather than a whole day's worth.
   5. If LOG Backup time is used, Long Filenames should be selected in the Project Information menu of the Survey program as shown below.
      
      
      
2. The next Item to create is the shortcut. This is done in either Windows Explorer or by selecting the drive through My Computer. Find the Survey32.EXE program in the HYPACK folder on your computer.
   
   
   
3. The user can then create a shortcut to the Survey32 program by right clicking on survey32.exe, and then clicking on Create Shortcut.
4. Next we have to Edit the Shortcut. Right click on the shortcut. On the menu that appears the user should select the Properties menu item.
5. To modify this the Target parameter should be modified. The correct method of launching a program is to add the project and project.ini to the path. 
   
   Example: C:\HYPACK\survey32.exe /pProjectName /iProjectName.ini
   In this example, the target should look like this:
   
   
   
   C:\HYPACK\survey32.exe /pHong_Kong /iHong_Kong.ini
   
6. The last step in the procedure is to add this shortcut to the Start Menu. This shortcut must be added to the Startup item on the Start Menu to allow the program to automatically start when Windows boots up. You can do this in Windows Explorer. Just drag this shortcut into the \Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp directory as shown below.
   
   

Once these steps have been completed the user will have a system that automatically recovers from a loss of power and restarts Survey. It will also automatically start logging data upon reboot.

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