Handheld Wildlife Recording With AditTrec

Suitable Hardware

PDA Hardware is evolving quickly, and you can get quite a lot for your money compared to only a couple of years ago. Pocket PCs with integrated GPS units are now under £200.

If you are in any doubt about the suitability of your existing hardware, or want advice about buying new hardware, please contact us. Contact

Many individuals and organisations are involved in the recording and mapping of wildlife and its associated environment. Some recorders do this as a hobby or as part of a general interest in wildlife, but much recording is done as part of environmental assessment work undertaken by statutory bodies, who have responsibility for conservation or planning. Most recording in the field is still done with notebook and pencil, with rough estimates made for position (grid reference) and altitude. After the survey work, the sightings often remain in notebooks, or with luck are then entered into a database, with associated transcription errors and omissions. We have been aware of the need for a handheld recording device for some years, and recent improvements in GPS (Global Positioning System) both in coverage (accuracy of position) and value for money, and the availability of more sophisticated handheld computers suggest that the time is ripe for the development of a fully integrated system.

”To allow species and feature recording and mapping that is conducted in the field, to be seamlessly integrated with recording, analysing and reporting tools in the office.”

Project Objectives

1. The system must be truly handheld to meet user requirements. We can see from the developments of mobile phones, handheld GPS units, and even calculators, that ergonomics are an important factor. Its no use having a system that is physically clumsy.
2. It must be suitable for use in the field with consideration given to weather, battery life, operating conditions like tree cover, etc.
3. It must be simple to use and fully automated in terms of integration with the host system. The individual involved in recording should want to use the system.
4. The system should be available to customers with varying budgets.
5. The system should support as far as possible a wide range of hardware devices.

Building a dataset on the PC

Select species, recorders, sites, and their associated maps - or you can choose specific maps to use on the handheld computer (maybe at a different scale or designed for a particular screen resolution), and then build the data set. For Pocket PC devices, the data can be downloaded automatically via ActiveSync. For Palm OS devices, the dataset is loaded onto the handheld computer during the next 'HotSync®' operation .

Recording on the Handheld

Uploading data to the PC