[Qgis-user] Android Camera App with compass bearing

[Zoltan Szecsei]

Hi Alex/All,
Thanks for the thoughts - my comments interspersed with your.

Kind regards,
Zoltan

On 2014/11/04 23:17, Alex Mandel wrote:
> 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...
I manually downloaded the latest version (newer than that on Play Store) 
and it still does not record bearing - even though the app does have a 
bearing tool.
I checked the website and recording bearing into EXIF is not even on the 
developer's long wish-list
I have emailed the developer, with a hope to at least get it onto the 
wish-list.
>
> 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
Yes, I checked that last night too - TAGs 0x0017 and 0x0018 relate to 
bearing info.
>
> 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.
Sigh, nope.
(In my kind of) Field trip data collection (& photography) often 
involves driving to a feature, leaning out the car window and taking a 
snap-shot, so recording moving direction will not help at all.
Note that bearing accuracy is NOT that critical, it needs only to be 
reasonably indicative.
>
> 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.
Yep, true, but the purpose of this thread is to see if this wheel has 
already been invented :-)
>
> 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.
What? You not 'hard core' enough to intercept the NMEA stream and insert 
"bearing-on-the-fly" by back-calculating the incoming coords?
(Just pulling your leg - thanks for your interest in this topic :-) )
>
> Thanks,
> Alex


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