Field Notes / Field Triangulate – Currently Free

I wrote these mainly for my own use, but took the time to productize them, so charge for them. That said, I like them being used and doing good, so if their price is a barrier, here is an opportunity to try them for free…

Timestamped Field Notes:

I use this myself for Raptor Monitoring taking timestamped notes when trying to keep binoculars on Peregrine Falcons, Prairie Falcons and Golden Eagles. Some use ethograms with primates, spiders, and more. It has been used for observation notes for everything from humans to whales and many more. Some use it for taking health log notes. The application is iOS only, but it is free for the month:

https://www.neukadye.com/mobile-applications/timestamped-field-notes/

Since this application is iOS only, I made Notes Collector free for the week on Android:

https://www.neukadye.com/mobile-applications/notes-collector/

Field Triangulate:

I wrote this for wildland firefighting (locating smoke columns in the mountains) but a number of wildlife biologists use it for radio telemetry triangulations. Take two points plus compass bearings to a destination point and it calculates the latitude/longitude estimate for that point: iOS and Android, and free on IOS for the month, on Android for the next week:

https://www.neukadye.com/mobile-applications/field-triangulate/

Android Triangulation and PI

Performing triangulation calculations involves more than a little interaction with PI. Amusing that the Google Play Store rating might come out as PI … 🙂

That said, more seriously … some old one star ratings are dragging things down a little. Old ratings that have not been updated when the application has been improved. New features of using the device compass to allow the application to get a bearing, offline support, persistent database, multiple events. Hopefully the application is higher than a three…

If you have the application and find value in it, a rating / review would be greatly appreciated.

Persistence in Android Field Triangulate

Android Field Triangulate has historically stored events (collections of readings comprising a triangulation) in memory. The intention was to create a few readings (in a relatively limited timeframe) and create a triangulation. Job done, triangulation shared. In actuality this isn’t how things always work, and wasn’t always sufficiently reliable.

Despite attempts to save these readings to instance state, in memory storage could lead to lost data … say if the application is unloaded (e.g. by a battery saver killing applications.) Lost data is never good, and this was never the intention.

Android Field Triangulate 1.3 now utilizes a persistent database in order to store readings. Sign up for a Beta Testing version, if you are interested in checking it out.

Note: The reason for network connectivity at first setup is because the persistent store utilized is a cloud synchronized database. In theory (given a named account) this could be used to synchronize events (readings and triangulations) between devices. Please contact me if that seems of interest.

BTW: If/when asked for location permissions, Android Field Triangulate doesn’t need more than “Allow only while using the app”.

Response Utilities – Create Incident

Many response teams work in remote locations where mobile networks are not available, or are available sporadically. Being able to create an incident offline (a placeholder, if not full details) allows capturing incident attendance.

Response Utilities version 1.0.8 has an option to create an incident, attach members (even offline) and queue that incident until on network and the information can be uploaded to D4H.

This ability is available for beta testing. Please check it out and provide feedback.

Note: This ability is (of course) dependent upon the user having the required permissions for their account in D4H.

New option to press “+” to create an incident.

Add title, reference identifier, a short description and attach attendance (from list of membership, available offline.)

Share Triangulation Android

After considering offline sharing (to offline capable maps) of the triangulation on iOS, I realized the same should be possible on Android.

The share coordinate button on the beta version of the Triangulation application, now offers a chooser to allow any installed applications that support the geo:{LATITUDE},{LONGITUDE} scheme to be opened to that location.

Please join the open beta for Field Triangulation and check it out…

Some application that support this scheme are:

Topo GPS
Google Earth
Google Maps
Backcounty Navigator
… and others …

Triangulation & Offline Maps

Be it a wild-land firefighter locating smoke or a wildlife biologist tracking subjects, or one of many other users, Field Triangulate is often used in the back country, away from cellular networks. Field Triangulate works offline (to accept locations and bearings and generate a triangulated location) but it cannot show maps offline. I often get asked about adding “offline maps” support to Field Triangulate, but that is not on the product development roadmap at this time.

Topo Maps+ from Glacier Peak Studios is an excellent offline topographic map solution for iOS (iPhone and iPad.) It provides access to a wide variety of offline downloadable maps, and offers GPS features.

Field Triangulate for iOS version 1.1.2 will allow a triangulation (latitude / longitude) to be sent to Topo Maps+ (even when fully offline) in order for Topo Maps+ to display the map for that location. Topo Maps+ will use the current map, and current zoom to present that location.

Use Topo Maps+ to survey the terrain at the location, and between you and that location.

Topo Maps+ will even allow you to use that triangulation as a waypoint, allowing you to easily navigate to it.

Do you use other Topo Mapping Apps?

Let me know what application you use for offline-capable topographic maps on Android devices, and I’ll look to integrating Field Triangulate to that on Android.

Field Triangulate launching Topo Maps+ on iOS

Incident “Credits”

Our annual membership requirements include training (across all disciplines), some safety requirements (e.g. mask fit testing) and 20% incident attendance. That 20% … 1 in 5 calls … can be hard on some responders. Calls drop at odd hours of the day or night irrespective of life, family and work schedules.

We offer “Incident Credits” as incentives / rewards for above and beyond shifts (Christmas & New Year shifts … one credit atop any calls), for critical conditions patrols in hot/dry summer months, and for other worthwhile causes.

To apply an incident credit:

Create an incident, allow D4H to set its unique identifier (we don’t typically use the CAD identifier, but we might add an “a” or “b” to the end of one to associate it with that incident, e.g. stayed overnight to monitor the fire.)
Tag the incident as “Incident Credit” (we create that tag)
Invite *only* those getting the credit (do NOT invite the rest of the team, hence a bonus for those present, and no negative for others not present)
Approve the incident as/when your process dictates.

D4H shows “percentage attendance” which mathematically is a numerator of “number of attended incidents” over a denominator of “number of invited incidents”. Adding an “incident credit” is technically not fully 1 incident attendance since it adds to both the numerator and the denominator, but it is a valuable credit (and close enough.)

We tag incident credits as such, mainly so we can pull them out from regular incidents to get accurate response numbers for (say) grant applications.

D4H does a good job of maintaining individual response numbers, and incident credits allow us to give credit while keeping things simple (the presented numbers correct) for the volunteer.

On-boarding new members to D4H and more…

With today’s training requirements on new firefighter recruits it take a couple of years to develop new/promoted firefighters. We do annual recruiting and annually hold classes for structural firefighting, medical response, hazardous materials and wild-land firefighting. We are about to start on-boarding almost a dozen new recruits…

On-boarding is a process. We have an orientation day where we take a photo of the firefighter (for identification, but also for us to put a face to a name) and we add them to D4H, and provide them a login so they can get acquainted with what is going on. We then have a bunch of other tasks per recruit…

We chose to use Asana for our task management. D4H has task management but we wanted a bit more sophistication in grouping, assignment & deadlines. (We use D4H tasks for equipment/station maintenance tasks.) One thing we do with Asana is group on-boarding tasks for a new recruit, and then clone that whole group of tasks for each recruit.

Our tasks look like this, and we clone them (with assignments / deadlines) one per recruit:

[IT] Add to Everbridge (as non-Operational.)
[IT] Add to D4H. Check groups, permissions. (Station group, mentee group, Full Fire-fighter or Wildland Team group.)
[Admin] Add ID photo to D4H.
[Admin] Add to Training Sheet.
[IT] Add to Google Groups – including dispatch group.
[IT] Add to Wild-land IQS – for qualification tracking
[IT] Add to Group Me – for dispatch messaging.
[IT] Add to Evite.com (for annual award dinner, family picnics, etc.)
[IT] Add to online training system (as needed.)
[Admin] Add to FPPA portal (pension)
[Admin] Get coded for County Fuel Key (once ready.)
[Admin/IT] Get Knox Box code (once ready.)
[IT] Add to Everbridge Operational Group (once ready.)

… and this is just the list after we’ve done the initial health / background screening, and paperwork. Actually, there is likely even more.

We found that if we did not explicitly add a task for each step of each new member we’d overlook something for somebody, and it is hard to catch these things after the fact. (New recruits don’t initially notice when they aren’t getting notifications they don’t yet know about.)

One gotcha we have each year with D4H and newcomers …

We are 4 fire stations, one fire community but two main teams (full firefighters FFF and wild-land firefighters WLT) and we are one D4H team. (I’m not sure we’d change to one D4H Organization and two D4H Teams, even if we could. It’d feel wrong to separate things.)

Anyway we do tend to create exercises where we invite FFF and/or WLT as appropriate, and we cannot not use “Full Team” so we use “Selective” attendance for the activity. We lay out our training calendar at the start of the year, which is where the problem arises: Our new recruits get added to D4H and these groups after the exercises are created, so they are not added to the exercise’s attendance … they are not “requested” and they don’t have permissions to add their attendance. It hits us every year.

We have no easy fix for this we just (after on-boarding) create a D4H group of the new recruits and manually updating the exercises they want to go to, requesting the members of that group. New recruits usually have more than enough of their own training, but there are a few (boat training, pack tests, mask fit tests) that they want to attend. It catches us every year.

We are very grateful for the new recruits, however on-boarding is quite a process…