Doors Open Day – Guided Tour App

In conjunction with our Main Library colleagues, the EDINA Mobile Internet project has developed a self-guided tour app using beacons for the main library.

The app has been specifically designed for the Doors Open Days on the 26th and 27th of September 2015. It will allow users to explore the University of Edinburgh’s Main Library through an interactive tour enabling you to learn about the history of the building, discover the exhibitions space and find out more about the library’s varied services and world-class collections.

The app uses beacons to pop up a series of videos as you explore the building(see screenshots below). It is available for download in iOS and Android versions from the Google Play store and the Apple app store :

Android : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=fplan.edina.ac.uk.fplan&hl=en_GB

iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/main-library-tour/id1040515101?mt=8

Or visit the stores and search for “Main Library Tour”

iOS Simulator Screen Shot 17 Sep 2015 10.26.13          iOS Simulator Screen Shot 16 Sep 2015 16.28.08         IMG_0298

FtGB supports Android 4.4

KitKat

Android 4.4

Fieldtrip GB version 1.3.2 has just been released. This update means that Fieldtrip GB will now support Android 4.4 (KitKat).  If you have set the app to auto-update then you may not even notice.  If you have a new(ish) Android device that runs KitKat and have tried to download FtGB but couldn’t find it in the Play Store, you should now be able to see it (note- still restricted to UK store).

Fieldtrip GB Group data collection crib guide

We thought we would put together a brief crib guide to help run data collection projects using Fieldtrip GB with a small group.  The idea is to create a form and get the group to download this to their devices, then collect data before uploading it to a central place and visualising the groups data.  This technique can be used to great effect to collect lots of data in a short period of time, or to get groups of school children to collect data on short field class exercises.

Intro
1. Navigate to Fieldtrip GB blog
2. Show the new which has some example of what can be done and the Help
3. Click the Authoring tool link and again
4. Login – you are logging into Dropbox at this point.
5. Explain the menus at the top of the page:
a. Create – create a new form
b. Record viewer – visualise/edit the data you have captured
c. Editors Gallery – some example forms
d. My Editors – a list of forms you have created

Create a new form
6. Create a Form
a. Get the group to decide what to collect (keep it simple – trees, birds, litter, building)
b. Create the form and try to use at least drop down lists, photos, range and text box
7. Save the form – this saves it to the Dropbox account that you logged in to

Download form to device
8. Get the group to start the app on their devices
9. Get them to log in to the shared Dropbox account
10. Select Download from the footer and then select Download Forms
11. You are now ready to collect data, you will find the new form in the Capture Tab (select it in the footer)

Upload data from devices to Dropbox
12. Once we have collected data, select Download tab
13. Press Upload Records – the data will now be pushed from the device to Dropbox

Visualise and export collected data
14. On a desktop/laptop – go back to the Authoring Tool
15. Select Record Viewer
16. Use the Filter Records section to select the form we have just used
17. Press Get Records – they should appear on the map
18. To view/edit the records – press Show Table above the map, you can view/edit each record
19. To export the records, you have several options:
a. GeoJSON – ideal for web mapping/coders
b. KML – Google Earth and easy to get into GIS (ArcGIS/QGIS)
c. CSV – for Excel and GIS
20. To export, select the format and press Export. The data that is exported will reflect the filter you have applied. In most cases you will be exporting all data collected using a particular form, but you could apply a date range filter if you wanted.

That’s it.  Really quite easy isn’t it.  Click here to download the guide as a PDF.

Geo-tools for Teaching and Learning

I’ve been out and about quite a bit over the past 2 months, mainly to promote Fieldtrip GB but this has given me the opportunity to sit through some interesting presentations and i have found out about a number of great tools that i thought i should share with you.

Polldaddy – this is an online service that allows you to create and conduct quick polls.  You can view the results immediately so the exercise can become interactive when you are teaching. You can use Polldaddy on websites or through mobiles with their app.  Quick, easy and effective.  The free account gives you 200 survey responses a month and up to 10 survey questions per survey. There is a Pro account which cost $200 per year.

Skitch – Skitch is a annotation application from the makers of Evernote. Skitch allows users to annotate images and screen-grabs, adding extra information and notes.  This could be great when students are out in the field. Students could take a picture and then augment the picture with their own notes e.g. adding in a fault or rock unconformity. One neat feature is the ability to sketch on maps, the app launches Google Maps you just sketch away. Skitch is available for iPad/iPhone, Android, iOS and Windows.

Skitch

Skitch annotations on a photo

 

SkitchMap

Skitch annotation on a map

Fotobabble– Fotobabble allows you to add audio clips to images, they call it talking photos and slideshows.  This could be a great way to convey information to students, give them a visual representation and then some audio which triggers a discussion point. Or, get the students to use it to augment the photo’s the capture in the field.  This way they will not be left trying to remember what on earth  the photo is supposed to represent.

Fotobabble

Fotobabble – talking photo’s

iSpot – this one is a bit different, it is a project which aims to crowdsource ecological mapping, but there is a twist.  The user can take a picture of a plant and submit it.  iSpot has a team of experts who will identify the plant species and provide the user with some information about the plant.  This is neat in that the users get information that they are interested and the project team get data from locations around the UK.  An example of a symbiotic crowdsourcing scientific project?  Quite possibly.

iSpot

 Google Earth Engine (coming soon) – Google Earth Engine is Google extension of customisable views in Google Earth.  With Earth Engine users can upload their own data and perform simple spatial analysis on them. The obvious advantage with Earth Engine is that users dont really have to worry about base mapping data, they have access to all the imagery from Google Earth.

Google Timelapse datasets – this is what large organisations can do if they focus their processing power.  Google has made mosaics with all the data from Landsat 5 and Landsat 7.  This is a huge amount of data and a colossal amount of processing.   Some great examples of the time lapse include:

This stuff was the preserve of the remote sensing scientists, but is now accessible to anyone with an internet connection. This would be great for demonstrating any temporal change that has occurred since 1984, as long as it is big enough to be visible from space.  

 

Fieldtrip GB – this is an app fro EDINA that enables users to capture data on their phones. Users can choose to create their own data collection forms and once collected, data can be exported to csv, kml and geojson format.  The app is also suited for collecting data as a group exercise, a great idea if you have lots of students and want to crowd-source data collection to demonstrate an example. There is a blog article on how to set up a group exercise on the FtGB blog.

Fieldtrip GB

Fieldtrip GB

In addition, there were a number of apps that were worth a look.  I have listed them below with the briefest of descriptions. If you want more information, then just click the links and have a play.

  • QuakeFeed  (Apple) Earthquake feed for most of the World.
  • Earthquakes (Android)Earthquakes is a quake application that based on multiple data sources. With this app, you can get the latest earthquake info immediately from all over the world. Also, you can search the earthquakes occurred in the past.
  • GPS Note (Apple) With GPSnote you can easily add, edit and delete notes on the map.
  • OS Converter – (Apple) Easily convert between British National Grid References (i.e. OS Grid Refs) and Latitude, Longitude coordinates (both OSGB36 and WGS84 are supplied).
  • Altimeter – get heights in real time.  Android – DS Altimeter. Apple – Travel Altimeter 
  • Clinometer – measure slopes. Android – Clinometer   Apple – Clinometer HD
  • Decibel Ultra – measure noise levels in the field. Android – Decibel-O-Meter. Apple – Decibel Ultra
  • Rainfall Radar – takes feeds from rainfall radar satellites and trigger an alarm if you are about to get wet. Android – OSM RainAlarm Apple –  MyRadar

That’s about all i can remember, if more comes back to me then i will add it to the post.

 

 

Fieldtrip GB – A data capture app from EDINA

EDINA, the Jisc funded data centre based at the University of Edinburgh,  has just released an app that allows users to capture data against high quality base maps.  Fieldtrip GB has been designed to support teaching, learning and research in Great Britain. In summary, Fieldtrip GB:

  • is free to download and use
  • uses high quality background maps that offer rich data in both urban and rural environments
  • allows maps to be cached for off-network usage
  • enables data capture
  • includes the ability to create custom data collection forms that allow users to define the data they want to capture.

So what does it look like?

The app is split into 4 sections; Home, Maps, Capture and Download and Sync.   In addition there is a header which displays active elements such as the GPS/GPS tracking and a footer which allows quick navigation between the sections (Fig 1).

Fig 1 – Fieldtrip GB Home Screen

Quality Cartography

Part of the appeal of Fieldtrip GB is the mapping it uses.  The maps have been designed and optimised for a small screen making them ideal for viewing on a mobile phone. One of the challenges when creating the app was to ensure that the mapping worked in both urban and rural environments.  This is tricky as user will be looking for buildings, roads and road names in urban areas but users in rural areas may be more interested in features such as contour lines and rivers. Getting the highest zoom levels right was tricky but a new feature in Mapserver 6.2 allowed the developers to create an urban mask. Areas that were considered to be “urban” would display OS Street View data, whereas “rural” areas would display OS VectorMap District data augmented with OS Land-Form PANORAMA contours and path data from Natural England. In addition, considerable effort was made to place labels in sensible places, not an easy task when you need to automate the process for the whole country. Examples of the cartography are shown below (Fig 2)

Fig 2 – Examples of the mapping in Fieldtrip GB (left to right – Urban, Rural, Urban-Rural boundary)

 

Off-line maps

We understand that mobile data connectivity is not reliable in many areas of the country. Fieldtrip GB has been designed to allow users to download maps to their phones prior to going into the field. This way they will be available when data connectivity is not. There is the additional advantage that you can use WiFi to download the maps and not eat into your data allowance.

Capturing data doesn’t require a data connection.  You can collect data all day, or in fact all month, and then upload it all when you are able to connect to a strong WiFi signal.

Capture Data

There are two ways to capture data in Fieldtrip GB; by using one of the standard capture elements which support text, images, audio and GPS tracklog capture, or through the custom capture forms.

The custom capture forms are created through the Fieldtrip GB Authoring Tool. This is a website that allows users to design forms by dragging elements into an editor and defining the specific parameters they want to capture (Fig 3). We think this is where Fieldtrip GB really stands out as a useful research tool.  The Authoring Tool allows you to design data capture to meet your specific research aims. Custom data capture forms are uploaded to you Dropbox folder so that they can be accessed from your phone. To load them on your phone, just login and then perform a sync. This will grab any new forms from Dropbox  and save them to your phone.

 

Fig 3 – Overview of the Authoring Tool

Here’s an example of a form, in this case it is for collecting information about rocks (Fig 4). There is a drop down selector allow users to specify sedimentary, metamorphic or igneous rock types, sliders to record dip and strike, a note book reference and a photo capture option. Quite simple things, but easy to record and data will be consistent. We added a field-note Book ref so users could tie the digital record to their paper notes which might include specific details or a sketch.

Fig 4 – Example of a custom data capture form

Upload –> Edit –> Share

Once you have captured your data you can upload it to your Dropbox account and then either access it from there or view, edit and export it through the Authoring Tool (the authoring tool is so much more than an authoring tool).  In the authoring tool you can export the data from GPX format to other useful formats such as KML. You also have the option to share your maps with others. The Authoring Tool will mint a WMS of your data and provide you with a link embedded in your Dropbox folder, all you have to do is control who you share this link with.

What’s Next?

Well, the app is available for Android Devices and you can download it from the Google Play Store.  We have submitted it to the Apple iStore and are awaiting approval.  If all goes well this should take no more than a couple of weeks.

As for future versions and developments, we have a few features that we want to improve but what we really want is feedback from users. What would you like to see in the app?  What would you need to make this an indispensable tool for teaching and research.

 Take a look at the Fieldtrip GB website

Fieldtrip GB App

First of all – apologies for this blog going quiet for so long. Due to resource issues its been hard to keep up with documenting our activities. All the same we have been quietly busy continuing work on geo mobile activity and I’m please to announce that we have now releases our Fieldtrip GB app in the Google Play Store  

GooglePlayCapture

We expect the iOS version to go through the Apple App Store  in a few weeks.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting to blog with details of how we implemented this app and why we choose certain technologies and solutions.

Hopefully this will prove a useful resource to the community out there trying to do similar things.

A brief summary. The app uses PhoneGap and OpenLayers so is largely using HTML5 web technologies but wrapped up in a native framework. The unique mapping uses OS Open data including Strategi , Vector Map District  and Land-Form PANORAMA mashed together with path and cycleway data from OpenStreetMap and Natural England.

DSC02978screenshot-1363210183404
screenshot-1363210085080screenshot-1363210738430

Fieldtrip GB is live in Play Store

Fieldtrip GB is now available to download from the Google Play Store.  This is hugely exciting.  Fear not iPhone users, we haven’t forgotten about you.  We are just about ready to submit the app to the iTunes App Store and will be waiting for it to be approved. This could take up to a couple of weeks. We will let you know when it is approved and ready to download.

Fieldtrip GB is now available at Google Play

Augmented Reality View of AddressingHistory Now Available for iPhone, Android or Nokia Ovi Phone

We are extremely excited to let you know that you can now explore an “Augmented Reality” version of AddressingHistoryusing your iPhone or Android device. You can stand on a street in Edinburgh and see who used to live there!

How does it work?

The AddressingHistory layer works with the Layar App to compare information about your current location (from your phone) and the geo-referenced entries in AddressingHistory to work out which historical residents and businesses used to be located near where you are standing at that moment. These are displayed as “points of interest” – little icons that hover over the appropriate locations.

On your phone you will see these points of interest – historical people and places of business – overlaid on a live image from your camera. Moving the camera around lets you see historical addresses in all directions. Tapping on the resident brings up their record from AddressingHistory and will sometimes be illustrated with an icon representing the profession of that addressee.

Screenshot of the AddressingHistory Augmented Reality layer.

Screenshot of the AddressingHistory Augmented Reality layer.

Above is a screen capture of the view at night looking out of our offices but we will add some additional images to the website along with more information about how to use the layer shortly.

 It all sounds complicated but it’s actually very easy to use once you are all up and running.

How to Install 

To use the AddressingHistory Augmented Reality layer you will need to download and install the Layar App on a compatible iPhone, Android or Nokia phone.  Once you have done this and have opened the app you need to add the AddressingHistory layer as a favourite. To do this search for “Addressing History” within the App. Alternatively you can do directly to the layer page (http://www.layar.com/layers/buildar11124) as shown below:

Image of the Addressing History Layer download screen.

Image of the Addressing History Layer download screen.

 

QR code leading to the AddressingHistory Augmented Reality layer

Once you have added the AddressingHistory layer as a favourite you can start exploring the history of Edinburgh street by street – a perfect weekend activity!

The layer was built by the very talented EDINA software engineers using the buildAR tool. If you are interested in finding out more about the properly geeky parts of creating great geographic content for mobile phones then take a look at the occasional EDINA Mobile Geo blog.

Please do give the layer a try and let us know what you think – we think you’ll agree that this is a fantastic new way to browse AddressingHistory. We’d love to hear your feedback and experiences.

And if you think this is exciting…

Look out for another update from the AddressingHistory team very shortly with news of what we’ve been working on for the last few months…

 

OpenLayers Mobile Code Sprint

Last week EDINA had the opportunity to take part in the OpenLayers Mobile code sprint in Lausanne. A group of developers from across the world gathered to add mobile support to the popular Javascript framework.

After a week of intensive development we have been able to add a number of new features allowing OpenLayers to function on a wide range of devices, not only taking advantage of the touch events available on iPhone and some Android mobiles to allow touch navigation, but also enabling the OpenLayers map to be responsive and useful on other platforms, or even unexpected devices!

Jorge Gustavo Rocha and myself worked on adding support for HTML offline storage. Covering storing maps and feature data on the users local browser using the Web Storage and Web SQL standards. Here is the example sandbox which allows the user to store map tiles for the area they are viewing, which are automatically used instead of downloading the online image when possible.  More details on this and other features added can be found on the OpenLayers blog.

I have to say I wasn’t sure what to expect, and I have certainly found it rewarding contributing to OpenLayers and working with such a dedicated and talented team of developers. Far more was achieved than I would have thought possible in such a short space of time. Very inspiring stuff!