Photo limitation in ArcGIS.com hosted services

[DavidJacobus]

Hello,

I am working on a project that could involve collecting thousands of points and pictures using the Collector app. I am thinking of using my origination's ArcGIS.com credits to "pay" for the hosted cloud space that is provided by Esri. With all the photo attachments involved with this project, I could be looking at 100-200 GB of photos being stored within my hosted File GDB in the cloud. Is there a limit to how many photos a file GDB can store? Is there a work around that would allow me to store my feature data in the Esri cloud, but still link my photos to each feature and have them located on an image server outside of my file GDB?

File GDB's are designed to store various types of geographic data, so I am very cautious to use the Esri cloud file GDB as a large photo storage location as well. Any insight would be helpful.

Thanks,

Dave

[JakeSkinner]

Hi David,

I've been working with the City of Philadelphia on a anti-graffiti project where they are using Collector to take before and after pictures of graffiti removal.  They currently have close to 2,000 points collected for a hosted feature service, with a before/after picture for each point.  Everything is going well, and they have not run into any issues storing the pictures.

[DavidJacobus]

Wow, Jake, thanks for the reply! Sounds encouraging. If you don't mind, do you know how many credits you are spending on an annual basis for your graffiti application? Have you encountered any issues with multiple field crews syncing their points/pictures to your hosted feature service?

Thanks,

Dave

[JakeSkinner · Accepted solution]

I was just assisting with getting this project off the ground, so I cannot give you actually numbers.  However, after July, ESRI made a change to AGOL to store attachments as files, so the credit usage is much less.  Take a look at the following link:

ArcGIS Online | Service Credits

It's only 1.2 credits per 1 GB per month.

As for syncing, I know they have multiple crews out throughout the day, and they have not reported any problems.

[DavidJacobus]

Jake, I appreciate your input. Thank you!

Dave

[SamKrueger1]

Just a note that may help if your crews are using iOS devices and taking LOTS of photos with the Collector:

I am currently leading a big project with the collector where we are surveying street conditions. One of the biggest things I had to address was the photo attachment size (iOS vs Android) Our android surveyors had no trouble posting edits in the field however iOS surveyors were experiencing sluggish uploads when 1 or more photos were attached to a feature. Android users were able to post edits in seconds, some iOS users took minutes (sometimes 5-10), obviously this would not be productive if we were going to survey thousands of street blocks.

We have both devices being used. Android photo size averaged about 200KB per attachment  resolution settings within the camera can be lowered without compromising quality). There were no issues with our Android users. However, iOS devices don't have this capability, so, photo's were around 3-4MB per attachment by default. If your project requires lots of field photos and you are using an iOS device, one work around is to download a third party camera app (we used camera plus pro) which allows a user to reduce the resolution and store the photos in the camera roll or gallery.

Our new workflow for iOS field crew members was to first take a photo with the new camera app > then open the collector > attach a photo from your camera roll instead of taking a photo directly. All iOS photos were now MUCH more manageable and upload times took seconds instead of minutes. This was huuge for us.

Our field crew said the brief extra step of using the third party app wasn't a hassle and it significantly improved upload times. One last note, we use the Collector on a network, not offline.

Good luck!

Sam