MasonJohnDavis
commented
9 years ago NB: We may need to be flexible with when this can be delivered...
This widget will be added to the survey designer and phone in the following way - but could take some time to technically analyse and implement.
Once added to a survey, the idea is that the observation form screen will then contain a "GPS Track" switch (which will default to off).
The user may switch it on and off at any time...
Switching the GPS Track on an observation screen will (via a back-end call without submitting the observation) cause: (i) Mobile GPS polling service (if not already running) to execute with the ID of the survey added to the list of active "GPSsessions" (global field). (ii) The polling service will create time/location entries within the file with an associated surveyID. The positions will be tracked at a reasonable polling period (say) every 2 mins.
When the user has finished, they would open up the same survey screen and turn the GPS track off (for that survey). (iii) Switching the "GPS Track" off will create an entry in the file to indicate that tracking has been turned off for that survey and the surveyID will be removed from the "GPSsessions" field.
Using this type of interaction it may be possible to track effort against multiple surveys, associate group (or no observations) and even with a single observation flexibly and reasonably intuitively.
As an additional feature it would be good if the state of the GPS polling service (which would be off if the GPSsessions is empty) could be seen prominently on the screen so that the user may be aware of battery usage, privacy implications, etc.
rgamez
GPS record track.What is proposed and needed is that any obtained field point data set must be associated with a line track also obtained in the field. This is a feature that has to be discussed and concerns the further statistical analysis of the point data obtained in the field. For example a group of citizens surveys a protected area for endangered plant species. The result of this survey is a set of points on a map with an attribute table. The absence of points on the map doesn’t mean absence of plants because it could possibly mean that a part of the area was not surveyed by the citizen group. There is an issue of battery usage that has to be dealt with and also a way to associate the files. An idea is that in the attribute table of the point file there could be a field with the name of the associated line track.