Temperature up/down button for streaming point data

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10-23-2023 11:49 AM
AdamGaudet
New Contributor III

We are capturing road temperature data for a county government road patrol crew. Basically, crews are required to enter road temperature information as temperatures change over the course of a work day.

Our current system is set up as a QuickCapture button that links to a Survey123 form in which road temperature is entered with a slider. This works somewhat OK, but we think it is a few too many pushes on the screen than desired (1. Push to enter the survey > 2. Slide the temperature slider to the desired temperature > 3. Push the checkmark to submit the survey > 4. Push "Send now" to submit the survey), as well as having to deal with a somewhat small slider button. Crews will also be entering this data in the winter with more often than not gloves on over their fingers, so the fewer touches of the screen, the better.

What was suggested by the crew and supervisor is having a way to toggle temperatures up/down such as with a set of arrows in which the input temperature would be visible in between (or next to) the arrows. Something like this would work excellent for our purposes in that temperatures doesn't fluctuate wildly over the course of a work day: a road temperatures will stay 2 degrees for an hour or so, then drops a degree in the next hour, and then drops a degree again over the next hour to now be at freezing level in which operations will shift strategies to deal with the frozen road segments.

Does anyone have any idea how this might be done? Toggling temperature by up/down buttons? I thought that there may be some fancy black magic that could be done under the hood in the JSON file, though I haven't explored this too deeply yet. Any little bit of help or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

TL;DR: Looking for a way to build up/down arrows to toggle streaming point data (temperature) in QuickCapture.

10 Replies
JeffSilberberg
Occasional Contributor III

Adam, you should probably be looking for a sensor that the crew can easily deploy and then either have that report automatically through a device like a cradlePoint or be accessible via Bluetooth to feed into your existing data capture tool.   I worked with the https://www.vaisala.com/en/products/roads/traffic-management ICE system previously and they might have something that would help, but there are many temperature sensors on the market that you might be able to integrate with.   A quick Google found another possible option here - https://roadwatch.com/product/roadwatch-sensor-kit/?attribute_pa_temperature-unit=fahrenheit

 

 

 

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AdamGaudet
New Contributor III

Thanks for this. The crews do have a sensor on their trucks that pick up this information with a display within the truck that shows the temperature. The issue is getting this information into the survey without having to manually enter it (or, if having to manually enter it, doing so with the up/down arrows). I can explore the suggestions provided and see if that may be an alternate solution to this problem. (Ideally, we would want this information as point data in ArcGIS Online somewhere where it can be queried and used to produce reports, such as grabbing all road temperature data from December 30 between midnight and 6am.)

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JeffSilberberg
Occasional Contributor III

You should be able to get the sensor data into Esri via a feed using geoEvent or Velocity depending on whether you are Enterprise or OnLine.    Probably a link from the existing Sensor(s) to a LTE device in the vehicle if one exists (CradlePoint)  or an IoT Device Location Device with an input if one does not already exist.    Something along the lines of one of these  -- https://lonestartracking.com/gps-tracking-products/

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AdamGaudet
New Contributor III

Thanks again. I will look into this.

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JohnathanHasthorpe
Esri Regular Contributor

Hi Adam - This is not currently supported in QuickCapture. What is the temperature range and precision that you are working with? I'll see if I can come up with something.

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AdamGaudet
New Contributor III

We're in Canada so looking at a range from -40 to +40 C. It's important to be accurate in capturing this data in that 0 degrees and 1 degrees for roads mean the point of frozen/not frozen. I have it right now as an attribute list where drivers would scroll (wheel) up and down the list for the temperature, though the range is quite large (80 choices), the radio buttons are small and there is no indication of what temperature was selected after the selection. An option to have two buttons (up/down) to toggle a temperature display button would be amazing for our particular situation. Do you think there is some black magic that can be done in the JSON to mimic this?

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JeffSilberberg
Occasional Contributor III

Adam, 

     I would think that automating the reporting through some form of radio link, Cell or Land Mobile, would make the whole process more accurate and usable.  

    What specific Sensor do you have in service? 

     Are you Enterprise or AGOL based? 

     Do you already track your vehicles with a Cellular LTE router?

  

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AdamGaudet
New Contributor III

We are currently capturing data with Geotab and it works great but we need a system in place to report out weather and road conditions for all miles driven at any time, so we are trying to get something built with QuickCapture.

Vehicles are equipped with sensors that provide both outisde and road temperatures on a screen within the vehicle, though I am unsure if these sensors can "speak" with other data capturing devices we are currently using (ie - Esri products).

We are AGOL based.

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JeffSilberberg
Occasional Contributor III

Adam, 

      My Google foo found two sensors along the lines of what you describe, but would really need to know what you have to offer an interface opinion.  Highly believe that your data would be much more usable if you can take the human data entry step out of the process.  But It also sounds like what you have should work. 

https://www.lufft.com/products/road-runway-sensors-292/marwis-umb-mobile-advanced-road-weather-infor...

https://msfoster.com/products/winter-products/roadwatch-temperature-measuring-system/roadwatch-road-...

 

 

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