Mergin Maps: QGIS in pocket

Lutra Consulting

About this app

Simplify your field survey by capturing field data on your mobile or tablet. Create mobile forms with the fields you require and invite your survey teams to complete them on their phones or tablets. Captured data, along with their location can be surveyed offline, then synced back to the QGIS in seconds.

Enter your data once, with ease, in the field. Mergin Maps aims to remove the pain of transcribing paper field notes, manually georeferencing photos and transcribing GPS coordinates.

The data you capture in the field survey is shown on a map and can be exported to a wide variety of formats including CSV, Microsoft Excel, ESRI Shapefile, Mapinfo, GeoPackage, PostGIS, AutoCAD DXF, KML and many more.

Mergin Maps Input is an extension of the free and open source GIS software QGIS. It allows you to open, interrogate and edit your QGIS projects on your mobile. Map layers look the same as in QGIS desktop and you can sync your data back and forward with QGIS desktop using the Mergin Maps QGIS plugin.

Mergin Maps supports offline field data capture and can be configured to use either offline or web-based background maps and contextual layers.

Perks of the Mergin Maps sync system:
- No need for cables to get your data on/off your device
- Share projects with others for collaborative working
- Safely work together on the same datasets, even offline
- Updates from different surveyors are intelligently merged
- Push data back from the field in real time
- Version history and cloud-based backup
- Fine-grained access control
- Sync with your PostGIS datasets

Supported field types for forms are:
- Text (single or multi-line)
- Numeric (plain, with +/- buttons or with slider)
- Date / time (with calendar picker)
- Photo
- Checkbox (yes/no values)
- Drop-down with predefined values
- Drop-down with values from another table

Forms can even be configured to perform data validation using custom rules.

Works with device internal GPS receiver and third-party Bluetooth GPS receivers.

Ratings and reviews

Just what I was looking for. Easy to record data in the field, uploaded once able to and then downloaded to my own files, opened the QGIS file that was created and all the data was there. It would have been useful to have created new layers out in the field, but I believe there is a way to set this up from QGIS originally to allow this. I used the text fields for all data as the number field is integers only and the check box is true/false only... But text works well anyway. Really impressed.

Great field survey app linked to a Cloud through Mergin. As a peatland restoration programme we conduct field surveys in the uplands of Autumn and Winter in the UK. We are quite frequently exposed to extreme weather conditions and gloves are required. With a stylus, I note that you can double tap the screen to zoom in, however this often highlights a layer and is sometimes intermittent. It would be fantastic if you could add in a zoom in/out function on the display. Thanks, Ollie

Great ap very easy to use and install and compatible with many GIS systems. I am using it to survey and map extent of invasive species across a catchment. Often chatting to landowners at the same time and have been able to map and chat simultaneously. I contacted Lutra regarding licencing and had a positive response within the hour. Excellent customer service. One star lost due to occasional stability issue, always resolved by restarting the ap without any data loss.

What's new

Changes:
- show list of available workspaces after accepting invitation
- hide the new badge for streaming mode
- hide information dialogue about migration to workspaces

Fixes
- fix photo orientation in the preview panel
- fix search in project list
- fix duplicated buttons in the project toolbar and more menu
- fix feature search
- do not show auth panel when app starts
- fix endless spinner in the project panel