I continually see observations submitted especially via the phone apps with unnecessarily large (in)accuracy circles around their locations. On the order of 100s of meters or more. Many users may not be aware that these uncertainty values exist, how large uncertainty values limit the usefulness …

Have you tried putting your phone into airplane mode, so that it doesn’t use the cell network or wi-fi to determine your location (only GPS)?

I’m dealing with the problem of huge “accuracy” numbers pushing observations out of my project area. My choices seem to be to chase down everyone whose observations slipped out and ask them to manually change their location or create a buffer zone of nearly a kilometer to make sure those observation…

For anyone experiencing these issues, it would be helpful to know: if you are importing photos taken with your cell phone or taking photos within the iNaturalist app. If you open the phone’s camera app and quickly snap a photo, it might not have time to register any location, or to register a de…

[image] tiwane: There isn’t anything we can do about that I respectfully disagree - if the app showed some indication of precision when an observation is being made, it would likely help people to wait a moment for a better fix and take pictures with better locational accuracy. This would sav…

[image] deboas: if the app showed some indication of precision when an observation is being made, it would likely help people to wait a moment for a better fix and take pictures with better locational accuracy Does the iOS app not do this? The Android app does.

The iNat iphone app does show accuracy right under the location name, to the right of the little pin icon. You can look at that number and watch it shrink to 5 or 10 meters in most cases. Or if you have cell service you can click that area and look at the air photo and make sure the location is righ…

@jdmore I can see how you might be frustrated with large location accuracy but I also believe it also deals with make and model of a smartphone. I got a new phone about two months back and I have to click the ‘locations’ setting on observation to get a more accurate location because it will only giv…

[image] birdwhisperer: And this is with the ‘GPS’ on. Yeah, to make sure you are getting full advantage of the 5-10 meter GPS accuracy, you also have to turn off cell service by putting it in airplane mode. Otherwise your accuracy may be coming from cell tower triangulation instead of pure G…

No it doesn’t work with airplane mode. I’ve done iNat when I’ve had no service days left and the location inaccuracy was ridiculous. And I also doublechecked your suggest to make sure I’m not missing anything. When cell service on, I was able to get a 10 meter accuracy around my home and it’s usuall…

Improving Location Accuracy on observations

General

deboas November 22, 2019, 11:02pm 72

No, it doesn’t. You only see the accuracy after the observation is made. I didn’t realise the Android app shows this. Hopefully this feature will get rolled out to iOS too!

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Improving Location Accuracy on observations

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