Jonathan Silverton actually sold iSpot to us as a recording tool. We were not as interested in getting IDs as two other aspects:
Getting good georeferenced localities (iSpot is almost all we have, there is the ADU which is just like iSpot now - a black hole for dumping pictures without any feedback ever, and a few very small fly by night sites which come and go.)
Getting good pictures of enough taxa. Currently we have over 13 000 plant species for southern Africa, which is twice as good as any field guide (if you ignore that for many cases we have many photos, incl. geographical variation),and almost 10 times better than the typical field guide. The only plant group we are outclassed on are the trees. Even for animals, we are as good as the best field guides for displaying species, but have the advantage in that one can discuss why it might or might not be a particular species. And for higher vertebrates, we generally work to subspecies as well.
So all in all, iSpot is a national treasure and a major investment. If iSpot fails there will almost certainly be a national outcry for the Open University to repatriate the data and allow SANBI to continue the site. Several national programmes (SeaKeys - the marine programme; Alien Rapid Response: the alien detection and eradication programme, the Red List programme - using data from the Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers) use iSpot as the primary tool for Citizen Science involvement and data collection.
The developments over the last few weeks have been most alarming and upsetting. We have initiated a scoping to look at the costs and timeframes are relocating the southern African data. However, top prize would be to continue collaborating with the Open University and rather invest in adding modules to improve the sites functionality.
On a liter note. To day I was in the field recording geo resistivity, and recording weigh points on a roving gps every 30 meters. Around 12h00 I figured out that I had put my geo pick down and left it behind. Knowing we had only stopped 4 times for a break, I checked the time data to determine where we had stopped, punched in the weigh-points and tracked back. Well two hours later we found the ālost itemā relieved but darn tired. Amazing how small a geo pick can be between the rocks even with an up-market GPS.
I dropped my recording (paper) notebook in the middle of a field once, and relocated it by following the GPS track across the field. Fortunately red notebooks are reasonable easy to spot.
I did it with my car keys. Followed my tracks both by GPS and by tracking. Took a few hours. Fortunately, I was not going anywhere else until I found the keys ā¦
No idea why others use it but my main recording software is a program called MapMate which is based on OS Grid References so all the sites I record have to be assigned a grid reference for that. Once Iāve gone to the effort of working out a grid reference for a site using it seems the easiest way of getting the location associated with an entry on iSpot (navigating to the location with Google Maps and dropping a pin takes longer).
You can sometimes get a more accurate location via the Google Maps interface (if the site is identifiable to a point, rather than a line or an area - as, for example, next to the gates of a canal lock). What is mildly unfortunate is that you canāt get the more precise grid reference out again (or at least I never found a way of doing so.).
The EXIF is part of the JPEG file, used for containing anciliary information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exif
GPS enabled cameras put the grid reference (or more likely the latitude and longitude) into the EXIF.
Tony upthread has mentioned Geosetter which is a tool which, provided the GPS and camera are synchronised, can copy the grid reference (or more likely the latitude and longitude) from a GPS track into the EXIF. I suspect that most of us werenāt aware of Geosetter or similar tools.
HORSES FOR COURSES - We got back to our regular life and jobs and planned to share our photos when we had spare time.
I definitely do things differently to you - I try to find out more about each subject before downloading it - I donāt think you do this?
I try to read papers and check other sources (on the internet - nogal!!). I have learned so much.
So still plowing through the hundreds of images of lichens from that trip in 2012.
BUT WAIT - there are still the plants that we saw.
Definitely not in 2012 with my basic GPS.
Also I think that the editor I use tends to remove stored information. So I need to save-as. Iāve had to buy a new computer to be able to add more pics.
Now my database no longer functions with the new system (I used a database to monitor my finds and keep track of related information) - so problems with iSpot are just one more challenge to cope with.
Wondering if you may have found my sunglasses at any of the sites you may have visited.
Cape Point - two pairs:
Scarborough - one lovely pair
Rondebosch Common - I think were reading glasses.
AND Peter Slingsby may have found my reading glasses along the White Road at Stofbergsfontein - just beyond their family home - I never could!!
Well yes, The_Bate_s.
At Stoffies they just disappeared among the bushes and I hunted high and low. Readers with light frames but one is always aware of ticks and snakes that may be lurking nearby.
Scarborough I had a slightly larger area to search, but it was after a fire; this time designer with dark frames.
Oh! and also if youāre visiting the Peninsula - look out for a lens filter somewhere on the slope above St Norbertās Priory, Kommetjie. We were hunting for Gladiolus jonquilliodorushttps://www.ispotnature.org/communities/southern-africa/view/observation/301564/gladiolus-jonquilliodorus-slangkop-2004
Here we had a reading for the plant Slangkop - [S34 08ā 43.8", E18 20ā 07.8"]
AND then there is a camera case at the bottom of Old Boyes Drive, Muizenberg. I didnāt want to go back unescorted to look for it - not a very salubrious location,
Think thatās all I can remember for the moment.
PS Had hoped the Gladiolus picture would be displayed,
When adding observations iSpot asks for permission to get your location, so it can stick the map in the right ballpark.
First problem - my ISP doesnāt give out the right information. (Not a major problem - I just reconfigured the brower to block iSpot from using this feature.)
Second problem - it also sticks the supposed location in a GR.( I canāt see that this is helpful except for people using phones to enter records while in the field.) Unfortunately by the time that I had found my supposed location to stuff it into the GR I was already typing the correct GR, so it just messes up what I have typed.
Other problems with GR entry
Third problem - the application I am using to get GRs out of GPS waypoint logs displays the GR as 3 separate fields in a form, so I have to copy and paste in stages. I think that this is why I keep getting popups telling me that the GR is in an invalid format. iSpot takes sufficiently long to do this that Iāve usually finished the copy and paste and thereby corrected the format before it gets round to complaining. (The workround would be to copy and paste into a notepad app, so I can then paste the GR into iSpot in one final operation.)
Latitude Longitude and Altitude (we wanted altitude for southern Africa, but iSpot would not entertain the idea - but we have lots of species that occur only in certain altitude zones so it would really help for both ID and recording niche and ecology. Unfortunately we have many places were altitude varies by over 500m and some almost 1000m within 100m horizontal)
Or do you mean, degrees, minutes and seconds? But that wont help for iSpot!
or am I again barking up the wrong tree?
When the iSpot programme stopped extracting coordinates from the exif in late May this year and we were told that the programmers would not fix it because they were working on this version, we (those working in the BioGaps project) used the exiftool (also used by Geosetter) to extract the data to a file, which allowed easy copy pasting of the data.
The fields were a two letter code giving a 100 x 100 km square and eastings and northings within that square. The grid reference is normally written as a 6 (monad), 8, 10 or 12 character string depending on resolution, but the app I use presents it in 3 pieces rather than 1.
I suspect that
the GPS file doesnāt store grid references, only latitude and longitude.
exiftool doesnāt do latitude and longitude to GR conversion (itās not mentioned in the feature list).
At the moment Iām just closing the popups when they appear. Theyāre an irritation, but not a significant obstacle.
Tony, maybe Iām not understanding what this is all about, but I have used ordnance survey maps quite a lot and find them very useful,especially when walking in the countryside; Iāve also used them together with Google and Bing maps to find locations of my UK observations and have found them all really good.
I found my GPS readings in Cape Town were quite often really out - especially the altitude, but maybe this was at a time when there may have been satellite jamming. Remembering now a reading taken on Table Mountain showing up as somewhere in the ocean north of Cape Town.
GPS is much less accurate vertically than horizontally. Iāve walked downhill and seen the alleged altitude increasing, and vice versa, or been told by the GPS that I was walking below sea level when I was several miles inland.
Otherwise Iāve seen GPSs (uncommonly) lose accuracy and plot a track up to 100m away from the true track.
