Survey123 unable to capture current location

[ShoumenChatterji]

Survey123 location not working on my android phone. Even we have 4g and location service turned on, after that also its not working. Please tell us solution ASAP

[AdilsonFurlani]

Hi Phil.

I've been experiencing this problem with my users for quite some time (over a year). This usually happens on Android devices where Survey123 has been running normally for more than 6 months, and Survey123 unexpectedly stops collecting the coordinates, but other applications collect normally. Well, after a lot of testing, apps installations to fix AGPS, etc., the solution I found unfortunately was to prompt the user for a "factory reset" on the device. It seems that after some time of use and after many software/apps updates the Survey123 kind of "loses" the preference for GPS, even if reinstalled. However, after the Factory Reset, the device always returns the GPS signal on Survey123. One way I did to "work around" this problem in devices that could not reset was to change my search to accept a photo (collected by an external app - OpenCamera - in my case) and then transfer the coordinates of this photo to the geopoint by a calculate.

Anyway, I hope this my experience help you to find a definitive solution for this issue in Survey123 field app code.

Good luck.

PS: I also realized that this problem occurs more often on devices with little internal memory. When I say "little memory", I mean 16GB or less.

[Anonymous User]

Hi Adilson,

You should not need to do a factory reset. It sounds as if the location permissions settings are getting "out of whack" on the device, and with Android, when you do an uninstall the app settings to not get deleted, they remain in the settings folder. As we have done a lot of changes to support external GNSS receivers and other improvements to location services, it could be the app settings that have conflicting settings, provided that location services is enabled for the app in the device system systems.

You can delete the app settings by navigating to ~\ArcGIS\AppStudio\Settings\ on the device (on Android it will be in the Internal Storage folder) and delete the *.json files in this folder. This will delete all the settings saved by the app, and when you open the app again it will re-create this file.

On iOS, when you uninstall the app, this folder is deleted, so a new files is always created. But for Windows, MacOS and Android, the settings are kept even though app is uninstalled.

Phil.

[NehaNeha]

Hi Team,

One of our client is having issue regarding the GPS issue in Survey123 for ArcGIS.

The GPS is working perfectly fine in the device as they use Google Maps and other mapping apps and is able to locate the correct location.

However, while getting into Survey123 for arcgis the GPS is not working and the location automatically picked is 0,0.

The device was taken outdoor and checked. But the issue still persists.

I would request team to please help us out with this is hampering the production work of the client.

[DougBrowning]

Newer versions of Android block the location from apps until turned on - app by app.  Have to tried this?

iPads actually will turn location off again every time a new version is installed.

[NehaNeha]

Thanks Doug for your response.

I will have user test this and update you.

[DougBrowning]

Also make sure they are not in airplane mode or have battery saver on.  We had a number of people doing that and it shuts the GPS off.  (You can use these, and it helps with battery, but you must remember to manually turn location back on).

[Neha-]

Hey Doug,

Thanks for your response again.

My user tried checking for the same and found that the GPS was already on.

Not sure, whats the issue.

I would be suggesting my client the workaround suggested by Adilson Furlani‌

Adilson Furlani‌- Thanks, and would be updating you shortly

[AdilsonFurlani]

Dear All.

I had this problem some time ago. After to try a lot of methods to solve this problem (including factory reset, which turns GPS back on in Survey123) I received a perfect solution from ESRI (I don’t remember who provided this solution for me, sorry).

This solution is:

On your phone, open the File Manager and go to this folder:

Internal Storage/ArcGIS/AppStudio/Settings

Remove (or rename the extension of) all JSON files.

Open Survey123 and try again.

The explanation:

These JSON files are generated at first time when the Survey123 is opened after of first installation. In some cases, this configuration file may be old for the new version of Survey123, Removing this file forces the new Survey123 to create this configuration file again.

An advice: If you use the DEVICE ID in your projects, take in mind that removing this file the DEVICE ID of your device will change.

Well, I hope this can help you and others with the same problem.

Best regards.

Adilson Furlani

Research

Phone: +55 11 3039-6894 | Email: adilson.furlani@ldcom.com<mailto:adilson.furlani@ldcom.com>

Louis Dreyfus Company Brasil S. A.

São Paulo / Brazil

http://www.ldc.com/br<https://emea01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ldc.com%2Fbr&data=02%7C01%7CADILSON.FURLANI%40LDCOM.COM%7C8a0b7c1cb890493859f908d654e62366%7C40a64d0bf2f94a34b1b30992ac0e5e4e%7C1%7C0%7C636789744746079120&sdata=W%2Br8nPVG6OYo3IYTmJn8AXkaAgp7HMsT%2BroK%2BIpG%2Bos%3D&reserved=0>

[GeorgeJoubert]

Hello all,

I noticed this issue related to another thread that has a solution, so I will add the link:

Solved: Location data not recorded - Esri Community

Here is the instruction to be executed in Survey123 on the problematic Android devices:

• Navigate to Settings
• Location
• Select the gear icon for the integrated provider
• Information
• Press and hold on the word “Information” on the title bar
• That will open a “Location provider type” toggle
• Enable the option to “Use Google Play Location API” for the location provider type

Hope it helps. 

Kind Regards,

George

[Anonymous User]

Thanks @GeorgeJoubert for linking the issue. As per my comment in that issue, this issue has been resolved in the upcoming 3.16 October Release of Survey123 with some Android devices not getting a valid location causing the geopoint to not be updated correctly. You can test out the latest 3.16 beta builds via the Early Adopter Community to get early access to these builds.

The workaround you provided above does work (for testing and debug purposes) however be aware that using the "Google Play Location API" may provide less accurate GPS locations and certain Android Extras location metadata will not be available. If high accuracy (horizontal and vertical accuracy) are needed, or you are using pulldata(@geopoint) to extract additional information, you may notice a difference when you switch to that provider.

The 3.16 release will be public next week in the Google Play store. Remember to check the setting is reverting back to "Android Location API" provider as default.

Regards,

Phil.