Was tricky to setup. It's not a Trimble GPS so it needs a RTCM stream, and then forwards a NMEA string to Earthworks (my guess). Those settings need to happen on the Volvo system and you can't easily save multiple streams, they actually have to manually edit the server address if they want to change from our southern to our northern base or vice versa.
You also couldn't get onto the EC520 so easy in the beginning, I had the dismount the screen, unplug a cable and use a Ethernet to USB adapter to get my laptop connected. Once that is done you can set the WiFi of the EC520 to get easier to the user interface, or now that it is online via remote access. That Volvo display doesn't have a web browser or the like where you could just browse to 192.168.168.1.
They also had an issue with the Volvo modem and the mobile carrier here. They actually have an extra mobile phone in the cabin that provides a USB-tethered mobile connection the system.
In the beginning the whole system had a 80 mm vertical offset to our survey gear. They had somebody from Volvo and Sitech flown in, not sure what exactly they did, I've heard a full factory reset.
One really positive thing though is the Volvo display, that is soooo much faster and responsive than the Trimble TD. With the TD you always wonder if it realized that you tapped it, whereas that Volvo display feels like a standard mobile phone. Even loading the design list, like in GCS900.
Also the connection via that mobile phone. Remote accessing that machine is much faster than any of the other machines with a SNM941.
Where the design list loads instantaneously on GCS900 it takes ages on Trimble Earthworks and especially on CAT Next Gen, they manage to be even slower. I can't remember anymore what the settings in the CAT Network manager were, 100 Mbit or just 10. My suspicion is just 10, which would be 1 Megabyte/s. In Earthworks, in order to populate all the drop down fields for working surface etc. the system needs to actually load and analyze the whole file, especially with VCL where you can have multiple surfaces and that every time you go into that screen. At the beginning of the job we used VCL, back then it was the full version, some models 60 MB (GCS900 <1MB). First it took 5 minutes to actually be able to select a design, then you got errors that the surface couldn't be loaded, or it didn't show. That's when I buried VCL for machines for me.
From my old SITECH days I can't say much negative about integrated machines. We had lots of CGC and at the end a few Cat Next Gen. CGC was only an issue if the rotation sensors got hit, the connection rods got play, or they were dismounted for repairs and afterwards they were wondering why the excavator dug in the wrong elevation. And sometimes CGC had a 20-40 mm elevation issue on the last 1 or 2 m of the reach. A bit closer to the cabin and all was fine, never got to the bottom of it.
If you mean automatics with an excavator, then the only system that I've operated myself that showed a reasonable surface quality was the aftermarket valve package from Trimble. Once that was properly fine tuned you had barely any diving in, coming up to high, undulating closer to target as you can see with Cat and Volvo. They usually dig in 50 mm when you start pulling the left stick, come back way too high and half way through the stroke they finally get close to target.
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Ronny Schneider
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-27-2022 04:40
From: Adam Procter
Subject: Devices not automatically added to Projects
That's some project on your hands!
How are you finding the Volvo DigAssist machine? I've been reluctant to try integrated machines after numerous headaches with D6Ts.
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Adam Procter
Original Message:
Sent: 01-27-2022 04:13
From: Ronny Schneider
Subject: Devices not automatically added to Projects
Our job is a 10 km highway upgrade, with side roads left and right, two heavy rail diversions, 5 cain rail upgrades, dozens if not hundreds of culverts, several bridge piling platforms, trenches for the intelligent traffic light systems, several water major rebuilds/diversions, batter surface treatment areas, etc. I definitely forgot something.
We have to clean up a bit soon, currently I'm seeing 114 designs.
And the design is not final, we have still changes all the time.
We've got:
6 - TSC7 with Trimble Access using Trimble Connect (works like a charm) for us Surveyors
8 - T7 with Siteworks for the Supervisors
2 - SPS855 base stations
19 - GCS900
10 - Trimble Earthworks
1 - Volvo DigAssist with a very old Trimble Earthworks 1.8.3 - that one doesn't understand VCL
I'm no fan of VCL for machines anyway, way too many bugs, I always create my models the old way SVL/SVD and check them in the GCS900 simulator before I manually create the design on Worksmanager.
Geofence doesn't work, the areas are not separated enough. We requested overlapping sub geofences, but they can't even give us sortable list columns.
But with those sub-geofences we would have an issue on some machines since some of our models are a few MB. We have machines with CB450's and a grader with CB460 but old harness which are limited to 9600 baud. They would need half an hour or more to synch if they switch areas.
And with that godd**n circling we usually just send everything to all devices, it's just too painful to try to do it selective. I also don't trust the system anymore after we had last year designs showing published in Worksmanager but suddenly disappearing from some machines. One day there, next day gone, angry phone calls from half a dozen people. I haven't checked it in a while but nearly always when I check it the design count on Trimble Earthworks machines is different to what Worksmanager shows.
I created a workaround with TCC Explorer, copying the whole ProjectLibrary that Worksmanager creates to my harddrive, a symbolic link creates a copy in a second directory that is uploaded to TCC again. That way the Trimble Earthworks machines always have a full copy in case the selective push fails again.
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Ronny Schneider
Original Message:
Sent: 01-27-2022 01:47
From: Adam Procter
Subject: Devices not automatically added to Projects
Ronny, I too feel your pain with the slowness. I'm finding I'm having to constantly close the web page down and start again to get it to respond. With regards to your long list of designs, are they all associated with one project? We've been using the WM platform since April and do feel that it is a great solution for issuing designs to sites. It should be a single interface to send data to machines and loggers which is useful, especially when the geofencing is working. I've used TCC for years which worked well with GCS900, but when Earthworks came along, the list of Projects that every machine was syncing with was ever expanding. Despite deleting the projects on TCC, the machines were throwing it back on. WM reduces the projects they sync with now. I'm also pleased to see the role permissions have been developed, allowing the site teams to safely monitor the platform as well now. Other issues experienced with WM include problems when un-archiving projects and changing coordinates systems. I would welcome the speed of the platform improved now before anymore features are added.
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Adam Procter
Original Message:
Sent: 01-26-2022 15:46
From: Ronny Schneider
Subject: Devices not automatically added to Projects
This bug is in my opinion irrelevant compared to to all the other shortcomings of that useless Worksmanager platform. Worksmanager is !!THE!! worst Trimble product ever.
We are complaining since about 1.5 years that it is ridiculously slow, that you can't sort the lists properly, sometimes designs just don't get pushed to certain machines etc., etc. and absolutely nothing is done about it.
I just tested it again, it takes me 45 seconds to scroll to the very bottom of our designs list, which I have to do because otherwise the search function is either circling endlessly or the result might be incomplete. And from the design page it just took 53 seconds to have "Edit devices" loaded. Absolutely ridicolous.
I need to be able to classify designs like culvert/trench excavation, Subgrade, FSL and need to be able to send a whole class to a certain type of machine. The graders don't need trenches but Subgrade, the excavators only need FSL and no Subgrade but trenches. With the old TCC, TCC explorer I could do that easily with a script. Unfortunately the decision was made to use WAITmanager.
Seriously people get going, we actually pay you heaps of money each month, and how about listening to the users on large construction sites, where it is near unbearable to use.
Worksmanager is sold as replacement for TCC, yeah right, keep dreaming, in another 10 years maybe. But I can see the advertising already, big achievement blabla. By then the old guys who know that TCC could do all that already 10 years ago are gone and Trimble got through with re-inventing the wheel.
That's what we have to put up with Waitmanager, that video is from 6 month ago and it is still the same snail speed
see the attached "too slow for a modern webpage2.gif"
and that's what it should look like, in TCC you can also sort any list column, we are requesting this since 1.5 years for Waitmanager and all we get is the finger
see the attached "ResponsivenessBenchmark2.gif"
Customer service for Waitmanager is rock bottom if I compare it to Trimble Connect or Stratus. In Stratus we have a near live Support chat and if we request features they are often implemented within weeks.
My advise to everybody who is considering to use Worksmanager for a large construction site "Don't do it", you'll save yourself lots of troubles and most importantly time.
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Ronny Schneider
Original Message:
Sent: 01-25-2022 08:20
From: Vijay Raghunathan
Subject: Devices not automatically added to Projects
Hello Adam, Per-Ola, regret inconvenience. Yes, the 'auto-add device to project' functionality is not working at the moment across all device models. The Engg. team has analyzed the issue, identified the root cause, and they are working to fix it in a day/ two. Until then, as Per-Ola mentioned, you can manually add the device to the project.
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Vijay Raghunathan
Original Message:
Sent: 01-25-2022 08:06
From: Per-Ola Berntsen
Subject: Devices not automatically added to Projects
It has been like this for a few weeks. It has been reported to Trimble Support, but we got feedback that it was solved. We still see the issue, so we manually assign the machines to the projects.
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Per-Ola Berntsen
Original Message:
Sent: 01-24-2022 10:02
From: Adam Procter
Subject: Devices not automatically added to Projects
So when a machine is delivered to a WorksManager project, my understanding is that once its position is reported, that project and designs will be made available to the machine. I have found that this feature has stopped working over the past week. I am having to manually add the devices to the projects so that the designs are made available.
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Adam Procter
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