Bird Watcher App

Andrew Schaefer
CS 595 - Mobile App Development
Dr. Tamer Nadeem

Description

The Bird Watcher app is designed to allow both casual and seasoned bird watchers to take advantage of their smart phone to capture audio and video in the field, while automatically tracking GPS location for each sighting.

Motivation

The Virginia Avian Records Committee (VARCOM) The Virginia Avian Records Committee (VARCOM) was formed in 1989 to increase knowledge of Virginia birds, to evaluate and to archive records of vagrants and rare nesting species in the state, and to encourage high standards of observation, recording, and reporting in the birding community. Since then, VARCOM has evaluated more than 650 records of rare species, unseasonal occurrences, and unusual breeding attempts.

VARCOM members report rare bird sighthing and this is currently a manual process, involving handwritten or typed notes of the sighting and related media. There is no current electronic submission format format for rare bird sightings and members must manage their own media.

Given the need for audio/video of these sighting as well as a desire for fine-grained location tracking, the use of smartphones is an obvious choice to manage this. The built-in components for audio/video recording and GPS can seamlessly handle these tasks and allow the members to focus on wacthing and observing birds in the wild.

The goal of this project is to provide an app that will capture and manage media, allow users to create electronic records and automatically submit them to VARCOM. There is a current project by CS 410 Blue group to create and implement a webserver to support this electronic record and submission facility.

Usage Case Scenario

The typical usage of this app will be that a bird watcher takes their phone into the field with them to observe birds. Once a bird is spotted, the app will be launched and the user will be able to caputure video and audio or take still pictures. The current GPS location will be logged for future use. After the outing the user will return home and go through the collected media and organize and delete as needed. Once ready the user can create a new bird sighting record, supply the required information, attached the collected media and automatically submit to the VARCOM database.

Demo Shots

This is the main activity where the user can select the type of media to capture. Or go in to organize captured media, or view a list of records.
This is the records activity, two tabs appear on containing in-progress records, and the other completed (submitted) records. Selecting a record from the list brings up that records activity.
A sample of the record activity, showing the submit tab and submission button. Other tabs include record data, and attachments, where media is selected to be attached to the submission.

Pending Tasks

Currently the record class is only a stub class and has not been fully implemented. I have been in contact with the CS 410 Blue Group regarding the specifications for the record that will be required to comply with server submissions. I have yet to receive this information, but will implement as soon as it is provided.

Additionally, the submission functionality is not implmented. As the server does not currently exist there is nowhere to submit the record to. Again, once ready this will be implemented.

Future Work

Once possible area for future work, is to build custom Media components for capturing audio/video and provide a single interface combining the three seperate components.

Further future work includes coupling the app with the server to fetch query data, and provide the website functionality through the app. Since this website is not functioning yet, this will not be possible until that project is completed.

Finally, it would be worthwhile attempting to make the app extensible and provide compatibilty for other states use.