[Qgis-user] Android Camera App with compass bearing

[Alex Mandel]

On 11/04/2014 04:55 AM, Zoltan Szecsei wrote:
> Hi,
> I need to do a field trip and take some photos.
> I've been googling around, but cannot find an app that will burn both
> GPS position _and compass bearing_ into either the image, or just the
> exif data for that image.
> 
> Anyone got any experience in this need?
> 
> Thanks & regards,
> Zoltan
> 
>

Maybe, http://geopaparazzi.github.io/geopaparazzi/
"georeferenced and orientated pictures"

And now my long rant before I remembered the above link...

GPS data is an on/off toggle on most Android devices. Bearing does
appear possible according to the exif specs, but in practice is rare.
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/TagNames/GPS.html

However I don't see any obvious apps for telling the phone you want to
capture that. I'm also not sure all phones are capable of calculating
bearing when not moving.

So my suggested work around would be a GPS Logging application of which
there are several. Then you can pull the bearing calculation out after
the fact, if it was while moving.

If stationary, you might need to write your own app which lets users
indicate which way they were facing when taking a picture. For someone
who's made an Android application I don't think this is hard.
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/sensors_overview.html
Indicates all version of Android support the Magentic sensor.

This example shows how to get the bearing from the API
https://www.codeofaninja.com/2013/08/android-compass-code-example.html
So GPS+Orientation+Camera should be all required.

Kinda busts my GPS logging idea, since the bearing information comes
from a different sensor than the GPS it won't be in the NMEA strings
even if you captured them.

Thanks,
Alex