Observation location problems

I have put Gaia GPS on my phone and have noticed when I put a waypoint at the location of an observation the coordinance numbers don’t match if I manually place the point on the map when uploading the observation on iNat. Is this something others have noticed and is there a fix to make boith things come up with the same lat./log. numbers?

If it is the DMS (Degrees Minutes Seconds) which is not compatible with DD Degrees decimal this can be quickly checked by converting the minutes to decimal.

I thought of that and checked. Both systems use the decimal system so that isn’t the problem.

I just did a test by going out in my front field to put a waypoint at a known spot and then went to iNat to see what the coordinates given on Gaia would show and found the place on iNat was almost 1/2 mile away from the actual place.

How big is the difference ? Any GPS device location is only going to be as accurate as the quality of signal / number of satellite connections it can make to triangulate location.

I am not familiar with how Gaia GPS works, but be aware that if either Gaia GPS or the phone you are iNatting with is relying on cell tower signals as part of its triangulation data, it can result in errors this large. It’s best to put the phone in airplane mode (and turn off Auto-sync in the iNat app settings) when iNatting, both to help save battery, and to force positioning data to come from GPS satellites only. Then manually sync the observations later when out of airplane mode.

Also, make sure you are allowing enough time for the phone / app to establish a good satellite fix. With an open sky this shouldn’t take more than about 15 seconds, but in tree canopy or topographic lows, it can take much longer.

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Does anyone have a suggestion for a GPS app for observations for my phone that might work better than Gaia for me?

I use this
https://www.geotagphotos.net

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