Hello community,
currently i am trying to evaluate possibilities to realize my idea and i stumbled upon QField, which looks very promising for my plan. But still there are concerns and gaps, so i don’t know if QField might be really a candidate for my idea.
But maybe let me explain about the idea first:
We have a rising community of people doing outdoor activity where documenting findings in the field is also a task beside the outdoor activity itself.
The documentation is required and still has to be delivered in a printed format (yes, unfortunately not digital). There is a template for this in PDF format which can be electronically filled, but it has so much information to fill, nobody is willing to fill it voluntarily, if it can be avoided. Also this process is all manual. The data that has to be filled must be collected by hand using online maps, which is on top very error prone. Unfrotunately changing the way of reporting isn’t an option for the next years.
Also a fact: One might think, if its required to report every finding, everything is documented. But the opposite is the case. A lot of stuff will be found, but never documented, which is really a big loss for the whole community.
In addition, many people are not really tech-savvy, especially older people are overwhelmed for example figthing with CRS transformations etc.
I really would like to change that to make it easy and thought about QField as a possible way
The use case flow should look like the following:
- install the app to a smartphone/tablet and on a Desktop
- collect data in the field with smartphone/tablet
- sync data to desktop when at home
- extend data at home on Desktop
- generate a report
- manage reports, check what findings are already reported and when etc.
- finally print reports, hand over and archive them
Sounds straight forward but my biggest concern using QField is, that there is a QGis behind needed on the desktop side which i am 100% sure, nobody can and want to operate with. Even if hiding all the toolboxes etc. i am really sure, nobody is using it.
Also i think, generating reports etc. isn’t really a task of QGis (or isn’t it?)
On the other hand: all the capabilities that QField already brings with, especially displaying layers with vectory etc. is very hard to recreate and really cool to use already.
So the “reporting” side might be easier to implement using a cross platform framework with a single code base, but all the “field work” including location data etc. on the other side looks really good coming from QField …
So my question: Do you have an idea and/or at least keywords or directions to look at to have the best chances for implementing my idea? Does somebody know similar projects? I can’t cedice between QGis + ? vs. doing a “lightweight” one codebase solution with other frameworks.
What do you think?
Thanks a lot!
Imported from GitHub discussion by @IntCleastwood on 2023-12-10T21:37:48Z