This app does quite
a bit. I don't think that I can say yet
that I understand all of its abilities, but I do know that its neat, functional
and could come in handy out on a site.
There is often a
disconnect between the person going out to the site and touring it, and the
person who is processing the data and drawing it back in the office. All sites, whether urban or greenfield have
interesting characteristics that designers want to accentuate, take advantage
of or utilize in their designs, whether it be placement on the site, views,
shadows or other natural or manmade features.
With Theodolite you
can do a variety of things from one place within the app. Overlaid onto the screen is a bunch of data
from the onboard sensors including Lat/Long, elevation, compass heading, tilt
and a few others. Pictures can be easily
taken within the app with the data overlaid.
The pictures are then automatically sent to your photo gallery where you
can easily email them to anyone or store for later use.
The app includes simple trig to allow you to calculate a variety of things including:
- Distance and heading between objects
- Height of objects, distance to an object with a known height
- Distance and height of an object from the user
- Difference in elevation, horizon and azimuth between two points
- Triangulation of a point from two known points
The app also includes a map overlay that can plot points on a map (see last item in the list above) and using the integrated compass, show you which direction you are facing.
Tapping on the
center of the screen changes the view to a half dozen or so pre-set
crosshairs. Included in here are two
rangefinders which if you know the height of the object, can tell you within a
reasonable degree of accuracy (2% over 100' claim the app's authors) the
distance to the object. Multiply the
height of the object by the number associated with the ring that it lines up
with on your screen (which can be adjusted slightly in each direction) and you
have the distance to the object.
A lot of features and very powerful. In fact in the last couple days an update was released which added even more! I would recommend it without a doubt.
