A custom toolbar for working with ArcPad Tracklogs

Recently I went hiking and wanted an effortless way to:

• record each days walk individually
• review each walk on a single map, showing the start, end and direction of the walk
• query the length of each walk
• take some photos along the way
• make sure the battery lasted all day
• not risk losing data because I collected to many features or overworked the hardware

To do this I chose to:

• use the out-of-the-box tracklog feature in ArcPad to collect the data (tracklog set to collect at 5 sec intervals)
• use the out-of-the-box photo layer to snap photos along the way
• create this custom toolbar applet which contains three tools: archive tracklog, load from archive, and clone points to line features.

The result was a very easy to use ArcPad project for collecting the data (the GPS device dangled from my hand most of the walk, I only interacted with it when I wanted to take a photo). At the end of each walk I archived and clone my tracklogs which meant they were safe from being deleted and were easy to review and show my friends.

So how fancy is this toolbar? Not fancy at all. Here is a breif explanation of each of the tools

1.The Archive tool 

• Turns of the GPS if it is on
• Moves contents of the Tracklog shapefile to another shapefile that has the name Tracklog_hhmmss_dd_mm_yyyy
• If the GPS was previously on, turn the GPS and Tracklog on.
• This tool is an adaption of the How to Archive GPS tracklog sample already on the ArcPad Gallery

2. The Load tool

• Launches the add layer dialog for user to add the desired tracklog archive layer
• Makes this layer editable

3.The Clone tool

• Checks that an editable point layer and editable line layer exists in the current map
• Clones the points contained in the tracklog archive and create a single line feature from these points into the editable line layer
• For more information on cloning points to line features check out Gareths recent blog and sample.