Section 1

Numbers to Remember

Plan segments at 12 to 15 minutes and keep every capture under 20 minutes. That satisfies every limit in the table on any supported workstation and in either pipeline. Everything below is what happens when a job pushes past it.

Figure

Value

What it governs

Device capture ceiling

90 minutes, L2 Pro and K2

Firmware hard stop on one recording session. Not a scan target.

Battery runtime

About 90 minutes; about 72 below 50°F (10°C)

Both devices use a 1,900 mAh clip-on battery. A separate fact that shares the number 90.

Alpine session ceiling

About 70 minutes per charge

Alpine practice: end the scan at 20 percent remaining, leaving reserve for the overlap walk and the write process.

LixelStudio Map Fusion

10 maps; each capture under 20 minutes

Point cloud pipeline. No total-duration cap is published.

LCC Studio Map Fusion

10 segments; 200 minutes combined

3DGS pipeline. No per-segment time limit applies.

Reconstruction memory

64 GB to 30 min, risk past 45. 128 GB to 60 min, risk past 90.

The limit that actually fails jobs. Roughly 2 GB per minute of capture.

Reconstruction time

About 20 minutes per minute of capture

A 45-minute scene is most of a day of compute before you know whether it worked.

Segment overlap

50 ft (15 m) floor; 65 to 100 ft (20 to 30 m) target

Shared scanned ground between neighbouring segments. Cannot be added later.

Control point interval

L2 Pro 328 ft (100 m); K2 164 ft (50 m)

Maximum spacing. Distribute evenly, never in a straight line.

Post-stop write

30 to 60 seconds, longer after a long scan

Fast-flashing green means writing. Solid green means safe.

Colorization minimum

L2 Pro 2 minutes; K2 3 minutes

Continuous movement. A shorter scan cannot complete the coloring step.

Initialization

About 30 to 45 seconds per segment

Hold still throughout. Movement corrupts the reference frame for the whole segment.

Export filename

20 characters or fewer

LAS and E57. Longer names fail silently with no error shown.

The two 90-minute figures are unrelated, and neither is a scan target. One is how long the firmware keeps recording; the other is how long the battery lasts. XGRIDS recommends against capturing a full 90-minute dataset in one session on any hardware, because a single fault inside a long capture, whether drift, interference or a battery problem, can cost the entire dataset. Split large scenes and combine them with Map Fusion. Full reasoning on 6.2 Scan Splitting.

Section 2

Battery and Segment Planning

Battery Discipline

End the scan at 20 percent remaining. That is roughly 70 minutes of scanning on a full charge, not 90. The reserve covers walking the overlap zone, reaching a clean stop position, and the write process.
Plan cold-weather battery counts on 72 minutes, not 90. Below 50°F (10°C) runtime drops roughly 20 percent.
Add initialization time at each segment start, plus travel between areas and setup.
Below 10 percent means under 5 minutes of runtime. End immediately rather than trying to finish the room.
Batteries are hot-swappable between segments, never during one. The scan ends when the battery leaves the device.

Splitting a Scan

Split at feature-rich geometry: a corridor intersection, equipment cluster, or lobby with columns. Never mid-corridor or against a blank wall.
Scan past the split point by at least 50 ft (15 m) to build the overlap zone. Target 65 to 100 ft (20 to 30 m).
Mark the connection before stopping. RTK Fixed throughout, or a shared control point with an identical, case-matched name in both segments.
Start the next segment 50 ft (15 m) back inside the previous coverage, and scan the full overlap before moving into new ground.
Vary your line through the overlap zone. Retracing the exact path gives the aligner only one viewpoint.
Never let one segment sit entirely inside another. With no unique coverage of its own, the aligner has nothing to solve against.

A segment with neither RTK nor a shared control point cannot be fused, and the link cannot be added after capture. Overlap and visual features alone do not qualify a segment. An uncontrolled segment has to be recaptured, so place fallback control points at every seam even on jobs running RTK.

Section 3

Camera Coloring

Both devices produce color from onboard cameras during scanning. No external camera and no pre-scan camera configuration is required for either. The same raw camera data serves both pipelines; the pipeline decides only how it is applied.

Device

Onboard cameras

Coloring timing

L2 Pro

2 × 48 MP panoramic plus 1 MP positioning camera

Applied during processing

K2

3 cameras: 2 fisheye plus 1 forward, 200° × 200° coverage

Real-time true color in RGB Mode; applied during processing in Guided Mode

K2 Guided Mode and RGB Mode are a pre-scan choice you cannot reverse. RGB Mode gives real-time true color but removes the Scan Assist System and the Scan Quality view, which are the only in-field checks on coverage density. Guided Mode keeps those checks but shows elevation or quality coloring instead of true color. If nobody is reviewing coverage on site, choose Guided Mode and check Scan Quality before you leave. Choose RGB Mode when a client is watching the screen or true-color confirmation matters more than a coverage check.

Field Practices for Reliable Coloring

Keep every lens clear. A sleeve, strap, or hand across a lens for any sustained period leaves a coloring gap in that part of the scan, and it is not fixable afterward.
Do not point cameras into the sun or any bright source. Direct overexposure corrupts color for the affected area, not just the bright frames.
Meet the minimum duration: 2 minutes on the L2 Pro, 3 minutes on the K2, with continuous movement. A shorter scan does not carry enough camera data for the coloring step to complete. Pad a short scan with extra walk time before stopping.
Hold a steady pace and avoid sharp rotations. Rapid angular movement degrades frame quality and produces blurred coloring.
Light the space evenly. Bring supplemental lighting for utility tunnels, deep basements, and shadowed mechanical rooms.

Section 4

L2 Pro Drone Mode

Drone mode is an L2 Pro capability only. The K2 is handheld and is not drone-mountable. Compatible aircraft are the DJI M300 RTK and M350 RTK, which supply RTK positioning from their own GNSS.

Setup Sequence

Remove the RTK module from the L2 Pro before mounting. The aircraft provides RTK in drone mode, and leaving the module fitted causes a positioning conflict.
Mount the L2 Pro in the bracket and engage the green safety lock.
Connect the L2 Pro to the aircraft with the Type-C power cable.
Power the drone first, then the L2 Pro. Powered through the Type-C cable, the L2 Pro initializes in drone mode. Powered from its own battery first, it initializes handheld and drone positioning will not work correctly.
Configure the scan in the field app before takeoff and confirm drone mode is active.
The aircraft will show a camera obstruction warning in flight. That is expected. The L2 Pro body partially covers a downward obstacle-avoidance camera. Do not abort for it.

Parameter

Recommended

Maximum

Flight speed

3 m/s

5 m/s. Data quality degrades noticeably above this.

Flight altitude

98 ft (30 m)

164 ft (50 m). Higher altitude reduces point density.

Flight distance

No restriction

Section 5

Aerial-Ground Fusion

Aerial-ground fusion combines drone imagery with ground scan data into one model covering roof-level and interior geometry. The field procedure is the same whichever pipeline processes it, and both the L2 Pro and the K2 are supported as the ground scanner.

Hard Requirements Before Starting

Current field app and current device firmware. The aerial-ground fusion point button does not appear in the interface on older builds. Update both before the site visit, not during it. Exact versions are on 6.4 Aerial-Ground Fusion.
Processing hardware: 16-core CPU, 128 GB RAM, NVIDIA RTX 4090. This is a higher bar than single-scene reconstruction.
Aerial input: 100 to 10,000 drone images. Outside that range the job will not run.
Budget 24 to 48 hours or more of processing for a large site.
All three inputs are mandatory: ground scan data, drone imagery, and photos at each takeoff and landing point. Reconstruction cannot start if any one is missing.

Fusion Point Planning

Place 4 to 5 fusion points spread evenly across the full site. Points clustered at one end do not constrain the far end of the model.
No part of the project boundary should sit more than 164 to 328 ft (50 to 100 m) from the nearest fusion point.
Each point must be visible both from overhead and from the ground scan path. Put them in open areas you can reach during the walk.
Mark each one during the ground scan with the aerial-ground fusion point button, and circle the point once before moving on.

Section 6

Before You Open the Processing Software

Data Preparation Checklist

Keep the original data on the device until processing is complete and the output is verified. Do not delete device files after copying. The K2 internal storage is not field-swappable, so plan around end-of-day transfers rather than mid-session swaps.
Check the workstation against the segment length before you start. Reconstruction memory climbs at roughly 2 GB per minute of capture: 64 GB handles up to 30 minutes reliably, 128 GB up to 60. Full requirements on 10.7 Device Specifications.
Give every segment its own named folder before importing. Inconsistent folder structure on a large project causes segments to reference the wrong files and adds hours to deliverable prep.
Keep paths free of spaces, using letters, digits, hyphens, underscores and periods only. Import the top-level project folder, not a sub-folder.
Keep drone imagery in a clearly labelled separate folder at the same level as the ground segment folders, with a _Drone suffix.
Process from a local internal disk. External drives, USB flash drives and network paths are a documented cause of post-processing crashes.

Section 7

Critical Warnings

Data loss Stopping the scan does not end the job. Wait out the write process. After you tap Stop, the scanner runs a sequence of processes and writes the project file to internal storage. That takes 30 to 60 seconds, and longer after a long capture. The green indicator flashes rapidly the whole time and goes solid green when it is finished. Do not power off, remove the battery, or disconnect until it is solid green. An interrupted write corrupts the project file and the capture is not recoverable.
No recovery Fusion connections are made in the field only. A segment captured without RTK and without a shared control point cannot be admitted to a fusion, and the link cannot be added afterward. That segment must be recaptured.
Warning Control point names are case-sensitive across segments. A point named fp01 in one segment and FP01 in another reads as two different points. The connection fails silently, with no error, and the segment drops out of the result.
Warning Do not move during initialization. Movement corrupts the reference frame and the error is carried by the entire segment. The only fix is to restart the segment.
Warning Onboard cameras must stay unobstructed. A blocked lens leaves a coloring gap for that portion of the scan that cannot be repaired in processing.
Warning Meet the colorization minimum: 2 minutes on the L2 Pro, 3 on the K2. A shorter scan cannot complete the coloring step.
Warning Remove the RTK module before mounting the L2 Pro on a drone, and power the aircraft before the scanner. Either mistake produces a positioning conflict or a handheld-mode initialization.
Warning Flying above 5 m/s or above 164 ft (50 m) degrades point density. Both are soft limits. The scanner keeps working, but the gaps and reduced density cannot be corrected after collection.
Warning Do not carry a duration limit from one pipeline to the other. The under-20-minute rule belongs to LixelStudio Map Fusion. The 200-minute combined cap belongs to LCC Studio Map Fusion. Neither applies to the other product.

Module 6 Quick Field Guide