The future of geopaparazzi

[andrea antonello]

Dear all,
it is about time that we have a chat about the future of geopaparazzi
(and SMASH).

As some of you might have noted, we have not been able to do may
improvements to geopaparazzi recently. This is due to the fact that we
tested the android/IOS road through flutter, which lead to the
creation of SMASH and this absorbed all of our voluntary time as well
as a big chunk of the job time :-).

Something unexpected happened along this road. We noticed that
developing in flutter not only would bring IOS support, but also that
it is much, much, much, much faster. Also it allows to make things way
way way more modern and beautiful, both from a visual and usability
point of view.
In few days the new release of SMASH will be pushed out and you will
be able to see how much improvement in few time it will bring.

For us as HydroloGIS this means that our focus will slow but steadily
move towards SMASH, because in this development of the project we are
quite alone and therefore have to choose what is best for us. :-)

Clearly we will continue to maintain geopaparazzi and also add small
functionalities as they come. But I feel that SMASH might, in 1 year
from now, be better loved by the geopaparazzi user community...
because it is simply more usable and it is extremely simple to add new
features. Just have a look at the attached images that show how a new
WMS service is added in SMASH and how the list of available services
are shown with a live-map each to see if the service is working. Doing
this in Geopaparazzi would have been unthinkable in voluntary time for
us.

I am thinking of many notes automation issues that have been asked in
geopaparazzi and that would be doable quickly in SMASH.

Ok, for now I am stopping here. Please do not think that we will stop
supporting geopaparazzi, that is unthinkable for us. But I start
thinking that I would love to see SMASH naturally replace geopaparazzi
within a year from now.

I would really like to hear what you all think about all this. Please
shoot without holding back.
We need to know what you are thinking and want to discuss this. Power
users instead are forced to give a feedback. Please? :-)

Have a great day and be safe,
Andrea

PS: There is one other thing that we have been thinking about and for
which we would love to get feedback. It might be time choose
geopackage as the standard format for new projects. It would be the
same gpap format, but with geopackage standard, so that it can be just
opened in a GIS.

[Tim]

Congratulations on your success with SMASH!  I actually didn't realize it was an iOS *and* Android app and so I went right away and installed it in google play to try it out! I look forward to the new update to see what you have added. At this point, we (the small non-profit I work for) depend on Geopaparazzi for field data collection but we can work with current versions and shifting towards SMASH in the long run might be a viable solution. 

Best, 

Tim

[Brent Fraser]

Hi Andrea (and all),

Things that are important to me with respect to SMASH (and Geopaparazzi)
:

1. Customization:
Make it easy to "re-brand" (modify icons and name). This allows other
developers to target the app to specific industries and workflows (and
contribute to the project). Try to off-load functions to other projects
(e.g. Open Data Kit for note collection) if possible.

2. Integration: Data collection is only part of the overall solution.
Make it easy (really easy!) to import and export data. And don't assume
users are GIS experts.

3.. Reliability
Real time positioning has lots of reliability issues (phone issues, GPS
signal problems, etc) so there needs to be a lot of attention paid to real
time feed back on how the data collection is going (number of notes, points
saved , etc) and the system status (lost GPS signal, accuracy of
position).

4. Usability:
This is one of the few mobile apps that is meant to be used outside in
bright sunlight (and other difficult conditions) so pay attention to the
details of the U/I: use of color, icon and text sizes, etc.

Thanks for the great apps!

Best Regards,
Brent Fraser

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[Dotzo Dotzov]

Hi Andrea and all other enthusiasts,

Thanks for your efforts of creating maintaining Geopaparazzi and now SMASH. It has the potential to replace Geopaparazzi, because of the more comprehensive interface. It looks like that in the near future I may get to introduce it in our work for efficient field data collection. My general points:

1. Background GPS tracking - for me this is critical and if not introduced in SMASH I'll stick to Geopaparazzi. Currently it is pretty much only Geopaparazzi that can do this - QField can't, Datamine Discover Mobile can't. Locus Map/GIS does it through a running service, similar to Geopaparazzi.

2. Easier data transfer between desktop and SMASH - I mean easier for a non-GIS pro, but for a regular user. Both are still somewhat limited for the privileged only :-)

3. Easier use of raster maps in the project - also very important for my work.

I think on points 2 and 3 Geopackage could be the solution.

Good luck and I'm looking forward to put my hands on the new release of SMASH.

Dotzo

[andrea antonello]

Dear all,
please allow me to answer in a cumulative block to all of you.

First off, thanks for answering. I was hoping for at least two other power users to jump in, but it is time that I answer to who did.

> Congratulations on your success with SMASH!  I actually
> didn't realize it was an iOS *and* Android app and so I went
> right away and installed it in google play to try it out!
> I look forward to the new update to see what you have added.
> At this point, we (the small non-profit I work for) depend on
> Geopaparazzi for field data collection but we can work with
> current versions and shifting towards SMASH in the long run
> might be a viable solution.

Thanks, that is great news. I think SMASH has already some features that you were looking for in the past (ex. more data from the GPS in the table) and will have more in future (position averaging might be a good moment to add, but you will have to talk me through it again :-) ).

> 1.  Customization:
>    Make it easy to "re-brand" (modify icons and name).  This allows other
> developers to target the app to specific industries and workflows (and
> contribute to the project).  Try to off-load functions to other projects
> (e.g. Open Data Kit for note collection) if possible.

I have pushed as far as I was able with my knowledge towards rebranding openness. I have the feeling that IOS has never been friend of this and Android is starting to do the same with versions > 9. Creating plugins that are installable by other users in a second step are not possible to my knowledge. Attaching to ODK is something that I have investigated in early days with the project leads and they were definitely not  as open at that time.

But in general we will continue to try to make things as open as we can to attract contributors.

>  2.  Integration:   Data collection is only part of the overall solution.
> Make it easy (really easy!) to import and export data. And don't assume
> users are GIS experts.

Yes and yes an yes. More later on in this email. 

>  3.. Reliability
>    Real time positioning has lots of reliability issues (phone issues, GPS
> signal problems, etc)  so there needs to be a lot of attention paid to real
> time feed back on how the data collection is going (number of notes, points
> saved , etc) and the system status (lost GPS signal, accuracy of
> position).

I completely agree with you and I think that this is one of the major things that are happening in SMASH due to the ease of building stuff in flutter.

Allow me to insert a couple of examples:

This is the toolbar. You can configure it even to show you how many points are being logged and how many were really used by the current log (i.e. not filtered).

This is the GPS Live preview view of the GPS Settings. Here you can test the filters set to see if they fit you or check why stuff is not working.

In geopaparazzi I would have only dreamt of this.

>  4. Usability:
>  This is one of the few mobile apps that is meant to be used outside in
> bright sunlight (and  other difficult conditions) so pay attention to the
> details of the U/I: use of color, icon and text sizes, etc.

Also agree here. Not simple to do. Right now only the main view icon size is configurable. But 

> Thanks for your efforts of creating maintaining Geopaparazzi and now SMASH.
> It has the potential to replace Geopaparazzi, because of the more
> comprehensive interface.

Thanks Dotzo, this is one comment I was hoping for :-) We spent much time in trying to do things right. Even if flutter is simple, a good UI takes tons of time.

And many times I have to throw away things done, because they don't work. But at least now that is possible. 

> It looks like that in the near future I may
> get to introduce it in our work for efficient field data collection. 

Fantastic :-)

> My general points:
>
> 1. Background GPS tracking - for me this is critical and if not introduced
> in SMASH I'll stick to Geopaparazzi. Currently it is pretty much only
> Geopaparazzi that can do this - QField can't, Datamine Discover Mobile can't.
> Locus Map/GIS does it through a running service, similar to Geopaparazzi.

The upcoming version already does this. It was a showstopper also for us, so now it is implemented. :-)

> 2. Easier data transfer between desktop and SMASH - I mean easier for a
> non-GIS pro, but for a regular user. Both are still somewhat limited for
> the privileged only :-)

That is also what Brent said and this is something I strongly believe in. 

But being a GIS guy I have no real idea what the best tools would be.

So I am asking you: to support non-GIS surveyors, what would the most needed import and exports be?

I opened an issue here to collect these: https://github.com/moovida/smash/issues/24

Please let us know.

> 3. Easier use of raster maps in the project - also very important
> for my work.

In the upcoming release there is support for raster imagery (tiff, jpg, png) with the tfw/jgw/pgw + projection format. 

Is this what you are looking for?

> I think on points 2 and 3 Geopackage could be the solution.

So geopackage would already be a simplification? But the user needs to be a GIS user in that case.

For 3 we are already working on having raster geopackages working the gdal way, i.e. with just one zoomlevel and that at the best resolution. This avoids the issue of the size exploding like in mbtiles.

> Good luck and I'm looking forward to put my hands on the new release of SMASH.

Yep, I am trying to throw it out by this week. We are overwelmed with work, so "trying" is the keyword here.

Cheers,

Andrea

PS: Andrew, sorry for the delay. I will make sure a working apk will land on github in the next days and will notify you.

[Eli Adam]

We're excited to try this and report feedback but it will take us a decent amount of time to load, configure, and then test SMASH in several situations.  Exciting to see your work!

Best regards, Eli

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[andrea antonello]

Hi Eli,

We're excited to try this and report feedback but it will take us a decent amount of time to load, configure, and then test SMASH in several situations.  Exciting to see your work!

really glad to hear that you will take time to try this out. I know it is a big work to do this really, so it is much appreciated. There is no rush, SMASH will get more and more stable.

Cheers,

Andrea

 

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[Dotzo Dotzov]

Hi Andrea,

Some results from SMASH testing:

- Georeferenced images load perfectly - fantastic!

- GPS logging consumes significantly less battery than Geopaparazzi!

Now the problems:

- GPS logging dies after some time - around one hour. Simply stops, although I can see the service is still running. I tried different settings, like min GPS distance and time, battery optimization, etc. Most of my tests were while driving, if this would make a difference.

- TMS - Generally the rendering of the layers appear more coarse than in Geopaparazzi. I compared Open Street Map, Open Topo Map, Google Hybrid.

- TMS - strange behaviour in the list - after adding a new TMS layer, I can no longer see the other pre-defined layers.

- There is no icon for the SMASH service. I can see the space for it in the task bar, but it is empty. The service is running though and it appears in the notifications list, and the icon there is just a grey square.

All this is on Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ - I bought this one lately to see how dual-frequency GPS works. It makes difference.

Best regards,

Dotzo

[andrea antonello]

Hi Dotzo,
good to hear from you.

> Some results from SMASH testing:
>
> - Georeferenced images load perfectly - fantastic!
> - GPS logging consumes significantly less battery than Geopaparazzi!

great!

> Now the problems:
> - GPS logging dies after some time - around one hour. Simply stops, although I can see the service is still running. I tried different settings, like min GPS distance and time, battery optimization, etc. Most of my tests were while driving, if this would make a difference.

is it possible that it happens when the gps looses the fix.
Today I released a bugfix (plus small nice features) that should fix a
lot on the GPS. The thing is that through covid I never had a real
chance to test it in bad environment.
So I would really appreciate a test with the new 1.2.1 that is out for
android. And if you were testing that one already... I am in trouble.

> - TMS - Generally the rendering of the layers appear more coarse than in Geopaparazzi. I compared Open Street Map, Open Topo Map, Google Hybrid.

I got this signalled from another user for the georeferenced images.

I never noticed it for the TMS. Will check

> - TMS - strange behaviour in the list - after adding a new TMS layer, I can no longer see the other pre-defined layers.

I will have to test this also.

> - There is no icon for the SMASH service. I can see the space for it in the task bar, but it is empty. The service is running
> though and it appears in the notifications list, and the icon there is just a grey square.

I just noticed the same behaviour on a Nokia with android 9. On a
tablet with the same I see the right smash notification icon :-(
Not sure what happens here.

> All this is on Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ - I bought this one lately to see how dual-frequency GPS works. It makes difference.

Woot, that is great to hear, thanks.

Cheers,
Andrea

>
> Best regards,
>
> Dotzo

>
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