North River Geographic Systems Inc

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Working from Home

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I told myself this year I was going to just type more and I’ve failed miserably at doing that. I’ve been caught up in projects, marketing, and life.

I work from Home. I know what you’re thinking – “How do you keep this international business running so smoothly from Home?”. It’s a struggle. Lately in the news there’s been a mass of “Don’t shake hands” or “Wash your hands” or “Avoid crowds” going around. So Check, Check, and Check.

Why do I work from Home? It’s just me at the moment. From the day I started this business I’ve had a home office. Sometimes I can close the door. Sometimes I can’t. Occasionally I’ll get fed up and have to leave and go work somewhere remotely be it a coffee shop or a friend’s office or something. Some days you have to get out. Most days I’m here with some music playing the background and working at something…be it a job….or marketing…or just writing.

Over the last 4 years  probably 90% of my work has become remotely driven. When I first started I was constantly driving to clients to do what was needed and over the last bit it’s been more and more remotely logging in and doing what I need to do. Most of my clients still house everything in house vs the cloud – BUT – the cloud is starting to slowly influence my life as clients move to remote hosting options.

It is hard though. In a past life I was married to a nurse and we dreaded August. Why August? Start of school. Kids would get sick and go to the Hospital and she would get sick and bring it to me and I’d get sick. For a month it was pretty miserable. After two months we were pretty much walking antibodies and were free from whatever was plaguing the normal world.

I get sick now like two times a year now – maybe less. Even one of my friends said the other day “You never get sick”. Well I’m hardly ever around people. The first  few years or so that was fine…well – it wasn’t fine because I was never really “getting out” except for work. The last 5 I’ve been actively getting out be it hiking or canoeing or taking small trips. Work can wait. My life and health can’t. Which if you’re ever thinking of working from home I would encourage you to monetize what you’re saving and invest in something to make you happy be it gym membership, outdoor something, or tickets to a sporting event.

Also – no kids. So if you just look at me in general I live in a bubble. A self contained germ free bubble. The last few times I’ve actively dated there were kids involved (for I have the brain of an 11 year old at times). I think the entire time that happened I stayed sick because I’m out of my bubble. “Oh My God why are you sick all the time”. I would then explain through my hacking and coughing that I live in this self contained environment. Send me to a conference for a week and by the end of it I’m starting to sniffle.

What does this all have to do with anything? Not much. How does this relate to the Covid 19 outbreak? For me not that big of a life change but for some it will be. So if you find yourself working from home:

  • Eat something good for you. Plan a meal you need to cook. If you go out to eat go somewhere you enjoy.
  • Do something – go for a walk/run/hike/bike ride/something that makes use of something other than your brain.
  • Stop when you get tired of sitting there. Do something else for a bit.
  • Set hours and stick to them.

So for all of you at home – enjoy something different. Eat your vitamins. Wash your hands. Stretch!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mobile Data Collection: Input

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If you flash back to 2008 you would have seen me sitting on my couch unwrapping a Trimble SB (?) running Arcpad. At the time I thought “collecting data” would be a beneficial add-on to me being a consultant. Spoiler alert – It wasn’t.

If you flash back to 2013 I was sitting in the Caribbean needed to collect data and I was holding a new giant yellow GPS unit that wouldn’t quit rebooting when it got hot. Spoiler Alert – It’s always hot (generally) in the Caribbean. What I did find is Fulcrum – and that allowed me and about 5 or so folk to disperse and work all over the place and collect data – WITH OUR PHONE. Which for 2013 was pretty awesome for me.Since then I’ve always been interested in how people are collecting data. I will make fun of you for doing it “Pencil and Paper” but I will admit to having a field journal and pencils in my laptop bag just in case.

A client asked a few weeks back “We need to take a copy of the data into the field” and that trip into the field was going to be with no to limited connectivity, no data collection, but they needed to know where they were. They are a IOS/Mac heavy group. Print a map seemed a bit harsh and working through some other hoops seemed unnecessary.

So my suggestion was Input. So what is an Input? Lutra Consulting developed a mobile app built off the QGIS Source Code. It runs on Android and IOS. There are tutorials out there on using Input. I can’t do better than the ones that are out so I won’t even try. I can throw in some screen shots and just general discussion on why Input is pretty cool from an avid QGIS user. When you get it installed on your mobile device of choice you get this:

input start screen

Simple. Home being the map screen, my projects being things you can work on, shared being projects that are shared with you from others, and finally explore just in case you can’t find your project.

So we will tackle this one of two ways. One way with Mergin and one without. What’s Mergin? Mergin is the commercial end of Input. Commercial? What? Yes – there is a commercial end of Input.

1. Install Mergin and Get an account. Don’t worry – it’s free for small projects. Download Mergin from the Plugin Manager in QGIS. Mergin will appear in your browser panel.

2. Build a project in QGIS. Import your data into Geopackage. Build the project the way you’d want it to be displayed on your phone. When I say “build your project” you’re going to build widgets for data input, set up labels, and set up your colors. I prefer boring as seen by this screenshot.

QGIS Project Screen

3. Import your project into Mergin (You’ll have to connect the plugin to your Mergin Account).

Give it a few minutes and you can now download your project into Input and start working. Edit your points, lines, and polygons….and attributes….

Input Project

 

4. Sync your project back to Mergin. Download it back to your computer.

One word of caution :

  1. You’re going to build a project .
  2. You’re going to COPY it to the server using Mergin.
  3. Move it to your mobile device.
  4. Edit it locally and sync it back to the server
  5. Eventually you’re going to download it back to your compute using Mergin
  6. So at the end you’ll have one old project and one new one sitting on your machine. Just pay attention. I did get confused at first but I’m slow.

You don’t want to use Mergin?

  1. Then copy your data to your mobile device.
  2. Create a directory under the projects folder under Input and move your data there.
  3. Start working. At some point you’ll have to manually move things back to your laptop.

….and there you go.

So where does that leave me with all of my current love of data and databases? So as an experiment I connected to a test server and edited data against PostGIS (live). I wouldn’t suggest that for day to day because “you always need a network connection of some sort”. So I’d always build a local project to share to your mobile device.

I need more than “me” collecting data – then read up. Several people can edit and Lutra has used Geodiff to handle multiple users. All your edits can go back into the same geopackage that you download back to your Workstation.

So should you pay for Mergin? If I stuff a street centerline file, building footprints, streams, and a few other things for a medium sized city I’m getting close to 100mb of disk space. So I’d say pay. If you just can’t pay – then keep it under 100Mb or manually move your data over.

Overall I like it.  For years I’ve said “QGIS on Mobile” and now we have Qfield and Input.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fishbones for the TN NG911 Address Server

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It’s been a bit since I’ve talked about the TN address server. I’ve been slowly adding more functionality to it and some of that functionality has been more difficult than others.

If you’ve played in the address space any length of time you’ve heard of fishbones – and that is simply drawing a line from the address point to it’s “spot on the street”. Granted if you’ve ever done an addressing project from scratch (I had the joy to do that a few years ago in the Caribbean) it makes a lot of sense. You can quickly see problems where lines cross over other lines or where addresses have no lines at all.  Please read up here if you are so inclined.

There are probably multiple ways to do this  but I’ve gotten fishboning (if that’s a word) running in the TN NG911 Address Server. In PostGIS with less than 25 lines of SQL (and I’m quite proud of myself – 5 years ago I sucked at SQL. I still suck at it – but way less).  While it’s not quite ready for prime time it’s close – I’m just trying to figure out what I can pull out of this that makes the County’s job easier in the addressing realm. I’d love to move it to python at some point – and it’s probably doable (well I know it is – it’s just doing it).

Three things happen:

  1. I join the address point to the closest road using ST_LineLocatePoint
  2. Does the closest point fit the address range on the street (double bonus I also check left and right).
  3. Finish it up with ST_Makeline to join the spot closest to the street to the address point.

Which quickly shows something is wrong here:

Bonus for this one as is it’s not incredibly obvious what the problem is at first glance….UNTIL you see you have an addressing issue where you have 2, 3, and 4 on the same side of the street.

Hurrah for misspelled street names by leaving a W off

Anyway – there will be more announcements coming like this “running in the cloud” and other things. I’d like to get the fishbones running once a night or realistically run the one for the new address. Why not both probably. Anyway – pretty nice for an ArcView/FGDB Replacement.

QGIS 16 Hour Class May 13-14th 2020

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The QGIS Workshop  makes an appearance on May 13th-14th 2020 at Chattanooga State Technical Community College.

This 16 hour workshop is designed to introduce you to QGIS 3.x, an alternative Open Source GIS software for viewing, editing, and managing spatial data in a wide variety of commonly used vector and raster formats. It is lightweight, flexible, and can be installed on Windows, MacOSX, and Linux. Best of all, most will find QGIS to be extremely affordable while still providing a growing list of features and functionality.

Length of workshop: Approximately 16 hours

Topics Covered:

  • Interface
  • Vector Data
  • Raster Data
  • Plugins
  • Processing Tools
  • Field Calculator
  • Exercises Throughout

Registration: https://www.campusce.net/cscc/course/EventDetail.aspx?C=106

Cost: $700

Now that I have all that boring stuff out of the way…..

So the first class went pretty well and although small – I received great feedback from people. Plus it made me navigate my way back through the QGIS Certification process for my end (Certificates/Payment). So the two day will get a slight upgrade for the May class and I should have certificates in hand on the last day. Plus the exercises will be a lot easier vs what I’m doing now.

On the facility – Easy parking and easier lunch. Granted we will all need to jump in a car for lunch it’s only a few miles away.

Anyway – come learn some QGIS and hang out in Chattanooga for a few days.

 

 

QGIS 4 hour workshop at TNGIC Conference on April 7th 2020

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It’s that time of the year again.

So I’ll be doing the 4 hour QGIS Workshop at the TNGIC Conference this year. The Conference will be in Kingsport TN for 2020. Where is Kingsport? Head to the NE Corner of the state until you’re about an hour past the last “Gatlinburg TN” sign.

If you happen to scroll past all the ESRI Centric stuff I’m at the bottom. As I’m not getting paid for this workshop I’d highly encourage you to sneak in. In fact – bring a friend. I’ve capped the class at 20 but if history is any indication I’ll be in a oversized room. Bring data. Bring Questions. Bring people.

What are we going to cover?

  • How this is better than ArcPro
  • Symbology
  • Making maps
  • Reading data
  • Editing data

What do you need?

  • QGIS
  • Laptop
  • Sense of Humor

If we have time after the class we can discuss a Full Open Source Server Installation for those that are interested.

Where is my workshop? I have no idea.

What time is my workshop? No one has told me.

I suppose it’s somewhere in all the details – BUT – show up! I’ll show you a new way to enjoy your GIS again.

 

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