Import csv + photo link?

General
1

Hi,

I have a big observation & image database (~60000) on a personal website, and I’d like to duplicate them on inat. I work directly in sql, and can generate easily a .csv. As I understand, there is no possibility of loading images. Is it convenient to put a link to the photo on my website in the comment field ?

Also, should I split my csv in several files with < 10000 lines ?

Thanks,

Mickaël

2

Do you have a link to your website on your profile?

3

You will still need the photo in your observations. Description/comments are not convenient for identifiers and without photo your observation can’t reach ‘Research Grade’.

You may still link the original observation on your site if it’s also something you want.

2 Likes
4

if you want to upload tons of observations with photos, probably the most efficient options you have are to upload observations using the API, or to add specific metadata to your image files an then upload the files.

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5

I don’t think so. It’s https://trombinature.org

6

Yes your link is there

https://www.inaturalist.org/people/mpechaud

7

Thanks, I’ll check metadata, might be the simplest for me. I there a limit to the number of uploaded photos ?

8

technically, i don’t think there is, but practically, i think it’s limited by the power of your own device and internet connection. for every 8GB of RAM you have on your machine, i would guess you could safely load 50 observations. if you have a flaky and slow connection, then i would do small batches of, say, 30.

9

ok, uploading 50 by 50 or even 100 by 100 would be very painful in my case (~60000 obs my database).
I’ll check the API then.

10

you could try to find the actual upper limit for your setup. it’s possible you might be able to do many more observation than my conservative guesses. start with 100, and if it works, try 200, and if that works, try 400, and so on.

11

This is a good question. I’m in a similar situation, with a large photo library on my home computer from the past 23 years and a database of associated observation information (geotags, species, annotations, etc.). As @pisum noted, the iNat API is your friend here. The tech I’m most familiar with coding in is R, so I’ve been working on getting R to leverage pyinaturalist to do this. I just recently got my prototype working (uploading this observation). Now I’ve got some work to do to get my photos properly aligned with the observation database before ramping it up. I’m happy to compare notes if that helps.