Hi Fran, Regarding uploads and also photo management more generally with Mapillary:
1) photo management : I have taken a backup of pretty much all Mapillary photos I've taken using an external hard drive (and backing those up to another external hard drive that I eventually copy to my file archive) this is for three reasons: (i) especially when taking photos while driving mapillarying accumulates quite a stack of data. Depends on your phone (as the app snaps max resolution 4:3 photos that your phone is capable of capturing) but eg my Samsung Galaxy S5 accumulates about 5GB/hr (with the standard setting of photo every 2 seconds). So, with the standard procedure of uploading with the mobile phone the memory of the SD card (or phone for iOS users) gets full fast unless you have a fast upload connection all the time. (I got a 128GB SD and have still had this issue ; ok, partly because I have downloaded maps for the whole world to OsmAnd, ~35GB, but still). This is a practical (upload) reason and ensures that I don't loose my data. (I've found digiKam, an open source photo management software to be the best thus far software for viewing/browsing tens of thousands of geotagged photos on a map, OSM of course. JOSM is also capable of not just showing Mapillary photos drag'n'dropped into it correctly but it also shows the compass direction of the photos _&_ it shows the photo preview as nicely as with photos taken with OSMTracker, which is superb!) (ii) I want to have a local copy of all of my data. Local data is just so much faster to browse, analyse, what not. Last but not least, (iii) as noted before Mapillary is currently pretty much the only system that makes survey / street view photo sharing meaningful - but this is quite likely not the case forever. And I want to be able to have the possibility to upload my data (easily) to any other possible future service. 2) Uploads : this is likely a challenge in many countries and planning ahead is a good idea (as noted above). I've uploaded most of my photos when I've visited countries with better upload. The Mapillary team also offered to upload photos for me if I'd send them photos on micro SD cards (=normal envelope). This option gave me peace of mind for continuing capturing photos even when I had tens of thousands of photos in my upload queue. Local upload might be easier using the upload scripts (Python) that allow you to continue to use your phone while leaving your photos uploading at a location with decent connection. The scripts are dead easy to use (even I have been able to use them!). I've tried the script upload with Raspberry Phi(?) (the $35 tiny computer) successfully; a neat "upload server solution". The script upload option could also make it easier to negotiate a possibility for local upload partners whether they be NGOs, international organizations, government, local companies or whoever with a decent upload link. It should be noted that the app writes the Mapillary user ID (as some cryptic text string) in the exif comment of each photo, so the photos will get posted on the account of the one who took the photos regardless of who uploads them. The two main issues noteworthy regarding using the system (both app related) are: 1) the app' camera (at least in Android) shows full screen when taking photos but it only captures 4:3 photos. This may leave a notable area visible in the viewfinder(?) uncaptured. Annoying until you know this and take it in consideration when taking photos. 2) some phone models are much more prone to blurry pictures using the Mapillary app than others. I was surprised at first how many of the photos I took with my spanking new Galaxy S5 were blurry. Playing with the app settings can make a big difference. The change that helped in my (S5) case was unticking the Autofocus in camera option. I also recommend checking the Skip location check box in the Developer options because the app refuses to take photos that it considers to have poor location accuracy (which is IMO set a bit too strictly). Ah, finally one important thing. If you want to take local backups of the photos or/and control when you upload and when not you need to always make sure that you have the "Upload pictures in the background" option unchecked. I also uncheck the "Sync when phone is not charging" option while at it. Ensures that you don't drain your battery. As you can see I'm pretty juiced up with collaborative survey photography / street view. I think it not only provides a lot of possible benefits for mapping but has the potential to help improve hum/dev sector activities (accountability, efficiency, effectiveness). A friend's recent blog post touches nicely upon this larger issue from a perspective of one int'l dev sector worker http://blogs.iadb.org/moviliblog/2014/11/13/im-believer-crowdsourcing-map/ Cheers, -Jaakko PS. I think that photo mapping including "mapillarying" doesn't take away nearly anything from the need to collect POI data and other survey observations while in the field (whether it be in the form of "traditional" field survey data collection with forms, direct POI data collection or OSM Map Notes). You can't of course do everything at the same time so there are many situations in which you need to choose which to do. Ideally Mapillary (or similar service) would be integrated with tools that are used for non-photo survey data collection to make combined use easier. There's eg no reason that OsmAnd's "Audio/video notes" plugin's Take a Photo feature couldn't offer an option to upload to Mapillary, that OSMTracker couldn't be tweaked to allow the same, etc. I hope that we'll see such integration(s) soon. (If any developer is interested I'd be very interested to help in non-coding aspects of such work.) -- Sent from my mobile device. On Nov 19, 2014 5:35 AM, "Fran Boon" <[email protected]> wrote: > On 19 November 2014 02:11, Pierre Béland <[email protected]> wrote: > > Interesting interaction to build with the humanitairans in the field and > we > > should surely look at the best options together. > > And all of this in an emergency context. > > We have not discussed these details with OCHA-Mali and UNICEF. But we can > > discuss this tomorrow. This is a workflow that we will build with them at > > the same time we respond to this emergency We also have to adapt to the > > operational context they will have. > > I will trial Mapillary in Central African Republic...both for my own > use & that of the NGOs working there...I am invited to the IM Working > Group by OCHA who are keen to learn how to make better use of OSM. > I am worried about bandwidth usage, so PoIs with OSMAnd may be a more > suitable option, but we'll see :) > > F >
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