Reading up more on ODK, I discovered an excellent thread on how to get
ODK and external devices (in that thread's case, Bluetooth-enabled
sensors) to "talk to one another". From the perspective of a
practitioner, the prospect of connecting external measurement devices
to ODK's core capture software could open up exciting new vistas for
future survey work--for example, directly collecting plot pH or
nutrient readings for agricultural surveys (e.g., World Bank's LSMS-
ISA), microbial counts of wells or air pollution readings for water
and sanitation surveys (e.g., World Bank's sanitation surveys), iron
deficiency or malaria tests for health surveys (e.g., USAID's general
DHS surveys and specialized ones on malaria).
As always, a question for each branch of the ODK community. For
practitioners, who has done this, how, and using which devices?
(Although the larger issue interests me, I'd be keen to hear about any
work in agriculture.)
For software developers, how easy or hard is the generic problem of
capturing readings from a peripheral measurement device? Also, how
far into the future do you see this potential device integration being
realized? (I hear strains of Conan's "In the Year 2000" theme in my
head.)
if whatever device you have has an android driver (usb or bluetooth),
it should be pretty easy to integrate. that is in the same way we fire
off an intent to capture a barcode scan, you can fire off an intent to
capture a soil sample. if android drivers don't exist doesn't then you
have to reverse engineer protocols and write your own drivers (read:
not fun).
timelines really depend on the devices. my guess is that bluetooth
connections will happen before usb. you can see the start of some of
that work at http://www.amarino-toolkit.net/index.php. if others are
interested in connecting things like fingerprint scanners and facial
recognition tech to odk, we are just now exploring the space. ping me
if you want to help...
···
On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 07:58, Arthur wrote:
> Dear ODKers,
>
> Reading up more on ODK, I discovered an excellent thread on how to get
> ODK and external devices (in that thread's case, Bluetooth-enabled
> sensors) to "talk to one another". From the perspective of a
> practitioner, the prospect of connecting external measurement devices
> to ODK's core capture software could open up exciting new vistas for
> future survey work--for example, directly collecting plot pH or
> nutrient readings for agricultural surveys (e.g., World Bank's LSMS-
> ISA), microbial counts of wells or air pollution readings for water
> and sanitation surveys (e.g., World Bank's sanitation surveys), iron
> deficiency or malaria tests for health surveys (e.g., USAID's general
> DHS surveys and specialized ones on malaria).
>
> As always, a question for each branch of the ODK community. For
> practitioners, who has done this, how, and using which devices?
> (Although the larger issue interests me, I'd be keen to hear about any
> work in agriculture.)
>
> For software developers, how easy or hard is the generic problem of
> capturing readings from a peripheral measurement device? Also, how
> far into the future do you see this potential device integration being
> realized? (I hear strains of Conan's "In the Year 2000" theme in my
> head.)
>
> Best,
> Arthur
>
> --
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>
Can I ask if there is a more up to date link to information on connecting an external device via USB or bluetooth to ODK collect as the two links above no longer work as they did 10 years ago?
The idea would be to use an external device to take a measurement which would be passed to a decimal type question or calculation in ODK collect. It would be a one direction only data flow with no need for ODK to communicate back to the external device.