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GPS and GIS with Matt Alexander [Encore] - Ep 176
284 Plays3 years ago
We’ve always wanted to have a GPS expert on the show to unpack terms and talk about the latest tech. Now we have it! Matt Alexander joins us to talk all things GPS and explain some of those terms you may have been wondering about.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello and welcome to the Archaeotech Podcast, episode number 107. I'm your host, Chris Webster, with my co-host, Paul Zimmerman. Today, we talk about the latest in GPS technology with Matt Alexander of Anatom Field Solutions. Let's get to it.
00:00:24
Speaker
All right, before we get started, here's a quick bio on Matt. Matt has worked as a field biologist all over the country and has always been a tech geek. He began assembling a mobile GIS mapping solution in 2010 to replace Windows handheld GPS equipment and paper data sheets. It sounds like that's today's lightsaber, like you got to assemble your own system just to, you know, be legit.
00:00:46
Speaker
Today, he runs a GPS equipment, sales, and rental company that services the whole US and every industry that has mapping needs.
Host Updates and Corrections
00:00:54
Speaker
But first, welcome Paul. How are you doing, man? Okay, I think. I've been kind of an API hell with what should have been a very simple programming project, and it's turned into anything but. But aside from that, good. How are you doing?
00:01:06
Speaker
Nice, not too bad, not too bad, keeping it going. I've got some new work stuff that I'm gonna be working on and working with here shortly, and it's gonna actually be my app of the day, so I'll talk about that in the app of the day segment. For now, before we get to our guest, Matt, today, I've gotta mention something because I was such an idiot for not saying it. Back on episode 105, when we were talking about, that was the good, fast, cheap, pick two episode, and I mentioned specifically that there are no
00:01:36
Speaker
programs or computers out there that are specifically built for archaeology that are in popular use. Because we adapt things for archaeology in a lot of cases like GIS we're going to talk about today. Esri wasn't built for archaeology, but we use it for archaeology, right? Wild note, wasn't built for archaeology, but we use it for archaeology. Now we're building modules for archaeology. Well, one that I completely forgot to mention, and we just had him on as a guest
00:01:59
Speaker
just a couple months ago, was in terrorist registries from Michael Capers. And terrorist registries was built over in Europe as archaeolink, and his version here was converted to terrorist registries. Go back and listen to that episode. I'll put the link in the show notes to it. But it was built specifically for archaeology. And so if you're looking for something from an infield, really built for excavation, to be honest, but he's adaptable to other things,
00:02:27
Speaker
But if you're looking for excavation and collections management type stuff for archaeology, then check out in Terrace registries and we'll have the links to that in the show notes. I had to mention that before I forgot and we got out of hand here. Because he sent me an email and he's like, hey, heard your podcast. This is built for archaeology. It's like, damn it. You're right. So, okay.
Transition in GPS Technology
00:02:50
Speaker
So let's bring on our guest, Matt Alexander. How's it going, man?
00:02:54
Speaker
Good. Thank you for having me on. Great. Great. So I got introduced to you actually through a colleague of mine at Wild Note because you guys were talking about different things and she was like, Hey, you need to talk to Matt. You've got some cool stuff going on. And so I went over to your website and we'll, we'll get into all this stuff, but there's just, I like what you guys are doing over there from the blog, the sort of training aspect and everything you're doing. So why don't you just give us a short,
00:03:19
Speaker
introduction to yourself and what you're doing with this. What's your company called? I mean, what's the point behind all of it? Yeah, great. Thanks. Our company is Anatom Geomobile Solutions. As you can tell from the name there, Geomobile, our focus is mobile mapping. Our focus is getting away from the handheld Windows Mobile rugged GPS units that we've all used and seen over the years or decades for some of us.
00:03:47
Speaker
And helping people transition away from that to being able to use their phone or tablet as their actual data collector, their interface. But along with that, we have to find a high accuracy GPS receiver to be able to get us better accuracy for our positioning. So with that, we can use what we call the Bluetooth GPS receivers. And that way we can get anything from sort of consumer grade, you know, three meter accuracy
00:04:15
Speaker
professional sub meter accuracy which i know your field needs just like the folks in the wetland delineation field all the way down to actual survey grade centimeter level accuracy so our focus is really helping people do that transition from what they're accustomed to using with windows mobile.
Benefits of Renting GPS Equipment
00:04:36
Speaker
handheld devices to being able to use a smarter mapping app and have a much bigger variety you know back in the day there's you know maybe a dozen. Mapping apps available for windows mobile and now with ios and android gosh is probably literally hundreds of versions.
00:04:55
Speaker
I got a question for you right off the bat here so we can get this out of the way. You guys rent equipment as well as sales of equipment as well, right? Yeah. So why, you must get this all the time. And I have my solid answer for this, but I want to hear your answer for this because I rent equipment too and I need it. Why rent when you can buy? What is the benefit of renting from you guys when I can just go on eBay and pick something up, you know, super cheap or buy brand new?
00:05:23
Speaker
Sure, no, that's a good point. I mean, really, the whole rental component to our company came about from the fact that I worked as a field biologist all around the US for state and federal government and private firms. And a lot of what I did working for private consulting firms was renting equipment, right? You know, the old tremble geos.
00:05:43
Speaker
And so when we look to transition to this mobile solution, there just wasn't anybody out there and there was nobody that was really offering advice and there was no one renting or selling full kits. So when we developed that for this company, we're really excited to take everything that we found annoying with renting and fix it for our rental clients.
00:06:07
Speaker
The advantage of renting is you don't have to put up a big cost expenditure right off the bat and then hope you can keep it busy enough to get it to pay for itself some point down the road. Instead, you can get your hands on the latest equipment,
00:06:23
Speaker
our technical support and service to help you along the way, and then a much smaller price tag for that rental period. And for the companies that really like to go that way and then just pass the cost on to their client as far as the rental equipment is concerned, every couple of years, you're always getting something brand new instead of buying something and 10 years down the road, you're complaining about it, but no one in the company wants to buy a new one because they spent a lot of money on that piece of equipment 10 years ago.
00:06:53
Speaker
I have a follow-up to that, actually. Back in the day, we used to rent a lot of survey equipment, total stations and the like, and a big advantage of renting versus buying was that when we'd rent it from a reputable surveying firm, they'd calibrate, clean and calibrate between each use, so we'd end up with things that were highly calibrated. Is that still with the kinds of equipment that you're using? Is that a factor?
00:07:15
Speaker
You know, the kind of calibration that you're doing with lasers isn't really necessary with today's GPS or more accurately to call the GNSS receivers.
00:07:26
Speaker
And the reason I say GNSS is because that means that it can actually track and utilize more than just the American GPS constellation. It can do additionally GLONASS and maybe also the European Galileo satellite. So that terminology, to be more correct, we say GNSS, which is a global navigation satellite system. But with this stuff, the beauty of it is instead of having what we used to deal with rugged Windows mobile devices, which are an all in one, right?
00:07:56
Speaker
they were a terrible computer and an okay GPS. Well, now the future where we're at is we've pulled them apart. So we say, okay, let's have a computer and let it, let's let it focus on being a computer. Well, our smartphones are darn good computers compared to computers eight years ago. And then that allows the GPS of its own to focus on being a GPS. And when all of a sudden we get better quality in our GPS system and its positioning,
00:08:23
Speaker
So as far as that sort of calibrating, it's not necessary since it doesn't have lasers and we're not making sure the measurements are all correctly. But what we do personally at our company is we have roof mounted antennas because we're in Portland, Oregon, it rains a lot. So whether it's a rental or a new product, everything gets hooked up to the roof mounted antenna.
00:08:45
Speaker
We run it through its paces, make sure it's tracking everything correctly, and then we send it off to the client. So there's not necessarily the same type of calibration, but we do spend a lot of time testing our equipment to make sure that it's good to go when it goes out to the client versus I'll have clients where they'll make a purchase, doesn't get used all winter.
00:09:05
Speaker
then they pass it off to the field person and maybe they forget to test the antenna cable or to be sure that it's working, person gets out in the field and realizes it doesn't work. So there's an advantage in using our rental system because we guarantee it's gonna come out of that box when it shows up on your doorstep and it's gonna be ready to rock and roll from time one. Yeah, that makes sense.
00:09:26
Speaker
you hit on some of the points why I rent too is I always want, I want to make sure I have the latest thing because not just because I like having the latest thing, which I do. I mean, I watched the Apple WWDC keynote yesterday. I didn't get out my credit card, but of course none of it's ready yet. But I think, I think when you're looking at increasing efficiencies in the field, some people they get, they get so used to the degradation of their equipment because sometimes it is so slow, you don't even notice it. And before long,
00:09:53
Speaker
Man, you're managing workflows around the speed and competency of the equipment you're using and you don't even realize it. If you had something newer and you're like, I can't afford to buy that new thing or I can't afford to rent it or something like that, but if you had it, you'd be able to work a lot more efficiently and quickly if you did have it, I think, if that makes any sense. Certainly, more efficiently than if you end up in the field with miles from any place and you find out that that critical charger or cable is busted.
00:10:21
Speaker
Right? Yeah. Or the winter went by and there wasn't a firmware update that was done before you get in the field and you don't have cell service and your receivers not behaving as well as you would have thought it would.
Selecting the Right GPS Receiver
00:10:33
Speaker
Yep. Yep. Quick question on sub meter GPS and well, not just sub meter, but the like the Bluetooth add-ons, which as archaeologists, we always think of that as sub meter because to be honest, anything between sub meter and what your phone or tablet already provides is not very useful, right? We either need sub meter or we don't.
00:10:52
Speaker
There's no in between with most of the stuff that we're doing. So there's a few different models on your website that you guys sell here. I see a bunch of different things from the bad elf to the eos line and other things. If an archeologist is looking for sub meter accuracy or meter accuracy, what do you suggest? What do you personally suggest that is probably the benefits outweigh the costs?
00:11:16
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's a good point. I mean, you know, I used a lot of it in the field before I switched full time to our company here that we're talking about. And the bad elf GPS, you know, they're a funny little device there, you know, the size of a stopwatch, they have huge battery lights on them, and they've got some cool features, but they just don't have that sub meter accuracy, you know, and even their newer model, the bad elf GNSS surveyor.
00:11:42
Speaker
It's really in truth a one to two meter device and they state it as such and we've field tested all of our stuff on a test course that we had established by a professionally licensed land surveyor using a total station. So we know that our points underneath tree canopy are exactly the position that they're supposed to be so we can really test all the receivers and compare them. So for your guys's group of field surveyors, really the EOS Aero 100
00:12:11
Speaker
Submeter receiver is really the best choice on the market. I mean, not to get too sales pitchy, but the reason why we settled on that, because we were an agnostic reseller and we were selling five different brands back in 2016 until we really put them through their paces and said, okay, if I were to go back in the field and start doing surveys again, what would I take with me? And that's how we settled on the EOS Aero 100.
00:12:36
Speaker
And the one thing that really helps set it apart from the other competition is the fact that it will, well, two things really. So it'll Bluetooth connect to iOS, Android, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Windows Mobile. It'll work with everything. But the real key feature to it is that it can track and utilize simultaneously all four available satellite constellations right now.
00:13:03
Speaker
And four is amazing. I mean, I'm sure you guys were mapping back when the only constellation available for navigation to the public was the American GPS. In a day we could use seven of them in the open, we were super excited. But now with the EOS Aero 100, it can do the American GPS, it can do the Russian GLONASS constellation, it can do the European Galileo, and it can also do the Chinese Beidou constellation.
00:13:29
Speaker
And the beauty of that when you're working in areas with either rugged train in the sense of canyons and ravines or tree canopy are both combined is if I have a GPS receiver that can only do GPS and GLONASS and I'm standing in the open and let's say I'm using 16 satellites combined. And then I go up under tree canopy and for argument's sake we'll say we lose half of those satellites. So now I went from 16 to 8. So that's going to greatly decrease my accuracy.
00:13:59
Speaker
If I have an Aero 100 and I'm standing open right now with all those extra constellations, I might be using 22 to 24 satellites for my position. So if I go under that tree canopy, now I'm talking
00:14:12
Speaker
you know, 2011, 12, maybe 13 satellites. So it's going to be double what the competition could do with just GPS and GLONASS or GPS and GLONASS. And then that just greatly helps us get our accuracy as tight as we can, because regardless of the brand of GPS, GNSS receiver you're going to use,
00:14:35
Speaker
it's always going to lose accuracy when you go under tree canopy. And that is because the signals are line of sight. They're too weak. They're not as strong as radio and cell service signals. So they get blocked by tree branches and then that introduces various types of error. Yeah. We lose signal a lot here in Nevada because of just mountain ranges too. I mean, we've got more unnamed mountain ranges than any other state in the union.
00:15:00
Speaker
You know, you get into a tight little valley or you're just coming over a hill or something like that. And sometimes, man, you lose line of sight with everything, including your crew. And on the flip side, the folks that work in cities have the same problem. It's just their buildings instead of the mountains next to you.
00:15:19
Speaker
Nice, nice. I've got some other questions, but I think before we get to segment two, I want to know this. What do you think is the one thing you wish all your potential clients or people you talked to about GPS knew? Because you must get one or two questions all the time and you're like, man, if I could just tell the world this, then we'd be great. It's probably that satellite signals are line of sight and that they can't go through objects. That would probably be
00:15:46
Speaker
the most unknown component to folks that are using GPS. And even if they've been using GPS for a decade, they may not still kind of put two and two together there. And along that, there's an issue that we've all had, and I used to do it wrong too, but if you're using a Garmin or a Trimble Geo or some sort of handheld GPS, that antenna is internal. And normally it's placed right above the screen. And that's kind of, if you look at the body, it's kind of that bend right there.
00:16:15
Speaker
What people don't realize is when you're standing in the sun and you hold that GPS up to your chest and turn your head so your head's shading that GPS receiver so you can see your screen and take your point, your body's blocking maybe 60-70% of the satellites it was using to track. So even though it looked good initially, when you actually start punching in that point data to collect your position,
00:16:40
Speaker
you may have gone from a sub meter position to two or three meter accuracy without even realizing that you had caused it. So that's really kind of the one thing I wish I could, you know, kind of mentally push out to the whole United States.
00:16:55
Speaker
Nice.
GPS Data Collection Tips
00:16:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's one thing I always tell people when I'm either teaching them how to use a GPS, usually some kind of Turnbull model or something like that that we have in the field, is face south while you're taking the point up here in Nevada. You're just going to get better satellite reception if you face south, depending on wherever you're at.
00:17:13
Speaker
Typically how it goes, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, and that's kind of become a little less necessary because the new receivers have the addition of Galileo and they have the addition of Beto. And there's just so many satellites now that facing South. Yep.
00:17:29
Speaker
that's definitely something that we're all accustomed to and you should be doing with the older models that can't use as many constellations. But now with the newer ones with so many constellations, just getting that the funny thing is you look goofy doing it. But really, we should do is right before you tap that screen and collect that point is to actually kind of hold it out at arm's length about the height of your head so that your body's not blocking anything.
00:17:53
Speaker
tap it with that stylus, then bring it down to your body, shade it with your head so you can see the screen and type in whatever information you have. But the south thing, a lot of that was to try to make sure that we were pinging the SBAS satellites. And that's where our sub-meter corrections are coming from.
00:18:10
Speaker
Well, related to shielding, it's been a long, long time since I've done any real GPS mapping, but I mean, we're pushing a couple decades now. At the time, I had a lot of trouble. I was working in Yemen. I was working next to cliff faces frequently, and so there's a lot of trouble with getting good readings, not just because of what was shielded by the cliffs, but also because of reflections. Is that still such an issue, or has that gotten better with all the extra satellites that you can read?
00:18:37
Speaker
The reflection is the multipath air where it bounces off that cliff first before it reaches your receiver. So, we haven't eliminated that. The good thing is that the more satellites we add overhead, the more high-quality receiver can ignore what it thinks is a problematic signal and focus on the ones that aren't bouncing off that cliff face. Yeah, that's good to know.
00:19:01
Speaker
Okay, well on that note let's take it to break and we'll come back and we have a lot more questions with Matt Alexander back in a second.
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00:19:48
Speaker
Welcome back to episode 107 of the Archiotech podcast and we are talking all things GPS with Matt Alexander. Matt, there's a couple terms that I want to talk about and I've wanted to do this on this podcast for a really long time because we throw a bunch of terminology around and especially new people in the field might not understand what the heck we're talking about.
Understanding RTK Technology
00:20:07
Speaker
And I'll start with one that's right on your website because it's one of the
00:20:11
Speaker
I guess classifications or qualifications for the different GPS devices you can get, but what is RTK? Yes. RTK stands for Real-Time Kinematics. Basically, what happens when we switch our correction service from what we're used to using with a standard GPS receiver to the real-time Kinematics is we're speeding up how quickly we're consuming a correction algorithm.
00:20:37
Speaker
And so the technology is a little bit different. We start using additional frequencies beyond a standard submeter receiver. And then that also greatly increases our ability to get really highly accurate data, I mean, down to a centimeter. Okay. Can this be adjusted on different devices or is it just it is or it isn't there?
00:20:59
Speaker
Yeah, so that's a good question. Basically, what we think of in our field in the GPS space as an RTK receiver is one that has the standard L1 frequency, which is what all GPS are using for their basic frequency to get their position.
00:21:19
Speaker
an rtk receiver typically is gonna be one that has an additional frequency l2 is what has been in use for a long time and then there's also this new one on american satellites that's called l5 and that's only a few years old we're actually really excited that about that one but what happens is.
00:21:40
Speaker
If we are getting an RTK correction service coming into our receiver and it's using L1 to get its position and L2 is making it help us get our accuracy really fast, I mean within seconds with today's RTK receivers like the one that we sell the Aerogold.
00:21:59
Speaker
If I was in a parking lot and I had it running and RTK feed was coming in via cell service, my corrections through cell service, my position from the satellites overhead, I could actually walk across the parking lot and as soon as I stop with my survey poll and I look at the bubble level, it's already gotten down to its fix.
00:22:21
Speaker
So that's really the interesting thing about RTK is it's just super fast and it's super accurate. Now, technically you can feed RTK to a standard sub meter receiver, an L1 only frequency receiver. But if I were to do that same methodology, first I'd have to stand in the parking lot for maybe two or three minutes to get it down to maybe sub foot. It won't go all the way to centimeter typically. And then I walked across the parking lot and stopped to take a new point.
00:22:49
Speaker
Whereas the full RTK receiver is going to get my centimeter fixed within a second or two. That L1 only frequency receiver that I'm I'm forcing to try to use RTK corrections, I might have stand there another three minutes to get it down to sub foot. So that's the big difference is the speed and then the price obviously cost twice as much for a full RTK receiver.
00:23:11
Speaker
Now I've heard people think because you hear, you see things spelled with a K when, when they think they're spelled with a C and I've heard people say that RTK stands for real time correction. They just spelled it with a K for some reason. Right. Right. So can you explain the difference between real time correction and, and RTK? I mean, obviously there are two different things, but just to put that out there.
00:23:34
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so RTK is real time kinematics. And basically, it's just a different type of correction algorithm that the receivers consuming real time correction. So there, you're right, there's no RTC. But basically, what's beautiful about technology that we've come so far is post processing is really a legacy methodology, we really don't have to post process anything anymore. Because
00:24:00
Speaker
When they designed post-processing and we kept using it for as long as we did all through the 2000s, it was because our GPS could only use GPS satellites to get our position. And even before that, the military was scrambling it. So we had to be able to apply some sort of correction to it to get it down from like 100 meter horizontal accuracy down to maybe 5 to 10 meters.
00:24:21
Speaker
But today, there's so many satellites helping us get our position that we just call it real time because you don't need to post process it. It's just a whole workflow that's not necessary anymore. People are really entrenched in it. I've even talked to some people that say they enjoy the process. Most people don't.
00:24:41
Speaker
I guess the software is expensive and the process is time consuming. But when we say real time these days, it just means that, hey, man, you know, if your receiver has been, you know, purchased the last five years, it's probably tracking so many satellites, you can just collect your data as you go and post processing it, you know, I don't know, maybe it's going to give you an extra 10 centimeters, maybe 15. But for the most part, the trade off just isn't worth it.
00:25:06
Speaker
If you rent a device, let's say I rent Trimble sometimes from this one company here in town when I just got to do a small project, how do you know that you're getting real
Real-Time Correction and PDOP
00:25:16
Speaker
-time correction? Is there an indication on the screen or something like that?
00:25:20
Speaker
Basically, the real-time correction is a correction that's coming in from the WASP satellites that are overhead, and we also call them SBAS. SBAS stands for satellite-based augmentation system. All of today's GPS receivers use a correction algorithm coming in from
00:25:40
Speaker
an s bass system and in north america the actual name of our s bass satellites in this three of them over north america they stay in geosynchronous orbit which means they're always over us they don't go over and around the planet like all the other satellites do. The the was stands for wide area augmentation system and that comes in every seven seconds and so.
00:26:04
Speaker
Gosh, it's been so long as I've used a Trimble, so I'm not sure where that is in the menu, but typically what you would do is you would look at that particular GPS receiver's interface screen with the satellites where it's telling you what's going on. Nowadays, we're not looking at PDOP anymore because the receivers are
00:26:25
Speaker
are good enough to give us a decent accuracy estimate. I still look at PDOP sometimes when someone's having some problems with their receiver, but for the most part, we don't look at it. But in there, there's going to be something called a diff age or a difference age, and you're going to watch it count. So if I'm standing outside with a sub meter receiver, whether it's a bad elf GPS for 300 bucks or an Aero 100 for 3,000 or a Trimble Geo for 8,000,
00:26:53
Speaker
If i find where that dif age tab is in the open it's gonna count up to seven and it's gonna go right back down one two three four five six seven one two three four five six seven so i tell me every seven seconds i'm getting that correction algorithm from the was satellites rest that lights if it starts counting up.
00:27:11
Speaker
Well, then I'm probably standing on a tree and it's been blocked. Because if I look down at my death agent, it says 300, that means 300 seconds have gone by since the last time I received a correction from the WASP satellites. Okay. I've got another, since we've got a lot of alphabet soup going on here, you just briefly mentioned PDOP. And I was looking on your company's website on the blogs, there's a
00:27:35
Speaker
a post from a couple years ago says, what is PDOP and why is it obsolete? So I have no idea what this is. Could you please enlighten me and probably a number of our listeners as well? Sure. Yeah. People that have been doing it for a long time, they're accustomed to the idea of PDOP. And what happened is when the receivers weren't very good, they
00:28:01
Speaker
They used to not be able to give us an estimated horizontal accuracy. And then even when they started to, they weren't super great. So what we got into accustomed to doing was looking at our PDOP and saying, oh, hey, look, my PDOP is below six. So I'm going to collect my data. And what that stands for is a dilution of precision.
00:28:25
Speaker
H-DOP is horizontal, V-DOP is vertical, and P is kind of your 3D positioning. So what it means is a really high P-DOP means that the satellites above you aren't spread out evenly. And this was a really big deal when we could only track the American GPS satellites.
00:28:47
Speaker
And if we get underneath tree canopy and all my satellites sort of above me into the northwest, the west, and the southwest are all being blocked, but I'm getting all my satellites on the other side of me, then my PDOT value is going to be really high. And when I see that high PDOT value, it used to tell me, oh, hey, you know what? My position is not going to be very accurate. And I'm just going to kind of roll with it because I have to collect the point here no matter what.
00:29:16
Speaker
But nowadays there's so many satellites that I usually, we used to get excited if the PDOP was below six in the 2000s, but now I usually see the PDOP below two. So it's just something that we don't really think of.
00:29:32
Speaker
unless we have a client that's saying, hey, can you look at my data and tell me why I'm not getting very good accuracy? And the nice thing, if they're using a mapping app like, say, as a collector, I'll use that, for example, because a lot of folks are using it these days,
00:29:51
Speaker
You can actually, when you collect your point, you can collect all the additional metadata. And when I say metadata from the satellite, that's your horizontal vertical position, how many satellites it used when it got your position, the time, PDOP, differential age, and DIF status. You know, was it GPS? Was it DGPS? Meaning I was getting my sub-meter corrections, whatever.
00:30:15
Speaker
So sometimes I'll have clients and they're using a really high accuracy receiver and they're saying, hey, how come I'm not getting a few centimeters? How come I'm getting two foot accuracy?
00:30:25
Speaker
I will still sometimes fall back on that PDOP because if I look at that PDOP and I see the values high, you know, six, seven, eight or something like that, then, you know, that helps me drive back around and go, okay, well, where were you standing? And inevitably in those situations, I find out that they were like right up against a building. Well, yeah, I expect you to have a poor beat up because the building is blocking half of the sky above you. That explains why your centimeter grade expensive receiver is doing two foot accuracy because you're up against that building.
00:30:55
Speaker
Right. Okay. Well, that leads me into one of the questions we had on here, which was about how GPS technology has changed in the last 10 years. That sounds like it's clearly one of them. We've talked about a few others, but what are some of the big things that you could pull out that have really changed in the last 10 years on GPS tech?
Advancements in GPS Technology
00:31:13
Speaker
The biggest thing has been the additional constellations coming available to the public. So I think the Russian GLONASS became available to the public around 2011, 2012.
00:31:24
Speaker
the Chinese Beidou, there's still not a ton of them coming over the US so it doesn't make a ton of difference but those came online I want to say around 2015. The one that we're most excited about in my space is the European Galileo constellation because
00:31:43
Speaker
They started to point around twenty sixteen supposed to be completely deployed by twenty twenty which means all of them will be in orbit around the planet and operational will be thirty of them. So that's thirty three or so american gps twenty four twenty five of the russian satellites and then thirty of galley and the best part about galley.
00:32:06
Speaker
They're all brand new so as a constellation gallery is actually gonna be better than the American GPS for a while because the US Air Force is always rotating out the older satellites so all these additional GPS satellites are super awesome the other most exciting thing is that
00:32:25
Speaker
by splitting up the GPS into its own standalone GPS, GNSS, RTK receiver that can Bluetooth connect to my phone or tablet, the prices have come way down. You mentioned doing RTK work. It used to be you had to have $25,000 to $40,000 worth of equipment in one on-site base station with a ham radio and one rover with a ham radio and the base station sending information to that rover and you're running around site collecting data.
00:32:55
Speaker
Well now we've gone from that price all the way down to say $8,000 for an RTK Rover that I can connect to my phone and then through cell service somewhere down the street next city over I can get my centimeter grade corrections from that base station through cell service.
00:33:13
Speaker
So those to me are the biggest most exciting things is the additional satellites and just the immense price drops we've seen both by getting technology more advanced and less of it, less of the equipment that we actually need on site and just the cost being driven down by advances in technology all the time anyways.
00:33:34
Speaker
Yeah, I'm interested in the fact that you pointed out the phones and the tablets there, because that's something that comes up on this podcast all the time, how we're using phones and tablets in a bunch of different situations that they weren't originally invented for, but incredibly useful. What does the software look like? What kind of interfaces do you have then on the phone or the tablet that you take out into the field to use with this GPS? Is it all extremely specialized in particular to the receivers, or do you have more generic stuff that could be learned and skills transferred from one set to another?
00:34:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good point. Most of today's mobile mapping applications, whether it be Collector, Wild Note, or some of the other manufacturers, not manufacturers, but software makers, it's almost like the mapping apps you saw back in the day with a gray screen. But instead, let's take that ability to collect highly accurate data, and let's almost drop it on Google Earth on your computer, but then cram it on your phone. So now I've got
00:34:32
Speaker
a live aerial image.
00:34:35
Speaker
on my background. I can see all those dirt roads so I can navigate better. But I'm getting my accuracy from my standalone Bluetooth GPS receiver, because you know, cell service is kind of five to 10 meters, depending on how far out and in the bush you are. As far as the actual sort of workflow, what I have found is that both for myself and for when I was a project manager now with this company, is people retain
00:35:03
Speaker
Workflows way better now because we're all walking around the smartphone. So if I go all winter and I don't collect data and it's springtime and I gotta get out in the field.
00:35:12
Speaker
within an hour, I'm gonna remember all the things I need to do. Whereas with old Windows Mobile GPS receivers, man, you could go winter without using that. And I used to spend two weeks trying to remember all the different trips and tricks and how to do everything. So it's really beautiful to see how easy it is for people to maintain today's mobile mapping apps, regardless of the manufacturer. But typically, it's gonna be like a map interface
00:35:40
Speaker
and then you can collect points and lines as you go, but the beauty is you can take your project boundaries, your access roads, any other features that you have existing, load it in before you even get to the field, and then it's almost like walking around with ArcMap, as we use ArcMap from desktop software crammed into your phone, and now you're collecting data live with it. That's very cool.
00:36:04
Speaker
That leads us into probably one of our last questions, given the time left in the segment, because I answer this literally all the time. If somebody asks me what are the most common questions I get, it's this one. So I'm interested to hear your sales pitch on this.
Using Smartphones in Fieldwork
00:36:18
Speaker
Is our phones and tablets rugged enough for using in the field? You look at a Trimble, which is something that's so recognizable to at least archaeologists and other people in surveying. I mean, they are built like a tank, right? That being said, I've seen so many screens cracked, but we won't go down that road.
00:36:32
Speaker
but they are built pretty rugged and pretty thick and tough and then you look at your phone and i've got my iphone 10 in my hand and it's this glass you know thing that seems relatively like i could break it in a second so what's your answer when people ask you that are the rug enough for the field i love that question i really do
00:36:48
Speaker
So, when I got into this, I was worried about that too. And at the time, we settled on Apple iPads because they were the only tablet really that had survived some of the early tries and had a metal case or as back as one case. So, I didn't have to worry about it being like a laptop where you drop and explodes into a ton of different plastic pieces.
00:37:11
Speaker
The other beauty about it and you know props to lifeproof a case maker the ipads only tablet you can get inside a good not only rugged case but waterproof case yeah and so it's our company since two thousand thirteen has been shipping ipads in lifeproof cases with an anti grip layer screen protector added to it.
00:37:33
Speaker
to about every state in the US, including Alaska and Hawaii, you know, people go out and they use it and they ship it back. And I got to find some wood to knock on. But in all these years, we've not lost any as far as being damaged or cracked screens. And it comes to the fact and you hit on this.
00:37:50
Speaker
Hand someone a triple geo and they go, wow, this is built like a tank and they do stupid stuff. They throw it across the stream they're about to cross and I've seen it. You hand them a tablet and all bets are off. They're like, oh, well, hey, now I got to be careful with this. So I don't have any problem with phones and tablets in the field. People generally take care of it much, much better than if you hand them a ruggedized Windows device.
00:38:17
Speaker
Wow, I never really thought about that, but you're totally right. They just think it's this, you know, more hands-off kind of thing, like they don't want to destroy it, so they take better care of it. That's a good point. Absolutely. Yeah, it's like getting a rental car, you know? Drive it like a rental. There you go. I have no idea what you're talking about. Right. Exactly, Paul. All right, well, we're pretty much out of time. We're going to hit the app of the day segment next. But first, where can people go to learn more about your company and to rent or buy devices from you guys?
00:38:45
Speaker
Yeah, great. Thank you. So they can visit our website at AGSGIS.com. And we've got a blog on there with plenty of great articles. And we also have information on rentals and purchases, or they can give us a call at 1-800-980-4649.
00:39:04
Speaker
All right, perfect. And I really do have to congratulate you and applaud you for your blog because so many companies are just out there to sell stuff and nobody's interested in education and really just talking about things. And I think your blog posts, I've read a bunch of them so far when I talked to you about a month ago about this.
00:39:23
Speaker
They're just really good, well-written posts about just really candid things that you guys are doing and dealing with and you can tell that you're really into this and you're not just in it to sell stuff and make money like some of the other bigger companies out there.
00:39:36
Speaker
Hey man, I really appreciate that. Um, we do work really hard to try to just educate folks, even if they don't buy our rent from us. I have plenty of phone call conversations with people just asking questions and I may never hear from them again, but you know, if it helps them get in the field and collect their data and get out, then I'm happy. Cause I, I'd spend a lot of time living in hotels and eating subway. So I know where they come from. Indeed. Indeed. So, all right. Well, thanks a lot, Matt. And, uh, over the break, we're going to try to convince him to come back for the app of the day segment. But until then.
00:40:06
Speaker
We will be back in just a second. The links to everything we mentioned, including the website that Matt just mentioned, is in the show notes. Back in a second. All right, welcome back to the App of the Day segment.
Tools for Remote Area Surveys
00:40:17
Speaker
And our guest, Matt Alexander, is joining us for this segment. So, Matt, as Paul and I often don't either, you don't have an app, but what do you have for us in this segment?
00:40:27
Speaker
Yeah, so I came across this little device. It's called a Link, L-Y-N-Q, and it's a pretty cool thing. I can think of a lot of uses for it. If your listeners want to head to their website, it's L-Y-N-Q-M-E.com, LinkMe.com.
00:40:45
Speaker
And it's a pretty cool device where basically you have two of them. They're bigger than a stopwatch, but they still fit in your hand and they've got a little carbine to hook onto your backpack. And what you can do is you can sync them together and it will help you tell where the other person is. So it's a very simple display. It'll say the person's name, the distance and feet. And then it's got a little, almost like a compass that kind of spins around in a circle depending on where they are in position to you.
00:41:15
Speaker
And you know having kids and dogs i love the idea of being able to hook one of these to my dogs caller for hiking or something but i also from a field survey component like the idea that because i personally spent a ton of time in northern nevada and all those mountain ranges there i mean the real short so you're you're up you're down the next valley up again down next valley,
00:41:37
Speaker
And so when we used to do surveys with two persons per team, sometimes it could be hard finding that other team. There's no cell service out there. So I can see how this device would actually be pretty cool to kind of help you keep an eye on where that other team is or maybe your partner if you guys are doing kind of wide transects and there's a lot of veg that you're fighting with. So that's kind of my little toy that I'm looking forward to getting my hands on and playing with.
00:42:04
Speaker
I'm on the website right now. It looks really, very interesting. Looks like it definitely would have use for field archaeologists, anybody doing survey work. Yeah, it looks pretty neat. Anything that doesn't rely on cell service that you can use to connect is pretty good. I used to do that with, but not very many people have one of these. I had a Garmin Rhino.
00:42:22
Speaker
And the Rhino, you could send texts through basically the radio signal to other Rhinos, which was pretty neat. But no one ever had a Rhino, so I barely ever used it. And the mic broke and I didn't replace it. Are you supposed to buy those in pairs? I know, right? Well, the Rhino itself is like $500, or at least it used to be. So they were not super cheap, the Rhino, because it's GPS and radio all in one. And yeah, it was something.
00:42:51
Speaker
All right. Well, thanks for that. The link for that is in the show notes. So check that out. Paul, what do you have?
00:42:56
Speaker
Okay, so this one has absolutely no real use for archaeologists as far as I could tell, other than it's a cool little app that I saw here at the school I work. And it just highlights to me some of the neat things that you can do with your phones. It's called CNeuroScience and it is by, let me get the full name of the lab, it is by the Genetic Science Learning Center from the University of Utah. It's a free app, it's for iOS, and basically what it is is a little simulator of different kinds of vision.
00:43:26
Speaker
with little explanations of why certain things would be the way that they are. So very simple interface, it has a pass through from the camera and two little icons on the left, one for, it's a human eye and one looks kind of like a cat eye or something. And a little scroll and you can go through different kinds of color blindness and nearsightedness and macular degeneration and get an explanation of
00:43:53
Speaker
why these things work on a physiological level. But then the real fun thing is when you click on the animal eye, you can see things more or less as other kinds of animals would see it. So it starts out with some very, very simple eye, a sea squirt, and then works up to things that have better vision through dogs and spiders and eagles and so on. And it's really cool. It's just, you know, when we first started with the tablets, there was
00:44:23
Speaker
there was a lot of push towards educational apps. And so I think we all saw, and there must have been a dozen different ones, the frog dissection apps and a lot of different anatomy apps. And this is just another one of the same lines of how one would build a program. Again, it's for the purposes of an adult who doesn't need to use it for teaching something, I think it's not going to last very long on
00:44:48
Speaker
on anybody's phone, but it's worth just taking a look at because it's well put together and the scientific content is, you know, it's grade school appropriate, but it's well done. It's really nice and clean. So this is just, you know, one of those things you download kind of on a whim and play with for a while because it's fun.
00:45:07
Speaker
All right, I'm going to record, Paul, you saying this isn't really applicable to archaeology and then just insert that for you so you don't have to say it every time you do now. Yeah, I know. I start everything with that. And then we usually figure out a way that it might actually be applicable for archaeology. But this one, you know, most of the apps is here at the school that I work in. Yeah, we use archaeology in the curriculum a lot, but we don't actually go out and do real archaeology. So I'll bring in, you know, learning programs to when I have to.
00:45:37
Speaker
in the editing process, copy and paste you saying that into mine,
00:45:45
Speaker
It has an app. Okay. I know. No, it is an app.
Safety Reporting Tools
00:45:53
Speaker
It is an app in the sense that it's mostly a web app and it's called done safe and D O N E S A F E dot com. And I'm mentioning this because weirdly I work at a coworking facility. That's not the weird part, but I work at a coworking facility and I have an office and I moved.
00:46:08
Speaker
I moved offices upstairs where I'm at here just a few months ago just because I needed some different style of space and there's two desks in that office and the guy that started a couple months ago that's now my office mate
00:46:22
Speaker
He works for this company called Dunsafe, and I heard him talking. He does a lot of sales calls, that's what he does in sales. And I heard him talking and I was like, man, what he's talking about sounds a lot like Wild Note. And of course, I work for Wild Note as well. And it turns out Dunsafe is kind of the Wild Note, but specifically for safety.
00:46:41
Speaker
And I'm mentioning this because there's a lot of companies that might be listening to this or people that work for bigger companies that have very specific safety reporting requirements. And I'm thinking about companies that work on mines, things like that. So they have the web application, which is really, from what I've seen so far, it's really more for the administration of a safety program. You can have
00:47:01
Speaker
training modules on here. He showed me the whole back end on this thing, you can have training modules. So if you've got like an onboarding training that a lot of companies do, you can set somebody up with an account, they come right in, they go right through the training modules, they can watch videos, they can do, you know, they can be graded, scored, whatever needs to happen.
00:47:19
Speaker
You could do all that right there, and then it marks that you've actually watched these things. You can also report incidents, report near misses, report whatever you have that needs to be reported within here, and then it goes to the person or people that you designate, and then they can go through an incident investigation checklist all through DoneSafe. And all of this is fully customizable as well. So when I was thinking app, I always think mobile apps, but of course, web apps are apps.
00:47:44
Speaker
They do have a mobile app for at least for iOS. I was actually trying to look around on the website to see if they have an Android app as well. And I imagine they would. But I honestly don't know. I have to have somebody with Android download because I didn't think to ask before I came downstairs to record the podcast.
00:47:58
Speaker
But the web app, the mobile app is just for incident reporting, which is pretty great. So if you got people out in the field and something happens, they can instantly, you know, once they stop the bleeding, they can open up their app and then go in and then immediately report this incident. And it goes to the safety manager or whoever's in charge of the system. And then they can start taking action on the incident because I know like, man, we're working in mines out here in Nevada, the whole M-Shaw thing. I mean, when something happens, M-Shaw needs to know within
00:48:28
Speaker
a really, really, really short period of time. If somebody dies, they have to be notified within 24 hours, I believe, if not quicker. So having these sorts of reporting systems is really great. And there's a lot you can do with it. I mean, they've got form builders in there that will allow you to do a lot of different things similar to WildNote. But I would say if you're going to choose a platform, you got to think, what am I doing the most of? So if you don't have a robust safety system, then use WildNote and create safety forms within there. But if you do,
00:48:56
Speaker
have a high focus on safety, but a little use for other forms and use something like done safe for your safety reporting. And then you can create other forms that are kind of in the system that you can use for different things. So yeah, it's really interesting how he was placed in an office with me and we do virtually the same thing, but for different industries.
00:49:13
Speaker
So very, very similar deals. So anyway, uh, I just wanted to mention that because I think a lot of companies that are listening right now or people working for bigger companies could definitely use something like this, even from a, just a training standpoint, not even really the safety aspect, but just from onboarding training and ongoing training, the ability to view and track all that within that platform is, is, uh, it's pretty great. So, but have anything else? No, I'm tapped out. I, uh, I don't even have any archeology apps to talk about.
00:49:45
Speaker
Nice. Nice. All right. Well, Matt, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess until next time.
00:49:57
Speaker
We'll be going now on the next recording I just want to let people know in case you want to go check this out again And I'll leave a link for this in the show notes as well We are interviewing Simon Young from Lithodomos VR and some of you that are long-term members might remember Lithodomos from cheese a couple years ago Well, they got a ton of funding like right after we did that interview with them They got like something like over a million dollars in funding. They're an Australian based company
00:50:23
Speaker
And I've been able to play with some of their virtual reality stuff. They basically go do highly detailed scans and computer renderings of ancient cities that are famous, like one of the ones they started with was Pompeii.
00:50:35
Speaker
You download that app from the store, you can pop it into Google Cardboard or something like that, and then virtually tour these areas with sounds and all kinds of other stuff included, and it's really neat. So they contacted me a few weeks ago and said, hey, we've got some new things coming down the line. Maybe it's time to do another interview. So that's what our next interview is going to be. So if you want to check that out in advance of the interview, head over to Lithodomo's VR, and I'll put the link in the show notes for this episode, archaeotech.com forward slash 107 on the ArcPodNet website.
00:51:05
Speaker
Look forward to that, and again, thank you Matt, thank you Paul, and we'll see you guys all next week. Take care. Thank you.
00:51:18
Speaker
Thanks for listening to the Archaeotech Podcast. Links to items mentioned on the show are in the show notes at www.archpodnet.com slash archaeotech. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com and paulatlugol.com. Support the show by becoming a member at archpodnet.com slash members. The music is a song called Off Road and is licensed free from Apple. Thanks for listening.
00:51:43
Speaker
This show is produced and recorded by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.