Surveylab supporting response to disaster in Samoa

The thoughts and prayers of staff at Surveylab are with those in Philippines, Vietnam, Samoa, and Indonesia struggling with the aftermath of hurricanes, earthquakes and the tsunami. Surveylab supplied two ikeGPS units and these have been deployed to Samoa with a multinational disaster assessment and coordination agency for use in the response to the disaster.

At Surveylab, we'll always help out by providing assistance where we can, and we welcome any inquiries from emergency and disaster response organisation for our services. ikeGPS has already seen action in other parts of the world as part of a rapid response to earthquakes, floods and hurricanes and we continue to work closely with those organisations providing immediate disaster management.

Image sourced from twitpic.

Leon interviewed by GIS Cafe at ESRI UC

Leon spoke to Sanjay Gangal of GIS Cafe during the ESRI US last week. Our new handheld GPS ike1000 series was launched at the user conference and Leon explains what's so great about it and why so many people are interested in it! You can find the video interview here.

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Juniper demo's ikeGPS technology at ESRI Conference

John Florio, Director of Marketing over at Juniper Systems, shows off the brand new Archer Longbow at ESRI's International User Conference. The Longbow uses Surveylab's patented ikeGPS technology - see the ProfSurvMag video here (or watch it below...)

ike1000 breaks cover at ESRI User Conference

Yes, the newest thing from Surveylab, our ike1000 series emerged to great interest at the ESRI International User Conference today, in San Diego.

You can find Leon and Jeff at the show for the next two days - be sure to track them down at stand 1501, Hall B2, for your own 1-on-1 demonstration of the new product. Be quick!!

RoboGEO makes quick work of JPEG processing!

I haven't used too many image processing Applications, but RoboGEO has got to be one of the most powerful and flexible out there. It provides the ability to batch process a number of images in one simply step; you can add stamps (logos, EXIF data, text); you can export to shapefile or Google Earth etc! It's highly featured (and incredibly cost effective to boot)!

Using our new ikeOS 3.1 with RoboGEO is the perfect combination! Rapid data capture and powerful image processing. Shown above is a real-world example of what's possible with their clever JPEG stamp feature!

Head to their website here for a free trial and more!

ikeGPS User Group on LinkedIn

A new place for users and enthusiasts of ikeGPS to review/ discuss/ contribute. We've kicked off the "ikeGPS User Group" on the popular LinkedIn website. If you want to join us, go to the Groups page and search on ikeGPS. I look forward to seeing you there!!

ikeGPS rises to top of PRWeb.com

Overwhelming response to Surveylab's ike305 GPS giveaway underscores the value of a multi-function solution in the current economy. By combining a compass, laser rangefinder, GPS & camera in one compact handheld device, the ikeGPS allows governments, utilities & companies to provide the same level of service with fewer resources.

See Full article on PRWeb HERE

See the complete range of ikeGPS products at http://www.ikegps.com/

Tracking Pumas across Patagonia

Melissa Grigione of the Bordercats Working Groups writes in to the competition :-

Being able to capture Puma sightings from a distance, but get the exact location plus a picture is a life saver for our research assistant, Karen Evelyn Barrera Gomez (pictured) !"

Which we can well understand!

ikeGPS being used by Papua New Guinea Power

We received this testamonial from PNG Power Ltd, Dominic Afuyave writes :-

I work for an Electric Utility company and first we bought ike 304 to capture power poles for our GIS project. I found that you can capture more poles quicker from a single clear spot than moving from pole to pole. We then decided to buy ike 305 and we have managed to capture poles that are under canopy of trees, inside properties surrounded by two meter fence guarded by fierce dogs. The management was so impressed because we could capture power poles faster with attributes too. Created a customs form and uploaded onto ike 305 using GBM Mobile software really helped us to capture and document individual poles in detail. Not only poles but pole mounted transformers, switches, and ground installed transformers too as well as meter locations. I could also attach photos taken by ike 305 which impresses the mangement team. I recommend ike GPS to my collegues and friends.

Surveylab helps out JRC with Abruzzo earthquake aftermath in Italy

Surveylab engineers have been working with engineers of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC), including the CRITECH research project, to prepare a survey team for work in the devastating earthquake's aftermath. Jeremy Gold, Surveylab's head of engineering, has been working with engineers at Ispra, JRC's Italian facility, to create an ikeGPS solution for the field technicians. We're expecting the field survey team will make use of ikeGPS as an integral part of their evaluation and investigation tasks.

ikeGPS Give away Launched

We have launched the ikeGPS giveaway contest, and have been overwhelmed at the quantities of entries so far. There is an internal bet in Surveylab to see how many turn up by May 29th...

Automatic Magnetic Declination in ike

The digital compass in ike uses magnetoresistive sensors to measure the heading to magnetic north, but to calculate the correct position of a remote target, the heading to true north is required. To calculate true north, the magnetic declination must be known. To make matters worse, magnetic declination varies not only with your location on the earth, but also drifts over time. However, all of these difficulties are easily overcome using ike's automatic magnetic declination feature.

The National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) provides a mathematical model of the magnetic field worldwide, that can be used to calculate the magnetic declination for a specific location at a specific time http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/WMM/DoDWMM.shtml.

ike uses this mathematical model, along with the current time and your GPS position to update the magnetic declination each time a new GPS reading is received, so you're always up to date.

I recall once many years ago I had to demonstrate an ike unit in Taiwan before we had automatic magnetic declination implemented. I had forgotten to check the magnetic declination before I left home, and didn't have Internet access. I had to find two find two landmarks about 100m apart, measure their GPS positions using ike, work out the true bearing between the landmarks using ArcPad, take bearings between the landmarks using the compass in ike, and finally calculate the difference between the true bearing as indicated in ArcPad, and my measured value to compute the magnetic declination... It did the trick, but boy what a hassle!

These days I just leave the "Automatic Magnetic Declination" option enabled...

ikeOS 3.1 beta !

We've been working hard here in the Surveylab engineering department to get ikeOS 3.1 up and running, and we've finally got a beta release available, and customers having a try of the new software.

The really exciting new aspect to ikeOS 3.1 is the use of EXIF information to embed all of the geospatial information associated with an iked photograph directly into the JPEG image file.

The new "ikeCapture" application can be invoked from any application that can generate an XML configuration file, and send Windows messages. The calling application creates the config file, sends the "GO" Windows Message to ikeCapture, and then waits for the requested image to be created. Then the application can extract any of the measured information (ike's location, target location, bearing, PDOP etc) from the EXIF metadata. Alternatively the image can simply be saved, and the metadata extracted later. This concept makes integrating ike into new GIS applications very straight forward.

We've set up an ArcPad extension to help with this, so it's very easy to work with ikeCapture from ArcPad with minimal modifications to existing shapefiles. The ArcPad toolbar has been extensively reworked, and now supports creation of Points, Polygons, and Polylines using any combination of remote and local positions (e.g. stand in one corner of a field, use local position for first vertex, and remote position for the remaining 3 vertices). Existing features can also be edited after the initial capture (great for capturing three sides of a building initially, and then walking around to the back of the building later to capture the final vertex).

For those who don't use ArcPad, we've also created the "ikeIt" application, which launches ikeCapture to create geotagged JPEGs, and appends the geospatial information to a CSV file (same output format at the Standard DCA included in ikeOS 2.6).

If you would like to be involved in the beta program, or need more information, please contact support@ikegps.com.

Surveylab at ESRI Federal User Conference

Surveylab regulary exhibits at the ESRI Federal User Conference in Washington DC. Its great to catch up with our existing customers, and meet a new ones. Pictued, is Ed Sanford (VP US Sales) and Jeff Stewart (Federal Account Manager)

Seen & heard in the Italian GIS media

Sistemi Avanzati and ikeGPS mentioned here:

ikeGPS per la Protezione Civile
GEOmedia - Roma,RM,Italy
IkeGPS è un dispositivo, unico nel suo genere, che consente agli operatori di protezione civile che devono intervenire in aree pericolose o difficilmente ...

New Case Study Released

The latest case study on ikeGPS is now available!

Written by us with a little help from Communica Marketing, and some photos from the nice guys at Department of Families and Communities, the case study describes how this innovative government organisation uses ikeGPS to integrate all the field functions into one simple and self-contained process. Simply put: they love ikeGPS! Read more here.

How Rugged is an ike?

Sometimes the engineers need a bit of light relief, so they thought is would be fun to throw an ikeGPS down the stairs, - and it kept on working... pity that it hit the camera man..