[Therion] Best caving tablet

Tue Sep 29 16:34:20 CEST 2015

A bit delayed, but here is the setup that I use.

 My tablet is an 8" Samsung Note 8. Not very compact, but it is very nice
for drawing due to the larger screen. It is as large as an A5 piece of
paper, so I didn't find the switch from paper drawing cumbersome. It can be
held in one hand while surveying, although when I climb or do lots of
crawling it goes in the bag.
What I like about this model is that it supports a Wacom pen, which is much
more accurate than using the finger or a capacitive stylus.
A 6" or 7" might be nice too. I tried a 4" smartphone too. It is fine for
collecting the measurements and rough sketches, but since I work with
Topodroid I prefer to draw as detailed as possible in the cave and only do
minor corrections later in Therion.

I have attached a few images of the packing that I use. The tablet goes in
a waterproof pocket. The Disto also has a clear case, which protects the
keyboard and lenses from mud, but is not waterproof. In most cases I use
the black Wacom stylus in the picture. It is not waterproof, but it hasn't
failed yet despite getting wet a few times and replacements are not
expensive. When I don't use it it goes in the small plastic tube. There is
also a small bluish capacitive pen for muddy or very wet caves, but it is
not that accurate.

The yellow bag has rigid plastic inserts at both sides ot the tablet
pocket(the one in the back) that protect it from impacts and being bent.
The front pocket contains the Disto, pens, some station marking stuff,
etc.

Overal I find the whole package light and easy to cary in most cases except
the most muddy or narrow crawls. Other combinations might work even better,
but I still haven't tried so many to compare.

Best
Vladimir

----- Цитат от Footleg (drfootleg at gmail.com), на 16.09.2015 в
20:08 -----  I would agree that the 'hold in one hand' size of a PDA is a
big plus. You need to be able to cave with the device in your hand, and
unless you only survey large walking passages with flat floors you will
appreciate something that you can climb around the cave while holding in
one hand. Also makes packing the device for transportation through crawls
and awkward entrance series much easier. I am often surveying 3 hours from
an entrance and having a light weight compact kit means it always gets
taken on exploration trips in case we make a break through. So we often
leave the cave with data on the trip where a discovery was made.
Footleg
On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 9:13 PM Andrew Atkinson  wrote:
I have a asus vivo tab/not 8 tablet, which I just find too big for cave
 surveying, which I feel will be a problem with the one below. I think
 that you need to be able to hold it on one hand while caving, which for
 me makes a 6inch tablet probably the biggest, but I have not got round
 to buying one as yet.
 The vivo although it has a wacom tablet built in, I am not very
 impressed with the accuracy, even after going through the 100+ point
 calibration, gone back to my dell axim,

 Andrew

 On 15/09/15 20:50, Rob Countess wrote:
 > http://ruggedpcreview.com/3_slates_xplore_xslate_b10.html [2]
 >
 > I'm thinking of this: XSlate B10. Has wacom digitizer. They also make
 > smaller android model. Any thoughts?
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[2] http://ruggedpcreview.com/3_slates_xplore_xslate_b10.html
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