ulopes / cavesurvey

Cave surveying application for Android devices

CaveSurvey

Cave surveying application for Android devices

The Story

Preparing a cave map is a tough activity. For example if you want to map a gallery you usually pick reference points for the main polyline going trough that gallery. Between every two poins distance, angle and inclination is measured and on each one (and on any other specific place) distance to the top, bottom and both sides is measured. Usually this is written to a paper sheet, later transformed in to Excel spreadsheet and processed with a variety of existing tools. Well, in real life this process is much harder and very error prone. CaveSurvey targets the process of collecting measures and tries to improve it. See examples in the User Guide.

Goal

CaveSurvey is tool for mapping caves having (at least) Android device and (optionally) laser distance meter or other measure devices:

• Having the measures sheet in digital format from the beginning (eliminating typo errors)
• Easy to enter measures (not all cave parts are pleasant place to stay)
• Able to export the sheet in Excel format for further processing (not being primary tool for the final map artifact, such tools exist and are awesome)
• Being able to draw simple map of the main line (detect big measure erros on place) or create simple sketch for a point.
• Aid measures collection (reduce number of measure instruments needed and/or need to manually type the value):
• using build-in sensors if available (as compass, clinometer) and tools (take a picture, take GPS location of the entrance, type a note, etc)
• using Bluetooth to integrate external laser distance meter - distance and in some cases clinometer measures

Features

Currently CaveSurvey can:

• Supports multiple cave projects
• Supports multiple cave galleries
• Can add points to the sheet and manually enter measures
• For each point you can add note, take picture, draw simple sketch, add vectors
• Take GPS coordinates of a point (assuming visible sky)
• Read compass from the build-in compass
• Read inclination from the build-in sensors
• Read measures from Bluetooth laser distance meter (currently supported only CEM iLDM-150 - distance + inclination)
• Display 2D map of the current measures(horizontal projection)
• Can export to Excel

See the issues for complete list or roadmap. Currently English and Bulgarian languages.

Notes

One of the possible target configurations is to read the distance and inclination from Bluetooth and use the build-in compass from the device. In this case both waterproof Android 4.x + iLDM-150 are about $250.

Test devices:

• Testing with both Android 2.1(cheap and small) and 4.3(better hardware). Have not decided for the right device yet but will try with Motorola Defy +. The smartphone need to have water protection, compass, SPP Bluetooth profile.
• iLDM-150 laser distance meter (IP54) with build in clinometer and Bluetooth transfer from CEM
• Trimble LaserAce 1000 has very accurate measures (distance/clinometer/azimuth) and is recommended for any places where cave environment will not be of direct impact for the device. Most expensive hardware used here.
• Leica and Bosh have awesome distance meters with Bluetooth but are much more expensive.
• Feel free to join our team and help with other hardware/functionalities

Precision

Having precise instruments is important to do a proper work. Anyway in most caves centimeter precision is never possible.

For iLDM-150 CEM have specified precision of 1.5mm for the distance and 0.5' from the clinometer. For LaserAce this is the manifacturer info provided. For the Android build-in compass - you have to consult your device manifacturer, but if small enough and you use short legs there should be no problem (error will distribute and compensate anyway).

If you are paranoic you can still use CaveSurvey in manual mode only - type the proper values from the existing tools you use. It will save you the Excel work later.

Links

Another Android app is Abris. They are already alive and have focus on creating the whole map underground. I have to admit they have done a great job, but I'm not confident in drawing stuff with muddy fingers.

About

Developed by members of caving club Paldin Plovdiv, Bulgaria.

Use the official version at Google Play or the latest build.

This software is free to use and modify. Well, we provide no guarantee in any kind but are open for ideas and collaborations. Contact us at [email protected].