Hi Simon,
I've advised the support team of this case, and they will be in contact shortly with respect to the hours on your account that you were not able to use at your job site. I trust that they will also be able to walk you through getting the troublesome connection to Catalyst sorted.
To answer your specific question on whether it is possible to test the connection to Catalyst before heading to the field: Yep, you can confirm this prior to travelling to your worksite and without consuming an On Demand credit/token:
1) Sign in to and launch the Trimble Mobile Manager (TMM) app with your Trimble Identity (email) as you have done.
2) Connect the USB cable on your DA1 antenna to your phone, and ensure Catalyst is selected as your Position Source in TMM.
3) Without starting an On Demand session, simply Connect to Catalyst with the toggle switch on the main Home screen of TMM.
If all is well, the Catalyst GNSS Service app should start up in the background on your phonein "Free" mode, establish a connection to the Antenna, and after a minute or so start searching for satellites then generate positions. In this Free mode, Catalyst runs in "autonomous positioning" mode (i.e. use of GNSS corrections is fully disabled). The best accuracy Catalyst will achieve as a result is typically 2-3 metres - but the Catalyst receiver is running. If there is a problem, Catalyst will not allow you to connect to it and you will see some form of error message.
Assuming you can connect OK without an On Demand session before you leave the office, you should have confidence that you would be able to start an On Demand session from the field (providing you have internat access).
The error message you showed still indicates that there is a problem with the Catalyst Service app on your phone. You can check the version of Catalyst Service via the Trimble Mobile Manager app (in the About screen), and can compare that to the latest version available via the Play Store. The current version (as at September 2021) is 1.5.2372.
Please note - updating Catalyst Service is separate to updating the Trimble Mobile Manager (TMM) app. I interpret from your notes you have recently updated TMM on your device. At the beginning of the year Trimble modernised its user identity systems- adding additional security features and functionality. Trimble Mobile Manager was updated to use this new system in the July timeframe. In August, the old identity system was turned off causing older versions of the app to not be able to sign in. Updating your installed version of TMM means you are now using the new sign-in platform.
Thanks,
Gareth
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Gareth Gibson
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Original Message:
Sent: 10-01-2021 01:57
From: Simon Ritchie
Subject: Catalyst on demand subscription vanished
> "Trimble Catalyst Service has Expired" is an indication that you are running an old version of the Catalyst Service background app.
As I said in the note in this thread "Today the mobile manager on my phone said that it needed updating because the authentication service it uses is no longer supported. I upgraded and logged in ....."
So unless the app has been updated since Wednesday, I'm running the correct version. My guess is that the system has got its knickers in a twist and the upgrade has failed to untwist them.
> If this still doesn't resolve the issue, please reach out directly to the Trimble support team
I will do that. I assume that, since this is clearly a Trimble issue, I will be credited for the two hours I burnt yesterday trying to get the equipment to work.
However, the situation I have is that yesterday morning I checked as best I could that the equipment was working correctly. I drove 50 miles to a customer site and when I got there it turned out to be not working. I could only find that out by wasting some money. Obviously I looked like a complete idiot trying to do a professional job with inadequate equipment.
So here is a simple question, and it would be useful if you could answer it in this forum: when using the On Demand subscription, what checks can a Catalyst operator do via the interfaces available to be sure that when they get to a customer site that the equipment will work?
I presume that for most cases there is a way to do this. If not then there should be. There is one edge case that I don't think it's possible to do anything about, which I discovered on Wednesday. If I buy some hours and don't use them for a year, they expire with no warning. So, if the opertor is very unlucky, they could run their checks before they leave home and by the time they get to their customer site, find that their subscription has expired. They will then have to contact their dealer to get the system working. If it is out of normal working hours, the dealers' office will be closed and they will be out of luck.
I've already said what I think about a company that takes customer's money for a service and then refuses to provide it because a year has passed, but I think we can all agree that it would be useful if Trimble could send a couple of emails warning that the subscription is going to expire.
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Simon Ritchie
Original Message:
Sent: 09-30-2021 13:23
From: Gareth Gibson
Subject: Catalyst on demand subscription vanished
Hi Simon,
I'm glad to read that your distributor has been able to assist.
I also think I understand what is happening on your device with the error message you have seen... (thanks for posting that).
"Trimble Catalyst Service has Expired" is an indication that you are running an old version of the Catalyst Service background app. The Catalyst Service backgorund app is the 'brains' of the Catalyst GNSS receiver, and runs entrirely in software 'in the background' whenever you are using the Catalyst system. We (Trimble) need to update the Catalyst Service app periodically - for most phones and devices, the service will self-update automatically. In this case it looks like the app has not self-updated on your device - and as a result a security feature which "expires" the app has been triggered. The only action you should need to take here is to update of the Catalyst Service app to the current version - which is a process of navigating to the Play Store, finding the Trimble Catalyst Service app, and tapping the update button. You can prevent this from becoming an issue in the future by enabling automatic updates to be installed for this app.
You can navigate directly to the Catalyst Service on the Google Play Store using this link.
If this still doesn't resolve the issue, please reach out directly to the Trimble support team at catalyst_support@trimble.com.
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Gareth Gibson
Original Message:
Sent: 09-30-2021 10:35
From: Simon Ritchie
Subject: Catalyst on demand subscription vanished
My dealer pulled out all the stops and sold me some more on demand hours. They are working from home because of the pandemic, so that took most of the morning. I checked that the app displayed the new hours and went off to my survey appointment. Late, but the client was understanding.
When I got there, I spent my first On Demand hour, but the app still refused to connect to the Cat, showing the same message as before. In the attached picture, one part of the screen shows that I have ten hours and I'm using the first one, while another part of the screen tells me that I need to renew my subscription.
So we've moved on quite far. Yesterday I had a Cat that did nothing, but did it for free. Today I have one that does nothing and burns my money at the same time.
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Simon Ritchie
Original Message:
Sent: 09-29-2021 18:06
From: Gareth Gibson
Subject: Catalyst on demand subscription vanished
Hi Simon,
You are correct - Catalyst On Demand hour blocks are valid for 12 months from the date of purchase. Any unused hours at the end of this time period expire. You can refer to the terms of service for Catalyst in the License Manager tool (license-manager.trimble.com). Who was your subscription purchased through?
Gareth Gibson - Trimble
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Gareth Gibson
Original Message:
Sent: 09-29-2021 15:18
From: Simon Ritchie
Subject: Catalyst on demand subscription vanished
I bought ten hours of Catalyst on demand service on the 27th September 2020, ie slightly over a year ago. I have used some but not all of the hours. (I'm not a heavy user.) Today the mobile manager on my phone said that it needed updating because the authentication service it uses is no longer supported.
I upgraded and logged in. I tried to connect to my Catalyst and a message appeared "the Trimble catalyst service expired. Please update to a new version." There is no longer an option to connect to on demand and use one of my hours.
What's the problem?
I can guess two explanations:
- a batch of on demand hours expires after one year if it's not used
- the new authentication system can't access the batch of hours associated with my account.
However, these are just guesses. Can anybody tell me what's going on?
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Simon Ritchie
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