Line tracking in QuickCapture - Populate length measurements

[Henry]

Hi,

Our organization is planning on using QuickCapture more and more for some of our surveying tasks.

Some of this is probably set up in the Hosted Feature Layer beforehand, but is there a good workflow for getting QuickCapture to record lines and populate the length in feet and miles? I know that the feature automatically records the Shape_Length property but if there's a way to track the distance without having to separately calculate geometry I would love to know.

Any assistance or guidance would be much appreciated. We're planning on recording lines for roadside surveys of invasive plants, and being able to get a length would be immensely helpful.

Thanks!

[Mandy_Li]

Hi Henry,

The answer is yes. With QuickCapture variables, you can calculate the start and end time of the captured line/polygon, length of the line/polygon in meters, miles, or kilometers, and area of the captured polygon in square meters, square miles, or square kilometers. 

To do this, you will first add a field for the line feature layer, e.g. add a field "distance", field type is Double. Back to your QuickCapture project, assign the corresponding device variable to this new field (see screenshot below). Save and download the project. When capturing the line feature, the app will calculate the distance info and send it back to the feature layer later on.

If needed, add more fields to the feature layer and assign device variables from your QuickCapture project. 

[Henry]

Hi XiaoxuLi,

Thanks for the fast response. I've added a Double type field to the feature service, however the option for the Device variable is currently greyed out. When I hover over the greyed out device variable option pop-up text displays "No variables compatible with this field" even though the field is Type Double.

I am using Enterprise 10.8.1 if that's relevant at all.

[Mandy_Li · Accepted solution]

Ah ok, 10.8.1 has QuickCapture version 1.5, but these variables were added to QuickCapture at version 1.7. As a workaround, you can specify these variables manually.

1. In the feature layer, delete the Double field and create a field with the String type.
2. In the QuickCapture project, manually type ${lengthM} for the new field.
   
3. Save the project. 
4. Make sure the QuickCapture app is up to date on your phone, test this by capturing a line and sending the record.
5. Now the feature layer should have the distance value populated on this new field.

Here are the other variables you may need, use a dollar sign $ in front, and curly bracket {} around the variable name, so the app knows it's a device variable.

Let me know if this works for you.

[Henry]

Tested it out - worked great! Thanks!

Just out of curiosity, are there no variables for collecting the distance in feet? I didn't see it listed as a variable in the links.

[Mandy_Li]

Hi Henry, right now it's just meter, mile, and kilometer as the calculated distance units.

[FrankHerbert]

Hi Mandy,

Would it be possible to use this function to calculate time spent. We capture start and end time for tracks - could we get it to tell us the time in hours or minutes?

[Mandy_Li]

Hi @FrankHerbert There isn't a QuickCapture device variable for time elapsed for now. But once you get the start time and end time, you could do some post data analysis to calculate this value to a different field from the Map viewer or other Esri tools. 

[AbiDhakal]

@Mandy_Li  -

Hey Mandy,
I'm also trying to calculate length and area in feet and acres with Quick Capture. As this database schema is someone else and the length field type is integer will I be able to calculate the value of length in this field? Also, will I be able to do this in feet for length and acres for area? I'm hoping this is possible since your last post was in 2021.
Thank you,
Abi