Our client needs to identify properties that have long grass or other fire hazards, so property owners can be sent a letter notifying them to cut their grass
before the fire season approaches. We needed a GPS with the ability to capture points, and maybe allow the operator to pick from a list of fire hazards. Easy right?
The Magellan MobileMapper 6 GPS seemed like a good fit, and it came with its own data capture software, called MobileMapper Field. The software sounded functional enough, and it was even capable of post-processing.
So here’s what we discovered:
- it cannot preview, test or otherwise interact with map without GPS signal (ie, can’t use in office)
- rendering of map often took over 30 seconds, without any indication that anything was happening
- the map didn’t seem to follow current GPS location (user may have to manually zoom out, find position, pan map, then zoom in)
- it didn’t display labels for point objects (we needed to display house numbers for address points)
- polygon labels often didn’t sit within polygon, causing confusing label arrangement
- screen frequently locked up, requiring device restart
- points could only be created at the user’s current position (ie, can’t place a point within a property)
- cannot cancel out of creating a point, only go back and delete it after you’ve completed creating it
- deleting a point took over 20 seconds, and didn’t indicate that anything was happening
I’m embarassed to admit how much time we wasted in trying to get a satisfactory setup of this software.
Fortunately I discovered that the client had a copy of ArcPad lying around from when they used a previous GPS. I promptly installed it on the MobileMapper GPS, and spent a relatively short amount of time (only one and half hours) trying to get that to work. It seems that the MobileMapper Field software had one last trick up its sleeve, and that was to not allow any other software connect to the device’s GPS. Resetting the device fixed that issue, and now, I’m ready to configure it for the fire inspection season, with only one week to spare before the first inspections.
