Trimble Navigation Limited

Jonathan Miles Marshall

Paul Robin Manson

Richard David Williams

Charles David Manning

A new and useful method and apparatus are provided for collecting, recording and displaying data pertaining to artifacts in a time based fashion. The apparatus includes a data measurement device such as a GPS receiver or other measurement device for collecting data such as position information pertaining to artifacts, a memory for recording collected data and a user interface having an input for receiving recorded information such as qualitative information pertaining to artifacts from the user and a display for displaying the collected data as it is collected by a user. The user interface includes a time scale to associate the data collected pertaining to the artifacts with the time at which the data was collected providing a useful project management tool for the user as well as for management personnel supervising the user and for providing an accurate time based archival record of data pertaining to artifacts such as their location and physical condition.

Method and apparatus for collecting recording and displaying data

A flash memory using branded sectors for managing data files. The flash memory is divided into separately erasable blocks where each block may only be erased in its entirety. Each erasable block includes several file sectors, a sector allocation table (SAT) including an SAT record for each file sector, and a block information record (BIR) including status and an erasure count for the block. Each file sector may be designated as a file data sector, a file header sector, or block erasure sector. The data sectors include a data segment of one of the data files and is branded by a file identification and a sequence number. The brand and the size of the file sectors are used for locating the data sector for accessing the data segment. In order to prevent data from being lost during an update or a consolidation, each SAT record includes a pre-discard indicator for indicating when the associated data sector is being modified or consolidated and a discard indicator for indicating that the modification or consolidation has been completed. In order to prevent block information from being lost during an erasure, the block erasure sector includes the status and erasure counts for each of the erasure blocks.

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Christchurch, New Zealand

Jonathan Miles Marshall