Data collection on an iPad2

[BenStreissguth]

I co-manage a small public garden and a friend of mine at my "real" job was showing me how he uses his iPad2 to collect gis data for work.  He said it was fairly easy to set up, but seemed unwilling to help me. I have basic knowledge of ArcMap 9.1, and have had no troubles making the move to the ArcExplorer10.  From my understanding of what my friend said, I can store data online and use my iPad for collection in the field.  I've tied myself in knots trying to figure this out, and all that I can seem to come up with is that the data must be server from a privately owned ArcServer box.  Sadly, this is out of the budget for this project.  Are their other options?

Thanks much!

[PaulLohr]

You are on the right track - ArcGIS Server is needed to do out of the box data collection on your iPad (unless you decide to write code against the iOS sdk). Maybe look at something like iGIS?

Paul Lohr

[BenStreissguth]

Thanks for the tips Paul!

iGis seems to be what I'm looking for, at least to start off with.  After about 6 hours of tinkering around, I was off and running doing some basic garden data collection! 🙂

Will explore that SDK aspect more when I get further into data collection later this winter.