This tutorial is for the new, online project designer. The tutorial for the Desktop Designer is available
here
.
The Camera point allows you to select photos from your photo library or capture new photos to be stored in a session. When used in conjunction with a Sketch point , you can draw sketches to add even more information to your photos.
When a photo is taken or an image is uploaded, you can extract information from the photo including
exif metadata, image filename and gps coordinates. This information can be saved to the session by
adding
Reference Points
to the project. This can be done easily by selecting the camera point and in the point's properties tab,
click on the button to
Generate Reference Points
. This will open a window which provides options to select from a variety of dynamic references as well
as the point type of the points that will be generated.
Modern smartphones can be configured to automatically geo-tag photos which captures the geographical location
of where a photo was taken. The camera point captures this information and stores it within the photo, allowing
you to view this information simply by downloading the photo and viewing the photo's details. On a computer
running a Windows operating system this can be done by downloading the photo from the portal, right clicking on
the photo and selecting properties. Select the details tab to view all of the metadata for the photo, including the
Latitude
,
Longitude
and
Altitude
.
In order for geo-tagging information to be captured, the device's camera application will need to be configured to enable geo-tagging and allow location services. When a photo is taken, the device will need to be in an environment where a GPS location can be captured, otherwise no geo-tag information will be stored. If a GPS location is required, it is recommended to add validation to ensure a location is captured, see adding validation to GPS coordinates .
To ensure GPS information is captured for a camera point, you can use dynamic references to output the captured GPS latitude and longitude to Edit points and add validation to ensure the Edit points have a value. This can be done by following the steps below:
For this example, the project contains an existing Camera point with the ID Name of
CameraPoint
.
Generate Metadata Points
button. This window provides options to select from a variety of dynamic references as well as the point type of the
points that will be generated.
Latitude Decimal
and
Longitude Decimal
and then click the
Create points
button. This will insert two new Edit points into the project, below the selected Camera point.
The Point ID's of the new points are configured automatically in order to extract data from the
associated camera point. Changing the Point ID will disassociate these points from each other, causing
the data to not be extracted.
The following steps can be used to add validation on a camera point's data to ensure the session cannot be sent to the web portal until the reference points contain valid coordinates.
MathLatLong
.
((CameraPoint.lat > 0 | CameraPoint.lat < 0) & (CameraPoint.long > 0 | CameraPoint.long < 0)) ? 1 : 0
This expression will check the latitude and longitude values to ensure there is a valid coordinate. If there is,
the Math point's value will be 1 otherwise it will be 0.
Session Validation
section.
Only allow sessions to be sent when the following point has the specified value
.
MathLatLong
and set
Valid when value equals
to
1
.
This will ensure that a session cannot be completed until there are valid GPS Coordinates captured for the camera point. For a working example of this validation, download or import the sample project .
The Camera point can be configured in the designer to customise the capture method and display options. See below for details on each of this point's properties.
This setting controls what happens when the camera point is tapped. It can be configured with any of the following options:
This is the default option and will display all options to the user so that they can choose to:
The camera will be opened allowing the user to quickly take a new photo without having to select the camera option.
The photo library will be opened allowing the user to quickly select an existing photo from their photo library without having to select the photo library option.
The most recent photo will be automatically selected from the photo library.
When enabled, the user can tap on a saved photo to remove the photo from the session.
This setting allows you to set the desired size of the image when saved to the session. 640x480 is the recommended size for best presentation on A4 size reports. Larger resolutions may be required for more detailed reports.
This setting allows you to set the desired size for displaying on the mobile app.
When set, this will overlay text onto the saved image whenever the camera point attaches a new image. The text can include dynamic references to other point's in order to save session data onto the camera point's image.
The format window is shown when you tap on the Text setting. It provides options that can be used to insert a point's value into the format string. Start by clicking in the format string at the location where the point should be inserted. Then select the point from the drop down list and select whether the value should be added as a string (text) or a number. If the value of the point is numeric ( Math point , Numpad point ) then you can specify additional options if the value is inserted as a number. The differences between inserting as a string/number are explained below:
When inserted as a string, the
padding
option can be set which sets a minimum number of characters for the inserted value. When the value
is less than the specified number, the value will be padded with spaces to fill the remaining characters
up to the set amount. For example if the inserted value is
test
with the settings set to
width: 8
the formatted value would be
test
.
When inserted as a string, the
padding
and
precision
can be set. The padding determines the leading number of zeroes to pad to and the precision determines
the trailing number of zeroes to pad to. For example if the inserted value is
1.2
with the settings set to
width: 8, precision: 3
the formatted value would be
00000001.200
.
When a project is configured to extract metadata into points , these points can be referenced in the overlay text to save that data onto the image. For example, this could be used to create an overlay containing the photo's filename, GPS latitude and longitude, and the date and time that the photo was taken. See the section on Generating Metadata Points for a Camera Point to see how to add metadata points to your project.
Select which corner of the image to display the overlay in. The text will be automatically left-justified or right-justified, based on the side of the selected corner position.
These settings customise the font and appearance of the overlay text and overlay background that is displayed
on the image. These settings will only apply if the overlay text has been configured. This section includes
options for
Font Style, Size, Bold, Italic, Underline, Color and Background Opacity. A preview is provided to
show how the overlay will appear.
On the mobile device, a Camera point will display a thumbnail within the session which will provide instructions to Tap to take a photo . Once a photo has been taken or selected from the device's photo library, the photo will display within the thumbnail, in the session. The size of the thumbnail is determined using the point's properties that are configured in the Mobile Data Anywhere Designer.
The following sample project demonstrates how a Camera point can be added to your projects along with dynamic references to capture geo-tag and photo metadata.