Every feature, and how to use it

1 · Getting started

GroundPlot is a web app that installs like a native one — no app store, no account.

• Android: open groundplot.ca/app in Chrome → tap Install app (or menu ⋮ → Add to home screen).
• iPhone / iPad: open it in Safari → Share → Add to Home Screen.
• Allow camera and location when asked — they're what stamp your stations. Nothing is uploaded; everything stays on your device.

2 · Capturing photos

Tap the big orange Capture station button. Each shot becomes a numbered station pinned at your GPS position, with an arrow showing the compass direction you faced.

The camera screen

• Top chips: GPS accuracy, live coordinates (lat/long or UTM — follows your coordinate setting), and compass heading. Green means good.
• ⟳ calibrate: compass reading wrong (common near the truck)? Tap it. Wave the phone in a figure-8, or point the camera at something whose bearing you know — a road, a fence line, due north — and enter that bearing. Every reading this session gets corrected.
• Lens buttons: zoom presets (0.5× / 1× / 2× / 4×) appear when your camera supports them; phones that expose each rear lens separately get Ultra / Wide / Tele buttons. The active lens is highlighted.
• Pinch to zoom on the viewfinder — a live ×-readout shows the level, and the nearest preset lights up when you let go.
• Portrait or landscape: hold the phone either way — the preview and photos match your orientation, and rotating mid-session switches automatically.
• Mic button (appears after your first shot): tap and talk to dictate a description onto the photo you just took — no typing with gloves on.
• ✕ (top-right) closes the camera.

3 · Importing existing photos

Drop photos into the drop zone (or tap it — on phones it opens the camera roll). GroundPlot reads GPS position, compass bearing, and time from the EXIF data.

• Phone location tags off? Photos arrive unlocated — tap Place in the log and tap the map where each was taken.
• No bearing in the file? Type one, or dictate it. Arrows update instantly.
• HEIC files are accepted (logged and exported), but browsers can't preview them — shoot JPEG if you can.

4 · The map & stations

• Basemaps: Esri satellite (default) or OpenStreetMap streets, with a place-label overlay you can toggle.
• Map height (Map menu): switch to a taller map for portrait-shaped sites — printed figures keep their paper size.
• No photos needed: you can draw on the map, print the figure, and save the project with markup alone — handy for quick planning sketches over imagery.
• Facing rays (Map menu, on by default): a thin arrow from every station along its camera bearing, always the same length on screen — so even pins crowded together read clearly. They print on the figure.
• Crowded pins shrink: when separate stations sit close on screen, their pins automatically drop to 70% size so the facing rays stay visible; zoom in and they grow back.
• Hover a station (desktop) for a quick photo peek — it disappears when your mouse moves on, so it never blocks the map.
• Click / tap a station to pin its card: edit the description right there, tap the photo to open it full size, or hit Retake. Edits sync to the log when the card closes.
• Pins are locked so panning can't scatter them. To reposition one: tap it → Move → drag — it locks again after that one drag. Groups work the same via Move group on the ring's card. An Undo move button appears for ten seconds.
• Direction at a glance: popups show a small compass arrow rotated to the camera bearing — on the station card, the hover peek, and beside every station in a group card.
• Blue-dot button: shows your live position on the map, so you can stand where a photo should go before dragging it there.
• Coordinates: one tap switches the whole app — log, popups, camera, exports, photo sheets — between lat/long and UTM.
• Measure: tap out a line or an area — each segment labels its length right on the line, and closed shapes show the area (m² / ha) at their centre.

5 · Same-spot groups

Photos taken within a few metres of each other merge into one white ring with orange numbers around it — one clean circle instead of a pile of pins.

• Grouping distance: the map button cycles Off / 3 m / 5 m / 10 m (default 5).
• Drag the ring → the whole group moves together.
• Drag a number out → that station splits from the group and stays out, however short the drag. Drag it back beside a station to regroup it.
• Tap the ring → a card lists every member with its photo, plus per-station Photo, Split, and Retake buttons.

6 · Repeat photos (retake mode)

For year-over-year monitoring. Open last year's project, tap a station, hit Retake:

1. The original photo ghosts over your viewfinder at 40% — line up the horizon and features. The ghost chip cycles 40% → 15% → off.
2. The aim chip guides you back: "26 m NW to spot · face 135° SE" — it turns green when you're within 5 m of where the original was taken.
3. Shoot. The new photo links itself to the original and inherits its description.

In the Pro report, a repeat photo's appendix sheet prints both images side by side, labelled ORIGINAL and REPEAT with their dates.

7 · Walked path

While the camera or the blue location dot is on, your route records automatically — thinned to ~3 m steps, with poor GPS fixes rejected.

• Once a path exists, a path button appears under the location button. Tap to show/hide the dashed line.
• Hiding it offers a Delete path button.
• The path prints on the figure, saves with the project, and rides along in KML and GeoJSON exports — proof of what ground you covered.

8 · The photo log

• Descriptions: type, or tap the row's mic and dictate.
• Custom columns: add your own (sample ID, depth, condition…) — they appear in the log, CSV, and photo sheets.
• Search / filter for big sites; the count shows how many match.
• Reorder stations by dragging the number, and renumber when order matters.
• Report checkboxes: untick photos you don't want in the PDF appendix or Word export — the header shows "7/23 in report". The log and data exports always include everything.

9 · Annotating photos

Open any photo full-size and mark it up: arrows, lines, circles and ellipses, freehand, and text. Colours are pickable per shape.

• The original photo is never touched — annotations live on a separate layer, and project files keep the untouched original alongside the annotated version.
• Annotated photos print with their markup; the figure can include both a clean and an annotated version.

10 · Site diagrams

Switch to the site diagram to draw over the imagery or your site plan:

• Tools: pan, text, line, polygon, circle/ellipse, freehand sketch — with line styles, dash patterns, and resizable everything.
• Labels: placing or re-tapping a label opens the editor — multi-line text (Enter = new line), a size slider, and Narrow / Medium / Wide / No-wrap box widths so notes grow down the page instead of across it. The drag handle still resizes in place.
• Dimension labels: lines can label their real length automatically — and polygons always label their area (m² / ha), no toggle needed.
• Setback tool: tap a point, type a radius (say 100), get a true-to-scale dashed circle labelled "100 m setback". Drag its edge handle to adjust — the label follows.
• Fill styles: areas can be hatched, cross-hatched, or stippled instead of solid — readable over imagery and on black-and-white prints. Pick a style with the Area tool or on a selected polygon.
• Symbol library: reclamation, Phase 1 and Phase 2 ESA icon sets — wetlands, weeds, well centres, boreholes, staining, rutting, bare ground, approaches and more. Tap an icon to recolour it.
• Legend: builds itself from the symbols you actually used, and flows to another page when it gets long.
• Undo / redo / duplicate while drawing; the text tool returns to pan after each placement so it never ambushes you.
• Delete key: with a shape selected, press Delete (or Backspace) to remove it — works in the photo annotator too.

11 · Site-plan basemaps

Working indoors, or on a lease with a proper survey plan? Load a plan image, calibrate its scale by tapping two points a known distance apart, and place stations directly on the plan. Measuring, grouping, and diagrams all work in plan units.

12 · Offline use

• Tap Offline maps while you still have signal, and the satellite tiles for your current view download to the device.
• Everything else — capture, GPS, compass, log, diagrams, saving, printing — already works offline. GPS needs no data connection.
• Voice dictation is the one exception: most phones need a connection for speech recognition.

13 · Saving & reopening projects

• Autosave: your work saves continuously on-device — and flushes instantly the moment the app is backgrounded, so even a swipe-away or crash costs nothing. Reopen and your session is simply there, with a "Start fresh" button if you didn't want it back. Only Clear all truly wipes.
• Device projects: keep several sites on the phone and switch between them.
• Project files: save a project as a single file (photos, originals, annotations, diagram, walked path, settings) — archive it, move it to another device, or reopen it next year for retakes.
• Share project: hands the project file straight to your phone's share menu — email, WhatsApp, Teams — instead of digging through Downloads. (Desktop browsers download it instead.)
• Merge project file: two techs walk opposite halves of a site, each saves a project, one taps Merge — photos combine and renumber, duplicate shots are skipped, custom columns match up by name, and both walked routes appear as separate lines (no false connector). Their diagram markup comes along too.

14 · Reports & printing PRO

Free prints carry a small watermark. Pro removes it and unlocks the client-ready package:

• Cover page with your logo, company, project details, and report text. (Setting your logo & company is free — Logo / branding in the Export menu shows a live preview of your letterhead on the title block. Free prints keep the watermark; Pro prints clean.)
• Figures: the photo-location figure, plus the annotated site diagram as its own figure when you've drawn one.
• Photo log table with your custom columns.
• Photo appendix sheets: one page per photo — image, caption, UTM location, facing, date, camera, custom fields, verification stamp. Repeat photos print as ORIGINAL / REPEAT pairs.
• Paper sizes: Letter portrait/landscape, 11×17, A3.
• Report style: pick an accent colour (orange, navy, forest, brick, ink) and heading font (modern sans / classic serif / plain) in Report setup — the cover page and photo sheets match your company documents. Styles save into templates and project files.
• Print to PDF from the browser dialog — the file name is set for you, and the map re-centres itself on your stations first (your view is restored afterwards).
• Templates: in Report setup, save the whole configuration — client, cover text, stamps, paper size, custom columns, drawn-by — under a name like "Acme — standard", then apply it to any future project in one tap.
• Not licensed yet? The Preview Pro PDF button prints the complete Pro package — cover page, clean figures, photo sheets — stamped PRO PREVIEW, so you can see exactly what $35 buys.

15 · Exports PRO

• Word (.docx): report text and photo appendix with embedded images — drops straight into your report template.
• CSV: the full log, custom columns included.
• KML / GeoJSON: stations with attributes, plus the walked path.
• KMZ + photos: one file the client opens in Google Earth — stations as oriented-arrow placemarks with the photo, description and bearing in the popup, walked path included. The photos travel inside the file.
• Shapefile: points with attribute table, ready for GIS.
• Photo zip: original photos (and annotated copies) with clean filenames.

16 · Activating Pro

1. Buy a license at groundplot.gumroad.com/l/pro ($35 CAD, one-time, per person).
2. Your key arrives instantly by email.
3. In the app: Pro → paste the key → Activate. Done — the license lives on your device.
4. Second device? On the licensed one, open the Pro panel → Show transfer code → scan the QR with your phone (or open the link there) and Pro activates itself. A Copy key button is there too. Same key, per person.

17 · Troubleshooting

• Imported photos have no location — your camera app's location tag was off. Turn it on for next time; meanwhile use Place to position stations by hand.
• Compass is off — metal (truck, drill rig) throws magnetometers. Use ⟳ calibrate in the camera.
• App looks out of date — close it fully and reopen twice; updates install on the second load. Stubborn case: browser settings → site data for groundplot.ca → clear, then revisit.
• Dictation does nothing — it needs Chrome (Android) or Safari (iOS), and usually a data connection.
• HEIC photo shows no preview — browsers can't display HEIC; the data still exports fine. Set your camera to JPEG for previews.

Stuck or found a bug? Project menu → Report a bug opens an email with your app version and device already filled in — just answer the three questions. (Or email us / file it on GitHub.)

18 · Changelog

v1.3.9 — July 2026

Station popup no longer repeats the bearing — it shows once as the facing chip, with just the coordinates and time below.

v1.3.8 — July 2026

Group popup fix: buttons no longer overlapped the station text — each photo now has its own button row, and facing shows as a plain N/E/S/W chip.

v1.3.7 — July 2026

Cleaner facing display in station and group popups — a single tidy compass chip (arrow + "270° W") instead of a redundant, truncating second line.

v1.3.6 — July 2026

Fixed: the first Print / Save as PDF could open before the photo plates finished loading (blank photos until a second try). Printing now waits for every image to decode, capped at three seconds.

v1.3.5 — July 2026

KMZ export (Pro): Google Earth file with photos embedded in the placemark popups. The figure legend is now dynamic — facing-ray, walked-path, and setback entries appear only when they're on the map.

v1.3.4 — July 2026

Site diagram: Setback tool (typed radius, true scale, self-labelling) · polygons always show their area · hatch / cross / stipple fills · bigger drag handles and a wide tap zone on thin lines for touch · facing rays now scale down with crowded pins.

v1.3.3 — July 2026

Crowding-aware pins: close-together stations shrink automatically so their facing rays stay readable, and restore at higher zoom.

v1.3.2 — July 2026

Pins are locked against accidental drags — tap a station → Move (or Move group) to arm exactly one drag. Compass-arrow direction glyphs in the station card, hover peek, and group card rows.

v1.3.1 — July 2026

Fixed: Report setup, My projects, and Offline maps dialogs rendered at the bottom of the page instead of on top of it. New: report styling — accent colour + heading font for the cover and photo sheets, saved with templates and projects.

v1.3 — July 2026

Branding window: everyone can put their logo and company on the title block with a live preview — free prints carry the watermark ("Pro removes this watermark"), Pro prints clean.

v1.2.9 — July 2026

Big imports feel instant: photo thumbnails generate three at a time using fast off-thread decoding, and the log never decodes full-resolution originals just to draw a 64px preview.

v1.2.8 — July 2026

Report a bug (Project menu): one tap opens a pre-filled email — app version, device, and the three questions — with a copy-to-clipboard fallback. Bug report form added on GitHub.

v1.2.7 — July 2026

Facing rays: constant-length bearing arrows from every station (and every member of a ring), so close-together pins stay readable. Toggle in the Map menu; prints on the figure.

v1.2.6 — July 2026

Diagram label editor: multi-line text, size slider, and per-label box width (Narrow/Medium/Wide/No-wrap).

v1.2.5 — July 2026

Pro price drops to $35 CAD (pay more if you like — the floor is the price). License transfer: QR / tap-link hand-off between your devices, copy-key button, and keys in transfer links are scrubbed from the address bar on arrival. GroundPlot is now open source (AGPL-3.0) — source link in the footer.

v1.2.4 — July 2026

Session protection: reopening the app auto-restores your unsaved work (no button to miss), the last edit is flushed to storage the instant the app is backgrounded, and an empty state can never overwrite a real session.

v1.2.3 — July 2026

Camera: portrait-orientation capture (rotating re-acquires the right aspect), pinch-to-zoom with live readout, presets re-highlight after a pinch.

v1.2.2 — July 2026

Tester feedback: markup-only projects now save, print, share, and auto-restore (photos no longer required) · diagram text labels wrap into a block instead of one long line · Map height toggle for portrait-shaped sites · one-tap install restored when the browser's prompt arrives late.

v1.2.1 — July 2026

Phone fixes: station cards now sit above the map controls, no more sideways page scroll, and the Install button always appears in the header (with manual instructions on browsers that hide the native prompt).

v1.2 — July 2026

Teamwork: merge a teammate's project file into yours (photos renumber, routes stay separate lines, duplicates skipped) · Share project via the phone's share menu · Report templates (Pro) — save a client's whole report setup and reuse it per job.

v1.1.2 — July 2026

PDF auto-centres the figure on your stations (and walked path) before printing, then restores your view. Free users get a Preview Pro PDF button — the full Pro report stamped as a preview.

v1.1.1 — July 2026

Hover a station for a self-dismissing photo peek; click pins an editing card with the description field, click-to-zoom photo, and Photo / Retake buttons. Measure labels now sit on the line (per-segment lengths + centred area). Delete key removes the selected shape in the diagram and photo annotator.

v1.1 — July 2026

Repeat-photo retake mode (ghost viewfinder, aim guide, ORIGINAL/REPEAT report pairs) · walked-path breadcrumb with KML/GeoJSON export · in-camera voice dictation · lens switcher (Ultra/Wide/Tele + zoom presets) · camera screen fixes for phones · groups: drag whole ring, split sticks, tap for member card · per-photo report selection · full-page photo appendix sheets.

v1.0 — June 2026

First release: capture with GPS + compass, station map, grouping, photo log, annotation, site diagrams with symbol libraries and auto legend, site-plan basemaps, offline maps, projects and autosave, Pro reports (cover page, stamps, paper sizes), DOCX / CSV / KML / GeoJSON / Shapefile export, UTM support.