When I enter an observation from my iphone, the lat-longs of the observation are almost always different from what I actually entered. For example, when I do a new observation and I enter a set of coordinates into the location field, the map takes me to a place near the coordinates I typed in, but almost never exactly to the coordinates. Does anybody know how I can rectify this?
Can you post screenshots of your workflow?
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OK here it is: the first photo shows the screen when I am trying to enter location data. I select “search” and get the second screen. I then type in the lat-longs as shown and hit “search” and I get as a return the third screen. My only choice at this point is to select the location returned and when I do so, I get the 4th screen in which you can see that the latitude has been changed. It seems clear that what I need to be able to do is select something other than the place returned in the third screen b/c the location returned is near the location but not a match to where I made the observation. Does this make sense?
Yes that makes sense. I don’t have an iPhone, so I’m not sure what the best solution would be. Can you scroll/zoom to set the location? You can probably pin locations used more than once. And then there’s always using the website, which is much easier, especially in bulk.
On your last screen (“Edit Location”) you should be able to drag the map until the correct location is under the cross-hairs, then click “Save” - on my iPhone this updates to the chosen location. However, I did just notice that the map only displays the latitude of the cross-hairs, not the longitude, which makes it hard to match your coordinates exactly. May need to wait for the new phone app for that to get fixed.
This seems like a really bad bug for the phone app. Is there any way to access your saved locations from the phone app?
So here is my work-around, but it really just makes more work. I enter the observation from my phone with no location, and then I immediately go to the website and type in the coordinates on the edit screen. If I forget, someone usually asks me to add the location, so this is not too bad. I can’t seem to figure out in the edit screen how to use my already stored locations.
Is there anybody at iNat I can communicate with directly to suggest that the next phone app changes this data entry malfunction?
These look like screenshots from the website upload function rather than the iPhone app? Also, there are different ways to upload an obs from the iNat web site app under iOS.
In my case, the apps normally pick up the location from the photo’s meta data. Perhaps there is be a setting or permission you can tweak? (Turn on Location services / allow iNat to access your photos, or some such?)
If iNat did not pick up the photo meta data* for location when the picture loads, I am presented with the world map centered on Africa to manually shift the screen to the desired location. I either drag/zoom the crosshairs to the location or enter a place name to search instead of cords. Then, I may drag the crosshairs to the final desired location.
- which sometimes happens when I am using one of upload functions from the website app under iOS rather than the iPhone app.
Edit: oh, you can write to help@inaturalist.com or submit a support ticket:
Support
https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting+started has further details about using the web interface to upload and set locations
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