It would be of real value if we could also have a locally stored map that we can use while making observations that are out of cell phone reception reach. It is currently a hinderance to my work as I am often out of cell reception and have to switch back and forth to another map. This must be important for other users also.
Thanks,
Paul S.
Where do you need a map for? The gps stores the location?
Other offline issues:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/android-app-offline-species-list-to-add-ids-offline/2179/3
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Better still IMO would be to configure to work with mapsforge OpenStreetMaps maps and then allow the user to select their map (google, bing, OSM if online, stored maps if offline. I use the geocaching app c:geo all the time without any internet connection, just the saved waypoints (geocaches, GPX file) and the offline map. Free maps are most locations globally. I can save a map for each Canadian province or US state that I plan to visit.
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would you describe your workflow / use case a little more? i’m trying to figure out why you wouldn’t want to use a dedicated mapping app?
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it’s definitely helpful to look at air photos sometimes and when out of cell reception it’s hard to use google maps to do that.
one can do that but it would be nice to be able to do it in the inat app.
Maybe this would be ‘feature creep’ but i think it would be valuable.
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You can download Google Maps sections offline (Android and iOS instructions) although obviously that doesn’t solve the switching back and forth problem.
I’m also not quite sure what the need is here, likely because I don’t do fieldwork (although I’m checking snake cover boards with a biologist tomorrow!). Does your current workflow involve using a separate map app for navigation and you don’t want to switch between that app and iNat when you want to make an observation?
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well, i can’t speak for the original poster but…
I primarily look at satellite pictures. I do usually switch between google maps and iNat which is a bit annoying. I also used a map app that let you add georeferenced PDFs but they changed it a bunch and made it mostly useless as i recall, and i haven’t really used it in a long time. It would be neat if it were possible to save an air photo on the iNat map, maybe as part of a ‘trips’ type functionality.
What I really miss is the feature from the old iNat map that put pins on the map page before you uploaded. You could leave pac man crumbs on the map of where you had been in real time, which was really useful for navigating around a place to explore and conduct surveys. I know I’ve mentioned this before and no one else seemed to remember or care about that feature, so i doubt it ever gets recreated, but the ability to do that, or even trace a path on the map somehow, would be really neat too.
I am guessing a lot of it is beyond what the devs have time for though since it’s not core functionality. But i can dream…
Good luck herping! My friend found a garter snake that had just swallowed something yesterday, but it got away before i got a photo :(
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i’m not aware of any mapping application that is designed to provide aerial imagery offline. you may be able to view a few of the aerial images in your app before you go offline, thereby caching them, but i don’t think you can download a whole set of aerial images, especially at various zoom levels.
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Yeah what you described is more or less what I do. It works okay.
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The one use case I can think of that doesn’t hinge on a digression into novel functionality like a map view of My Observations is to verify that the GPS coordinates are correct for those rare cases where you get a stale or otherwise inaccurate GPS read. Is that your use case, @spauls, or did you have something else in mind?
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