Manifold Scanner Guides
These guides cover capturing a site with a Manifold Pocket2 Scanner and exporting the point cloud a robot deployment is built on.
What to know before your first session:
- It records to its own internal SSD. The capture is on the scanner, not on the phone.
- The phone connects over the scanner's own Wi-Fi, and is used to start, preview and stop the scan.
- While joined to that Wi-Fi the phone has no internet, and only one phone can be connected at a time.
- A scan is not finished when you stop walking. It has to be stopped in the app and saved.
From a scan to a site map
A scan is not a map. It records where surfaces are, but not where a robot may drive, what is off limits, or which places matter. Adding that is the Robot Deployment Toolbox's job, and the two meet at a single file.
These guides take you as far as the .pcd. From there, Map editor loads it in its Load stage and carries it through to a published map.
The workflow end to end
If you are doing this for the first time, read the guides in this order rather than dipping in.
| Step | Covered in | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Charge the scanner, install both applications, plan the session | Getting started on the product page |
| 2 | Join the phone to the scanner's own Wi-Fi | Connection |
| 3 | Turn on Connect Device and check the sensor indicators | Connection |
| 4 | Start Scan, name the project, decide the NTRIP and Panorama toggles | Scanning |
| 5 | Initialise on a flat, level surface — hands off until the point cloud appears | Scanning |
| 6 | Walk the site: controlled pace, loops, gentle tilts for corners | Scanning |
| 7 | Stop, and wait for the project to save | Scanning |
| 8 | Connect rear Port C to a computer and copy the whole project folder | Processing |
| 9 | File ▸ New Task, browse to the .lx, choose the optimisations | Processing |
| 10 | Look at the result before committing to it | Processing |
| 11 | Subsample ▸ Spatial ▸ 0.1 m | Processing |
| 12 | Export Point Cloud Library cloud (*.pcd), Binary, as pointcloud_map.pcd — aim for under about 300 MB | Processing |
| 13 | Import the .pcd, set up levels and author the site map | Robot Deployment Toolbox |
| 14 | Deploy, and check the robot actually localises and navigates | The final check is the robot |
Step 14 is the one that decides whether the rest worked. Every check before it — a clean-looking cloud, a .pcd the toolbox accepts, levels that extract, a map that validates — tells you the files are coherent, not that a robot will drive on them.
The guides
| Guide | Reach for it when |
|---|---|
| Pocket2 Connection Guide | Setting the app up for the first time, or the app cannot see the scanner |
| Pocket2 Scanning Guide | Your first session, or a capture came back with gaps |
| Point Cloud Processing & Export Guide | You have a raw capture and need a usable point cloud |
All scanning guides — generated from the scanning tag, so anything published later appears there without this page being edited.
What you need
| Scanner | A Pocket2 with a charged handle battery — up to 2 hours of capture |
| Phone or tablet | Running MindCloud Go, on Android or iOS |
| Desktop computer | Running MindCloud Studio — Windows, or Linux as an AppImage. It requires a per-machine licence, so sort that out before the site visit rather than on it: request one from Manifold, or from us if you bought the scanner through Weston Robot. Loading and processing a capture is slow and CPU-heavy, so run it on a machine you can leave busy |
| USB-C data cable | USB 3.0, for copying projects from the scanner. The supplied cable, or a known data cable — a charge-only one will not enumerate the SSD |
MindCloud Studio works with all of Manifold Tech's scanners, so the processing guide applies equally to a capture from the earlier Pocket Scanner. The connection and scanning guides describe the Pocket2's app screens.
Resources
| Resource | What it is | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Pocket2 downloads and resources | Manifold's maintained page for the current Pocket2 User Manual — the authority for the scanner and the field app — and related software | Downloads page |
| MindCloud Studio | The desktop application — Windows, and Linux as an AppImage. The same page carries its user manual, the authority for processing and export | Download page |
| MindCloud Go | The field app | App Store · Google Play |
| Manifold Tech support | The manufacturer's contact page — after-sales support, plus a contact form | Contact & support |
Manifold's support address is contact@3dmanifold.com.
Once you have a .pcd, continue with the Robot Deployment Toolbox. Something wrong with the scanner itself? Manifold Pocket2 Scanner › Troubleshooting first, then Support.