Hi all

In a nutshell - is there a way to stop the .net CF 2.0  software from being lost if your battery runs out.

Background
Bit of a mega surveying trip to do on Saturday in a major new find in Derbyshire, under the pressure of potentially losing access until a new entrance can be found..... no pressure then.

Everything charged, Pocket Topo installed, all good to go. 

Completed about an hours surveying when (as per ususal) Pocket topo hung.  spinny egg timer, nothing can be done, touching screen does nothing etc etc. 

So - wondering what to do. Thankful that we'd not long since done a File>Save As.

Decided to take battery out - hopeful that it would kick out pocket topo, but not reset whole pda (fairly sure I'd tried swapping batteries at home and it had worked i.e. the internal back up battery had ensured that no data was lost).
Wrong
Total reset - .net CF 2.0 lost - not able to run pocket topo - bollocks. much swearing etc.

So I'm wondering if there is a way of re-installing .net CF 2.0 from a backup on the SD card or something whilst still underground.
Or infact - if there is a way of stopping Pocket Topo hanging so frequently.  I suspect its to do with the bluetooth connection process.

(I'm using a HP iPAQ H2200)

This has happened too many times - and I'm seriously thinking of just going back to compass clino and tape.

(PS - someone had just mentioned the small 'reset' button on the back that I didn't know about. Seems that does some sort of soft reset - doh!).

Anyone any ideas/info/similar experiences.

Sam,

I have not had this problem so can not offer a solution to it getting lost. I installed .Net on my Dell AXIM X51 PDA using an SD card. Also this PDA has an extended battery plus I have a spare. Your loss might indicate a failure of an internal backup battery but I do not know enough about the guts of your PDA to confirm this.

The backup for a PDA is a notepad and pencil !

DistoX will store all the measurements unless you do a mega mega trip and over-run the memory ! Once back at the surface, establish a bluetooth link, all of the data in memory will be downloaded so that saves you transcribing your notepad obs, means you do not get transcription errors and all your notepad written left, right, up, down distances now have a compass and clino reading with them too.

Personally I prefer the above method rather than using a PDA underground. Unfortunately my last working DistoX was sold to a desperate surveyor so now hoping to get the latest batch working so I can have at least one myself.

Hope that helps.

I have had a similar problem with my PDA stopping playing during a trip. After installing Pocket Topo I used the IPaq backup which stores all the settings on the memory card. I then save the Pocket Topo data to the SD. If it fecks up mid trip, you should be able to do a full reset and reload the IPaq settings.
That doesn't help with the data put in between the save and the crash however.

I have also used the trick as kdxn of only taking the Disto, writing the data in a notebook and downloading the whole trip afterwards. my disto managed 3 days worth of pushing in china without filling the memory.

Cheers guys -

Yep - Ipaq backup seems to be the solution - knew there'd be a way.

Also - it seems that on saturday - just using the soft reset button on the back would have been the way forward rather than taking the battery out. (I didn't know this button existed until after the event).

Not sure why it performed a hard reset when I took out the battery - the internal backup battery seems to be holding its charge for at least a minute (not ideal though).  Tried swapping batteries today and that worked OK without losing any settings.  Ho hum

Cheers for the replies anyway.

i have a folder on the sd card with pocket topo and the .net installer just in case things go wrong. Although ive never had to do this underground.

Not sure the installer will work straight off the SD card though.  Will give it a go later.

SamT said:

(I'm using a HP iPAQ H2200)

Click to expand...

This is the problem. HP technologies are very often "too compatible" to work. I changed to Axim X51 and no problems more (+ there is huge battery - 3500 mAh available). Anyway store all your measurements and drawings on memory card! So you may run PocketTopo on PC at home and still use the data from card.

Check: http://cp.cavesurveying.org.uk/index.php/articles/3-therion-tutorial there are several tips how to use PocketTopo.

m.