And also AditSync on the same site.

Brian

I'd be very interested indeed to follow your progress on this Rob.

Hi Rob,

We at HBIC are very keen to trial some remote PDA data entry such as Adit.  Do you have an update on your project?

Cheers,
Andy.

Would be good if those independent reviews made it back onto this forum, if the authors are willing...

Hi All

I've been using ArcPad for recording species and habitats on a PDA for the last couple of years and this has proven to be a good solution for NESBReC (North East Scotland Biological Records Centre)

I've been planning to create a document covering this trial and will try and get something nailed together over Christmas for early in the New Year.

In the meantime I've uploaded a few screen captures from the PDA which can be found at

http://forums.nbn.org.uk/uploaded/pda.zip

Note one very important thing - to squash as much information onto one screen I'm using a PDA with screen resolution running at 480x640 (iPAQ hx4700)

Cheers

Iain

I've written a rough guide to NESBReC's experience with ArcPad for species recording which can be found at

http://www.nesbrec.org.uk/articles/PPC%20Recording.pdf

It's not a very detailed account, but does give you an idea of what can be done with ArcPad as a solution for species recording with minimal user input. We find this works very well both for species and habitat recording and integrates well with the desktop software which we use.

Cheers

Iain

http://forums.nbn.org.uk/uploaded/ArcPad.zip

Not a problem sharing the stuff and the upload link is above. There are a few things you need to be aware of.

Unless you're running in VGA mode you'll only see the top left quarter of each form. Obviously the complete form will be viewable on the desktop version of ArcPad. Also note that I create a toolbar which is used to activate the action buttons on the unit. This toolbar is invisible when using VGA but I have noticed using QVGA that it appears as a blank toolbar. I've never bothered to look into why this is, as it's not something that affects the way we work, but maybe you could let me know of your experiences with this. Also, you'll only see around half the commands on the custom toolbar so you may find it difficult to even quit the application (CTRL-Q will still work). Maybe running in landscape mode will help this a little bit.

That said, the scripting should be functional but be aware that I use numerous scripts in different places to try and 'de-couple' toolbars from projects but I guess you are aware of where files need to go within the ArcPad hierarchy. I've also used a rather unconventional way of creating the APL file for the species list in that I've broken this into page sections so that if a file with .APG is found in the directory this will automatically be added to the tab view at the bottom of the screen - probably best seen by viewing the files in notepad. This file (species.apl) is updated at runtime. This is used to add/remove taxonomic groups without the need for scripting. The function to generate grid references from Eastings/Northings will need a bit of treatment as I only use certain 100km squares here but that should be easy enough to work out.

I've amended the ArcPad application resources to alter the command bar but it's probably 'safer' to just create another custom toolbar and copy across this functionality. You'll probably have to amend a significant proportion of this project to get it to tie in with your way of working - let me know how you get on. Remember to copy all your original ArcPad files as this makes alterations to the standard toolbars.

I've left in some data which is for the north-east of Scotland so at least there is some data there for you to look at.

Let me know how it goes.

cheers

Iain

Hi

Just a quick update on AditTrec

1. Thanks to suggestions from Snowdonia National Park, species lists from 'Rucksacks' can now be imported into the system, and downloaded to your Pocket PC.

2. Tireless testing work by Cheshire LRC has improved the time taken to establish a GPS position, and established a more efficient way of handling multiple species lists with different counting methods.

Paul Griffiths

www.aditsite.co.uk