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Collector for Android - SD Card Support for .tpk

KirkDavis1

Hello all,

I have researched into this topic, but have not found an updated answer. Has ESRI Collector for Android decided to support tile package (.tpk) storage on SD cards? I understand that there were performance issues with SD cards during testing. I would like to know if anyone has experimented with this or if Collector plans on including this feature in future iterations? I need to make a disclaimer that I have not tested saving .tpk files in an SD card - I wanted to check here first.

Thanks,

Kirk

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PeteCrosier

Just copy the TPK in to the ArcGIS_Collector folder, don't unzip it.

Shauna-RaeBrown

Doug, When you unzip the TPK file(s) where on the device or microSD card do you put the extracted files? I've got a 4.4GB tpk file and Collector just sits and spins when I'm trying to load the background. Thanks ever so much for your help.

kylie

Hi Patrick -- We are always looking to improve our documentation. Could you give me some examples of information about using the SD card that you are looking for and not finding?

Thanks!

PatrickMurphy

They may have introduced it, but have done a lousy job of explaining how it works. I miss the old days of big manuals where you could look up everything via a good index.

Anonymous User

Just an update - Collector 17.0.1 introduced loading basemaps through a sd card. This is only possible on Android.

Go offline—Collector for ArcGIS | ArcGIS

PatrickMurphy

Here is how I did it. I made a folder on the extSD card called ArcGIS_Collector.

I copied the .tpk file there. It showed up as a basemap when I opened the project, I selected it, it loaded quickly. I looked on the internal memory and found a folder with the .tpk file name but only two small files were there and the tpk was still on the extSD card. For other basemaps that I didn't load this way, the tpk was still in the folders on internal memory.

So...it worked.

RebeccaStrauch__GISP

Doug, I have no android nor have I worked with SD on Android or Collector all that much (doing stuff today though).....anyway you can map the data drive and give it the "ArcGIS_Collector" name? Just throwing things out there.

dougbrowning

Well the update came out today and it looks like there is no way to choose a directory as i stated in my post. Since you asked for the list I was really hoping you guys did it. It only lets you change to sdcard then forces you to use ArcGIS_Collector folder (unless I am missing something).

Why not just give is a file pick box? Please! If not I will still have two copies of my data. Also it seems like this change was only for basemaps and it does not have the ability to just read in any tpks.

Thanks

https://community.esri.com/community/gis/applications/collector-for-arcgis/blog/2017/06/06/collector-for-arcgis-updated-today

kylie

Thanks for all these details Doug! Could you please email these requirements to Collector4ArcGIS@esri.com?

dougbrowning

Can you please make sure we can set the specific directory as well. Not forced to a directory named Collector or anything like that. This is so I can point both my apps to the same location. I do this for Survey123 now and it works great. (BTW Survey123 has let me pick any dir for tpks for some time now - look at how they did it.)

All our tablets are Android 6 now so I guess we have to wait. For our app we had to program in a way to pick the actual dir to use since in v6 the card is named by the serial number. So for example /storage/3876-5345/dir/tpks There is no way to know the card name in advance. But in the end it was nice to have it so flexible. Please just give us a dir pick box to set the location.

Also please make sure it can read ALL tpks in the spot even if they are buried in subdirs. That way I can organize them better and use my current app structure.

One last idea. Allow the tpks to be unzipped as well. We have found that this really speeds up larger caches - like for imagery. As listed in my previous post I have over 100 tpks on my tablets now - some up to 9 GB. Have been using them for 3 years now and learned a lot about them. SD Card has always worked great. I have noticed that SD Cards rated at 80 MB/S or higher work the best in newer tablets.

As far as the TPKs themselves I still have 5 open bugs on the building tools (Create Map package, Export tile cache, etc) that have been open for 2 years now - even after being escalated. Getting these to work right is critical.

Thanks a lot!

kylie

It is on the roadmap to add it to later versions as well.

Natalie_MRunyan1

woohoo! But, wait, EARLIER than 4.4, so this is a feature that will not be supported going forward?! My phone is >2 years old and I'm on Android 6.0... are there even any devices still using Android < 4.4

kylie

SD cards are supported in devices running a version of Android earlier than 4.4. See FAQs—Collector for ArcGIS | ArcGIS

Update: With the 17.0.1 release in June 2017, using an SD card is supported on all verisons of Android.

Natalie_MRunyan1

Does anyone know if this limitation still exists? I'm not finding it in the list of current features, and I find lots of talk about offline basemaps but nothing about using on external SD.

JoeCeradini

I am also having trouble storing tpk files on an external SD card and using them as base maps in Arc Collector. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

I have a NVIDIA shield K1 tablet (Lollipop version), which is rooted. I have tried many approaches for moving/linking collector to the SD but none have worked, such as Link2SD, Apps2SD, FolderMount, and File Commander. I have also tried these apps with and without the SD card partitioned. The apps say that Collector has been moved or linked, and certain Collector data files are on the SD, but I still cannot store tpk’s on the SD and get Collector to find them.

A Collector folder always shows up on the internal storage even after it has supposedly been moved. If I put a tpk in the Collector folder on internal memory, the tpk is stored on internal, and Collector converts it to a base map (this is great for smaller files, but I quickly run out of internal memory). If I try the approach outlined by batpro99 in this thread (I copied the Collector folder to the external SD via File Commander), the tpk is stored on the external memory but Collector cannot find it.

Any suggestions? Is there a better way to copy/move/link the Collector folder from internal to external memory and still get Collector to recognize the files in the external location?

- Joe

dougbrowning

We are using a Android app by a vendor that uses TPK files on a SD card allowing us to take very large areas offline (3 million+ acres down to L16). We have no performance issues at all running 30+GB of caches/TPKs - 12+ unzipped caches and 80+ TPK files. Some tpks are 600+MB and still no issue. We also can put any shp files we want on.

We do unzip that larger TPKs for the imagery (3+gb) since it can get slow but other than that it is as fast as we can pan on Tab 4 and newer. I ran a high res test last week and was running a 16GB imagery cache no problem. We have had it running for over 2 years on tablets as old as Samsung Tab 2s. We go buy the faster SD cards.

I did a lot of performance testing on internal and SDcards for our app. I found the speed to be the same on a SD card if not faster (maybe because the app is local splitting the load). So I am always very surprised when I hear Esri say this. It has been our main reason for not using collector.

I wish they would open it up and let us at least try it.

AdamOlson

I am thinking that devices may need to be rooted to work. Because the devices it works on for me ARE rooted and the devices that it does not work are NOT rooted.

I will root a device its not working on and report back.

KirkDavis1

Adam,

how are you able to get your <4gb in size .tpk files read from the SD card? I tried to mimic what you said, I haven't tried the "root-symlink-workaround" yet, it hasn't quite worked. Is there any hope for having he .tpk files read from the SD card - hope I'm not asking you the same question.

KirkDavis1

I was looking to the SD card for direct storage of the large .tpk files. For example, my Samsung Galaxy Tablet has 16GB of onboard memory (of which 11GB is available) which is where the Collector folder is stored. I created a tile package which is 25GB and want to get it onto the tablet (I need 14GB more of space, which I don't have). Storing .tpk files on the SD card is the only way to do this. The root-mount-symlink is the only way to have the Collector app read and process the tile package - unless ESRI develops SD card compatibility. Do you see why I need that workaround?

AdamOlson

I don't know why you need a work around?

I am using TPK's from the SD Card, copied into the Collector folder

KirkDavis1

Thank you for your response. This is exactly what I was envisioning as a work around. If SD cards were supported by the application, I imagine someone from ESRI immediately answering my question. I'm going to implement the root, mount, symlink workaround.

PeteCrosier

I haven't seen anything for a while, currently only internal storage is supported officially.

You could work around it by mounting your SD card and setting a symlink..

https://community.esri.com/message/453313#453313

.. but obviously this is unsupported by Esri.

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