Android Camera App for Surveys

[Peter Symmonds]

Just to add a bit of context, I do IT surveys of servers rooms and need to take lots of pictures of everything.

After spending hours snapping away I go back to the office and have to put together a report of all the photos. However, all these pics look the same and by the end of it I have no idea what room or floor they were taken in.

Appreciate I can come out the app, create a new folder, then take a picture, come out the app again, move it in there etc but it’s not very efficient.

Does anyone know of an app to help organise photos on the fly? I.e. create folders\move stuff\create labels on the go while taking the photos? So they dont all get muddled up.

Thanks very much in advance

 

[VidJunky]

Welcome to Android Central.

As I was reading your post I was totally relating. I too take multiple photos of similar things, to which I then have to orginize and explain in work instructions and reports. I've done things like taking pics of signage and taken blacked out photos to mark breaks. Along with my notes I can usually keep things straight.

As for moving items into folders more or less automatically I only have one way. There are most certainly others, this is just the only one I can think of. There is an app called Tasker, it is an automation app and there are several on the Play Store. Tasker and the other automation apps can do things like turn on your wifi when you're in a location or turn it off. It can return texts, change your phone's settings, open and close apps and so much more. It can also move photos to folders as they are being taken.

My story
There was a clone app of a camera that I had and liked from another model of device. I downloaded it to try it and found that it would only put images in a folder it created, no option to edit the save location, so I used tasker to move the photos and videos created with that app to my DCIM folder and delete the source file. It would have been just as easy to move them to a folder named anything. I could have also created a Tasker profile that renamed them, so that each photo is named for the location being photographed, and so many other possible solutions. Really whatever you can imagine.

The downside, Tasker has a learning curve and it costs. The upside though is you can find Tasker stuff everywhere. There are Tasker forums here at AC. There are Tasker forums at most of the Android forum sites I've been to, most, there is taskerwiki.com and YouTube. All of these places host profiles created by other users so if it something that someone else has already thought of, one only needs to find and edit a profile to meet their needs. The components and examples one finds in these places can be pieced and parted together to create whole new profiles. In a lot of these places questions can be asked of the community so it isn't like being handed a tool without instructions. I mentioned that there are other automation apps out there and there are, so why am I talking about Tasker so much? The simple answer is that I have the most experience with Tasker but I have also tried some of the other apps too. I found some could not take control of a device or perform some of the tasks Tasker does. Yes, some are free. Yes, many are easier to learn and use. However, none of them have the wide spread resources or community that Tasker does.

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[Peter Symmonds]

Hi VidJunky - thank you for your reply. Its something you'd never really need unless you have to do a job like this. Taking photos of endless servers in endless cabinets in endless servers rooms then trying to piece them together

Thats almost exactly how I did it - writing labels on bits of scrap paper and taking photos of it. But then you're still left with sifting through it all and organizing into meaningful folders.

Appreciate the recommendation, I'll look into that. Looks like they have a free trial so I'll give that a shot!! I did think, theres got to be a better way to do this!!

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! I made you the owner of the original guest post to make it easier for you to find.

After you take each photo, you could edit its properties and add a description. Or, if your phone's gallery/photo editing app allows it, add some text to the image. Obviously, that won't organize the photos for you, but at least you can see more details about the photo at a glance.

 

[VidJunky]

Yeah I sometimes mention the free trial but I'm never sure anymore if they are still doing it. Glad you found it though. Was it online or in the Play Store? I ask because at one time I thought it was like 15 days or something, maybe 30... I just remember it was a good long while.

In the meantime I found Tasker groups on Reddit and on a Google forum board.

I found this topic that matches what I was doing, not sure if this is the actual profile I used, but it sounds like a step in the right direction. https://groups.google.com/g/tasker/c/nUuFX5gfbwc/m/tV7yDkrjbVMJ?pli=1

Best wishes