[Nhcoll-l] Mobile app for collection in the field

[Eli Wyman]

Hi Eirik,

    I had a very similar issue in our lab and the solution I came up with
was to use a combination of pre-printed barcode labels (printed on special
labels that are cryo and solvent safe) applied to small (1.7ml) tubes and
an app called Scan-It To Office. Scan-It is a subscription app costing
something like $5/month per device which depending on how many devices and
length of field season can be very affordable. It allows you to VERY easily
create custom data input forms within the app that can have many different
kinds of data fields including automatically recording GPS coords, date,
time etc etc, also can input barcodes, photos and so on. It then stores all
records locally on your device (phone/tablet) until you sync it with a
spreadsheet. It works with Excel or Google Sheets. Then it will send all of
the records to your spreadsheet but maintain the last 1000 records on your
phone until you delete them. Hence the data is very safe even if you are
not near an internet connection.

   The system works very well for us, but there are some downsides.
Obviously the way we do it requires one to generate and organize barcodes.
In our case we make a unique barcode for every specimen, though of course
it could be done many other ways, and indeed you could just generate a
unique code each time if you wanted to. One has to be careful about where
the cursor is when uploading to the spreadsheet because if you highlight
the first cell of an already populated sheet it will overwrite the cells.
There are a few other minor issues, but if you are aware of them and plan
around them it is an extremely versatile system that is pretty user
friendly. If you want any other info I am happy to talk about it with you
one on one. We also have an in-house relational database that allows us to
connect the unique specimen ID number across spreadsheets and track
specimen usage (sequencing) etc.

Eli Wyman
Kocher Lab
Princeton University

On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 12:56 AM Eirik Rindal <eirik.rindal at nhm.uio.no>
wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> As a part of our digitization of the workflow in the Collections, we are
> looking for a mobile app to capture data during fieldwork. So when you
> collect a specimen, yu can use your cellphone to register data about
> «coordinate, date, who collected» and so on. Does anyone have any
> recommendations in this respect?
>
>
>
> We have had a look at the iNaturalist app and are looking for alternativs
> to this.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Eirik Rindal, PhD
>
>
>
> Natural History Museum
>
> P.O. Box 1172
> Blindern
> 0318 Oslo
>
> Norway
>
>
>
> Tlf: + 47 402 24 872 / 22 85 18 72
>
>
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