I’ve recently been confirming some identifications for moths that are found in mountains (new for me). Is there any way to include altitude in observations? Some moths, and I presume other life forms, are found at a specific altitude. Or should this be added into the “comments” part of the observati…

Elevation is a standard thing that every GPS chip calculates. I’ve seen it show up in the Exif for devices from multiple vendors, and the bulk of my uploads actually have it. Look for the ‘GPS altitude’ field, which tends to actually record elevation. You can probably go back and add elevation to…

@mamestraconfigurata do you have a specific feature request here, or are you asking about the best way to add altitude data to iNat observations?

I would like to suggest this be added to the Feature Request… "Can we have the option in the uploader to extract the exif elevation data and have it incorporated into the observation, in a similar field as the Acc (m) field…" I would imagine it handled in a similar way as the Acc (m) field, and th…

[04] It should be here next to the longitude, before accuracy. I believe the latitude and longitude are taken from the first photo’s metadata so just extract the elevation as well or if it does not exist leave it blank.

Just keep in mind that GPS elevations are always less accurate than their horizontal coordinates, generally by a factor of 3 or more. If we start capturing elevation (which I am in favor of), “Accuracy” should be re-labeled as “Horizontal Accuracy.” I don’t believe GPS chipsets capture any kind of…

wait… does it actually measure the altitude in relation to the satelites it is measuring off, or does it look up GPS coords to get the elevation in the same way many mapping apps do? In other words, how does it know where MSL is?

My understanding is that GPS chipsets base elevation/altitude solely on calculations directly from satellite signals and geometry, and the reference ellipsoid model in use, not from looking up horizontal coordinates against a Digital Elevation Model like some mapping apps. The height above (or belo…

[image] jdmore: I don’t believe GPS chipsets capture any kind of vertical accuracy, but correct me if I’m wrong. I believe most GPS units will report a vertical dilution of position (VDOP) which is a function of the position of the GPS unit relative to the visible satellite constellation, and…

[image] crellow: The VDOP and several other dilutions of position are standard output in GPX files. Thanks, good to know! I’m guessing any vertical accuracy measures probably don’t get incorporated into the EXIF headers of smartphone photos, but I’d love to be wrong about that too.

[image] jdmore: Just keep in mind that GPS elevations are always less accurate than their horizontal coordinates, generally by a factor of 3 or more. Sure, but when I put the altitude into an observation field (which I do), I am getting it from the same place. No worse off then. Although I re…

Altitude on observations

Feature Requests

jdmore March 29, 2019, 6:56am 29

I could definitely live with that too, if all my GPS waypoints were that close. But the variation over >1000 points has been much greater for me. Hopefully your sample wasn’t just a fluke…

Is there an existing way to see the elevation level for where the observation was observed?

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Altitude on observations

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