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Hi All, Late to the party here— It’s with some chagrin that I admit I didn’t know about this listserv (many thanks to Matt Massey for clueing me in). My apologies if any of what I write below has already been discussed in depth on this list more than a few months back. Great discussion! And I thought I’d throw my hat into the ring and share my experiences over the past several years with digital tech in the field for production geologic mapping & structural data collection: Caveats: My experience / philosophy of using digital tech in the field is almost exclusively ruled by what actually saves me time. I don’t draw linework / deal with GIS in the field, as that’s not the bottleneck in my map production workflow. To be frank, for me, dealing with topology and geodatabases is much better suited to my office or the local cafe when there’s snow on the ground. I still map on (custom) paper field bases and use a clean-copy compilation map back in the office, as it only takes a few hours to semi-auto-digitize my linework from those at the end of field season, and after I’ve had time to think about map problems, analyze structural data, etc... I use my iPhone 4S primarily for note-taking, taking georeferenced photos, and recording measurements and other point data. I still use a field notebook for my sketches, although I’ve noticed I sketch less since taking digital field notes, which is not good. More details on my particular rig and software I use are below. Dictation: Even though my fieldwork is mostly in areas with good cell coverage, I’ve found it really doesn’t work as well as it should on account of the Siri-factor (e.g. “joint sets” becomes, well...). I’ve found I can type notes one-handed just as quick as I can write at this point, especially if I keep autocorrect off, but I am generation Y, so take that into account. Re: FieldMove Clino— I like it a lot and am excited for what it is and where it’s going: the interface design is very well thought out. It combines many functions I use across several apps. I may also have squealed, just a little bit, at the in-app plotting of measurements on an equal area net. I think MVE is doing fabulous things. The main reason I do not use it, though, is that, unless I’ve missed something, it doesn’t (yet) have the ability to add additional data attributes to one’s measurements, and/or set up one’s own database structure. I map almost exclusively in polydeformed rocks and record a lot of fracture data (it’s New England), so being able to attribute each measurement with things like relative age, mineralization, width, etc… and relate them to other measurements (e.g. intersection lineation on a particular surface) is critical. Using smartphones as transits: There’s been great discussion on this and I echo most everyone else’s experience— I can’t get accurate readings either. Darren Wilkinson has a nice little writeup of a trial he did on this subject (http://wilkinsondarren.wordpress.com/2013/06/24/19-update-should-you-trust-your-digital-compass/) and MVE also has a nice fact sheet on their FieldMoveClino website. The form factor of smartphones and tablets themselves don’t make for a great transit, either, as they don’t fit in half the nooks and crannies I need to take measurements from. Hardware & Cases: After talking with Kyle House, I’m craving a Nexus 7 (cheaper-bigger-faster-lighter-brighter-better-battery)… but most of the apps I use and would like to use are not developed for Android— understandable given the development issues involved. My setup & Apps: Hardware: 32 GB iPhone 4S, typically run in Airplane Mode. BadElf Pro Bluetooth GPS Mophie Powerstation USB battery (for recharging phone during lunch) LifeProof waterproof case (silicone wears out in 6 months, but iPhone survived an hour in a high RPM washing machine in one of these). Printed custom paper base on heavy stock and waterproof ink, cut and folded into sections, tucked in my notebook. Pigment liners and colored pencils. :-) I photograph each map section at least once a field day as a backup. More often in bad weather. iOS Apps: FileMakerGO - I use this for recording notes and structural data using a modified database and layout template I got from Chad Hults (NPS). This app only works if you have a license for FileMaker Pro, which is a pretty fabulous piece of desktop database software. I’m very happy with it. I print out “field sheets” of notes and measurements for each station and put them in a binder, as I get nervous unless I have a stable analog backup of my data. Galileo.app - I use this as my GPS interface to record station locations, “short note” stations, etc… This also displays MBTiles of pretty much any map and imagery I want, and does it with little processor overhead. I typically have 1:24K topo sheets, legacy geologic maps, aeromag, orthophotos, and custom bases using hill/slopeshaded LiDAR, surficial/soils, wetlands data, and OpenStreetMap cultural features on there. I assemble these and covert them to MBTiles in TileMill. An alternative app that does much the same is Avenza PDF maps. IMetaPhoto - For editing IPTC and EXIF metadata of the photos I take with my iPhone. I add a station number and quick note of what the photograph is of. Echoing Kyle House, I can’t emphasize enough the utility of georeferenced photos and using in-file metadata to keyword tag and organize photos, especially in the field. It saves a lot of time and searching if one uses a good photo manager back in the office (I use Lightroom, but others are just as good). There are many apps that do this sort of thing, I just use this one out of familiarity. GaiaGPS: I use this, at this point, mainly for recreation, but the pre-loaded data layers are pretty comprehensive and you can cache them on the phone for when you’re in areas with no data coverage. It can come in pretty handy. I’d love to know what setups other people are using on iOS and Android devices, and what people are using in the office, as part of their workflows for geologic mapping and structural analysis. I also want to plug the Digital Mapping Techniques workshop run by Dave Soller (USGS) every year, in case people might be unaware of it— it's the main place the U.S. state geologic surveys get together and discuss these kinds of issues, and there are several white papers that come out of it every year: http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Info/dmt/. Also, thanks Terry, for starting up a website on these things! Cheers, Joe _______________________________ Joseph P. Kopera Geologist and Senior Research Fellow Massachusetts Geological Survey University of Massachusetts, Amherst [log in to unmask] http://www.geo.umass.edu/stategeologist _______________________________