Total Open Station

Total Open Station (TOPS for friends) is a free software program for downloading and processing data from total station devices.

This is a task which is usually done by proprietary, dedicated and Windows™-only software, but TOPS is different by nature, because:

  • it is free software released under the GNU GPLv3 license;

  • it works on any operating system;

  • it is designed to support as many devices and formats as possible, all within the same program, opposed to having one program per device.

Every model has its own quirks, but TOPS uses a modular structure and keeps the downloading of data logically separated from its processing, thus enabling exporting data to a variety of output formats, even at a later moment. Archiving of raw data is made easy by using plain text files.

Users of Total Open Station are a growing number, you can be the next. See which Models are already supported.

Getting started with Total Open Station

Total Open Station 0.5 is now available and can be installed on all major operating systems. A development version could be build from source.

Detailed instructions are available at the Installing Total Open Station page.

If you are having problems with getting started, try first our Frequently Asked Questions (and some answers!). If that doesn’t help, get in touch with the development team through our dedicated support channel.

Documentation

User manual

Development

Indices and tables

Who is doing this?

Total Open Station is mainly developed as part of the IOSA project by Stefano Costa and Luca Bianconi, archaeologists.

Damien Gaignon, land surveyor, has joined the project in september 2015.

Total Open Station is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3 or, at your option, any later version.

The application icons are copyright by Lapo Calamandrei 2008.