Is Orientation of Users Stored in Data Captured with Collector App?

[PatrickMcKinney1]

I am developing a mobile data collection workflow that will be using the Collector App.  Currently, staff takes photos with a camera, and notes on a printed map the location and directional-orientation for where they take the photo.

Whenever they start using Collector, will the directional-orientation for where they capture a point (north, east, etc) be stored in the data?  If so, how can I access that property?

If it's not stored in the data, I'll have to add a field to capture their directional-origination.  

[DougMorgenthaler]

Patrick McKinney‌ are you using the GPS to capture the location of the point?  If so, we capture the orientation of the device if the appropriate metadata field is present (esrisnsr_azimuth).  For more information see Prepare for high-accuracy data collection—Collector for ArcGIS | Documentation.  Staff would still need to ensure that when the photo and GPS location is captured they'd want to face the same direction.  

Alternatively you could process the EXIF from the photos and compute the direction accordingly. 

[PatrickMcKinney1]

Thanks for the link, it is a great resource.  The staff will be using a Samsung Tablet (I don't know what model yet).  They would prefer to use offline data collection to save money on not purchasing a data plan.  I have tested this process on my phone (airplane mode), and I think it will work out.  So we would either use the device's internal GPS or an external receiver.  

The project is for baseline reports for new farms in our agricultural preservation programs.  They need the points symbolized so that it shows the direction they were facing when they took the picture.  So capturing direction is actually more important than horizontal positional accuracy.  

[PatrickMcKinney1]

I ran the Add GPS Metadata Fields and published a new version of the test service.  I see new data collected related to the internal GPS receiver on my phone.  However, I still do not see the Azimuth information.

Does that property need to be collected by the GPS receiver for it to show in the data?  

I also didn't see any reference to azimuth in the Add GPS Metadata Fields tool.

Grateful for any insights.

[DougMorgenthaler]

The next version of Pro (2.6) will have updated to the Add GPS Metadata fields tool.  in the meantime, we have updated our Python script here: GitHub - Esri/collector-tools that will add the azimuth metadata field. You can also add it manually if you choose.

You do need to use the GPS location for the azimuth to be populated.