ColectoR is a free assistant for botanist field trips, to help to manage big amounts of data from each specimen collected using any Android smart phone based. ColectoR contain the fields most used by botanist in the label for their collections. ColectoR use sensors in each smart phone like GPS, altimeter and camera, allowing integrate this information with each registry. Present functions to avoid enter repetitive data like main collector, additional collector, country and others. Auto-increment the number of collector and suggest morphological descriptions based on the previews registries entered. Use a API of inverse geocoding to suggest names of locations, roads and others. ColectoR can connect directly with iPlant CollaborativeTM servers to verify species names, authors and families. ColectoR present an interface to make easy the exportation of data to use directly in Excel or other similar. In ColectoR you can find rapid entry lists to enter data that you used in other past registries.
ColectoR was thought-out to be easy, fast and productive.
Field trips of 1 to 4 weeks driving long distances, can be result in hundred of specimens with a big notes and labels unsorted. The elaboration of labels can be result in many hours of work registering each collection in the main database. ColectoR permit finish the trip with the database almost done ready to export to create labels or reports in minutes.
Citation
If you use this software in your work, you can cite it as: Maya-Lastra, C.A. 2016. ColectoR, a Digital Field Notebook for Voucher Specimen Collection for Smartphones. Applications in Plant Sciences, 4(7):1600035. doi:10.3732/apps.1600035.
v2.5 -
Fix: Export function crashes the app in Android 8 or 9.
Future implementation: Create a Progressive Web Apps version to use it in any OS with a compatible Browser.
Future implementation: Save voice notes.
v2.4 -
Fix: Due new policies in Google Maps api location suggestion stopped working. This version fix that problem.
New: If species name is not defined but family name is defined, family will be used in the list panel.
v2.3 -
New: Camera function is added. Now the user can take pictures directly from the registry screen. Those are saved in the folder ColectoR_Photos
New: Each registry or entry have a folder for each folder, each change in the registry is changed in the folder
New: Export photo database, the user can export as ZIP file all photos in the Colector_Photos folder using Gmail, Dropbox, or other apps installed in the smart phone
New: [Experimental] Simple photo collection viewer (Need to improve the thumbnail management). To see this you need to enable in config screen. NOTE: This is a intense RAM consume process, so low RAM devices (less than 1 GB) can experiment app crashes.
New: New icons for Exporting Database and Photos
New: New GPS error handling, include problem with altitude in High accuracy and Battery saving mode
New: New DB error handling
Fix: Accuracy number fixed to two decimals
Fix: Town selection screen problem when phone back button is pressed return to main screen with GUI glitch
Fix: Show suggestion of previous entries after certain circumstances
Important for Android 6 or superior users: Without the permissions the app will not run properly. Make sure you allow the use of GPS, Folders and Camera, when pop up the notification.
Secure your data:
Remember ColectoR save every change in a backup file (in /ColectoR_Data/ColectoR_backup.txt) this is very useful, in the follow cases to rescue some data: uninstall the app; bad execution or app crashes;out of memory errors. If you save a entry, modify, or even delete, this will be permanently in the backup file. You can import in excel and select the desired information.
The new add in this version is the camera function, remember this is a Beta function, can be very well, but their execution depends in a good way of each smart phone. If your app crashes or close and you cannot save the photos, in the folder /ColectoR_Photos/TEMP/ are the last unsaved session photos.
v2.0 - All code was rewritten in Javascript (Compiled using Cordova) to fit to current devices specifications, improving speed, stability and potential new features. It was developed as cross-platform but only released for Android. New configurations and screens were added or updated. Icon was changed.
v1.4 - GPS functions fixed.
v1.3 - English version and new function to locate nearby towns to add to location description.
v1.0 - First release version, developed in MIT App Inventor.
List of features:
• Minimalist, intuitive and graphic interface
• Auto-fill of repetitive data as country, collector name and additional collector
• Auto-increment of collector number
• Fast data entry with helpers and rapid entry lists
• Verification of scientific names in iPlant CollaborativeTM through cellular network
Complete list of features (in Spanish)
- Interfaz minimalista, intuitiva y gráfica
- Edición y corrección de cada registro con un solo botón
- Contiene los campos más usados en las etiquetas botánicas
- Rápida entrada por registro reduciendo el tiempo de captura de datos en campo
- Registro fotográfico de soporte
- Múltiples posibilidades de respaldo en línea de la base de datos por medio de una interfaz para exportar a sistemas como Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, Mega, Gmail, entre otros
- Autollenado de datos repetitivos como país, colector y colectores asociados
- Autoincremento del número de colector
- Listados de ingreso rápido de entradas y datos usados en otros registros
- Verificación y corrección de nombres de especies por medio de los servidores de iPlant CollaborativeTM
- Obtención de datos de los sensores del celular como altímetro y GPS
- Sugerencias de localidad usando geocodificación inversa de Google
- Accesos directos para reconocimiento de voz para llenar campos largos como la descripción de la planta y notas
- Sugerencias de descripciones de registros anteriores, que permite unificar la descripción de organismos similares sin perder datos importantes
- Integración con objetos nativos de Android para ofrecer servicios como corrección ortográfica y acceso al portapapeles
- Base de datos en formato universal (*.csv) para permitir la importación sencilla desde procesadores de hojas de cálculo (como Excel) y de bases de datos
- Tamaño reducido de la base de datos y uso de APIs minimalistas para reducir gastos en redes celulares
- Adaptación a cualquier tamaño de pantalla, desde pequeños celulares inteligentes hasta tabletas de gran tamaño
- Grabado de datos en la memoria externa (en caso de tenerla) para mejorar la movilidad y resguardo de los datos