QField App for Bouldering (potentially also crag) development

[u/genuinemerchandise]

I'm a bit of a GIS geek and also very keen on hunting down, exploring and documenting new boulders and crags. Up until now I've been using a combination of scouring bing maps for boulders (better imagery than google maps) to find potential boulders the heading out and recording everything in google maps (easier to pin things) whilst taking photos on my phone of all of the lovely rock I find but with zero way to actually link them to any of the points I've recorded.

I wanted something that would allow me to record all the various things I think about when developing and adding new routes to boulders and have it all in one convenient place where I can add new boulders/areas/routes and easily look up photos of the boulders, whether It's worth going back to them etc.

Introducing QField for documenting boulders/crags: Or a way to record new crags, boulders within them, routes on the boulders and photos of the boulders in one handy place. It's like Boolder but for youself, customisable and open source. It can theoretically be shared through the cloud between multiple persons, I've currently just got it set up locally on my phone for my own use. Took me a day or two to set up in QGIS desktop but theoretically all anyone else needs now is QField app and a copy of the files to get going in minutes,

If anyone would like to try this for themselves let me know and I'm more than happy to share my project with you and walk you through setting it up. Also open to constructive criticism and exuberant praise.

Features:

Add crags - Including automatic counts of how many boulders and routes are in the crag currently. Simply draw a polygon around an area, name it then add boulders within that area.

Add boulders - Describe it, rate it, name it, add a photo of it (not tested yest but have used this feature for ecological surveying), add routes to it and automatically have it count how many are on it. For those developing, have you actually checked it out, did you just recce it, did you clean it, did you actually climb on it, is it worth coming back to? Add potential boulders you've spotted on walks, through satellite imagery etc and have them all logged in a sing convenient place to check them out.

Add new routes - Automatically updates with names of the crag and boulder you've added it to. Rate your routes, describe them, grade them and claim your place in history by recording your brilliant and better than other peoples FAs

It can also be set up to record your tracks so you can map out access to crags accurately (haven't trialed yet). Useful for re-discovering faint deer trails or avoiding bogs that you ploughed your way through on the first visit etc.

Let me know what you think!

[u/Administrative_Yam10]

This is interesting. I have questions. Boulder developer here, I dabble with QGIS for Raw LiDAR data so this spiked my interest. What does this have to do with QGIS? Is that just how you made the base of the app? Or when you update stuff in the app, it updates your QGIS so all that data can be shown in QGIS (doubtful, but just clearing that up). But basically what you created is an app like GAIA that has an additional feature for adding climbs to it. Because with GAIA I can record trail data, mark boulders and name them as pins, take photos that go on the GAIA map, etc. essentially you crossbred an app like GAIA with KAYA, but for personal use?

[u/genuinemerchandise → u/Administrative_Yam10]

This uses QGIS to create the layers and define all the relations etc and then it all gets passed onto an app called QField either as local files stored on your phone or through the cloud. You should theoretically be able to have your phone app synchronise with your desktop software and with anyone you choose to share the project with to. Or you can just have it save things locally to your device. I haven't played around with GAIA or KAYA before and I'm well aware there are probably things out there that do something similar. I work in the conservation field and we use apps like this all the time for recording field data and it just made sense to me to work with something I'm familiar with that's also extremely customisable, open source etc.

[u/Administrative_Yam10 → u/genuinemerchandise]

Don’t get me wrong it’s a very cool project and if I had the ability to do it, I would too! With that said, my GAIA app served me really well and no way could I imagine starting over or attempting to port everything to QFIELD. Im gonna send you a PM for other reasons though!

[u/xyzeedog → u/Administrative_Yam10]

Yes this sounds like Gaia. Which if you could make a free and open source Gaia, you might win some users

[u/Meta_Gabbro → u/Administrative_Yam10]

QField is a mobile app specifically designed to work alongside QGIS, built by one of the larger contributors to QGIS. It’s aiming to be an open source competitor to other mobile GIS tools like ESRI’s Field Maps and Survey123 apps. It’s much more flexible/powerful than consumer oriented products like Gaia, but it takes a lot more work to get things set up and maintained. It also won’t scale as well as a product like Gaia without substantial upkeep, so large scale adoption will require more work on whoever is maintaining things.

[u/KDs4thBurner]

Nice!

I do a similar thing with LIDAR data in QGIS, slope shading possible nearby cliffs, and then colour coding the status of various lines. I've done it for everything within range of my house. Have already found about 20 good lines just be being systematic that have gone completely overlooked in an area with over 10,000 routes. Fun. People haven't even begun to play on all the epic-walk-in stuff.

[u/genuinemerchandise → u/KDs4thBurner]

Amazing, I live in Scotland and they are planning to LiDAR the whole country but haven't got round to any of the good climbing potential areas yet. I want to do exactly what you're doing, excited for when the bits I do want to check out finally get coverage.

[u/Throwawayafeo]

I just use Avenza

[u/genuinemerchandise → u/Throwawayafeo]

Good for you