Phantom Survey Paths

Since upgrading to AirMagnet Survey Pro 8.8 in June I have been consistently haunted by anomalous survey paths. The issue is very random, but typically occurs about three to four times daily. What is consistent is that it only occurs at the beginning of a survey path, immediately after the second direction change. Typically I am in a hurry and simply undo my last two “clicks” and re-walk the area. The screenshots I’ve taken in the past have mysteriously disappeared (probably during one of my OCD fueled desktop cleanup crusades), but I grabbed a fresh one today. It’s as blurry and cropped as a bad Sasquatch photo, but I’m sure I’ll get another chance soon. When I do I’ll update with more pics.

Here’s the setup-

I begin my survey path with that initial “click” and follow the wall to my first turn. Click. Everything appears to be normal, but once I reach the next corner/direction change Survey goes rogue.

Today, while surveying a large CEO type office, I began at the doorway shown in the upper right of the photo and followed the wall until I reached the opposite wall at a conference room. At that location I made the first successful direction change and headed toward the exterior wall. Note the consistency of samples along the path. At the exterior wall when I clicked to register the direction change the path was closed off to form a triangle shape. When this issue occurs it’s always a path leading back to the starting point and never a path in a random direction.

Now you’ll notice these phantom sampling points are not consistent along the new path as mine are and, in this case, there aren’t enough samples in the immediate prior path for it to simply be a misplaced duplication.

I have noticed that although the false path always connects back to the starting point the data samples remain very inconsistent in both quantity and spacing. The second or third time this happened I ended the survey with one of these paths intact to investigate. It appears to be live data and not just a troublesome apparition — it even logs spectrum data!

Got any ideas?

For now it’s still a mystery to me and I’m getting uncomfortably familiar with the Undo button. Let me know in the comments if you have any ideas and I’ll check back in with updates.