How to Record Your Route with QField Tracking

Introduction

During a field survey, you often want to check later where you walked and which areas you have already surveyed. When you survey a wide area or work with several people, a record of your route helps you organize and verify the work. QField has a tracking feature that records your device's location at regular intervals and saves your route automatically.

This article covers the basics of the tracking feature in QField and what to check when you set it up.

Add features with tracking

QField's tracking feature supports three geometry types: points, lines, and polygons. You can enable it from the options of a vector layer.

The steps below use a QField project that contains all three geometry types. The article first explains how to record a line, the basic case, and then covers what differs for polygons and points.

Add features to a line layer

First, record a line with the tracking feature. In the layers panel, double-tap or touch and hold the layer you want to record in.

When the layer options menu appears, tap the Setup tracking button.

The tracking settings screen appears. The options are explained later. For now, keep the default settings and tap Start tracking.

Before tracking starts, the attribute form appears. The attribute values you enter here apply to the feature that tracking records. Enter attribute values as needed, then tap the check mark button at the top left to start tracking.

Once tracking starts, a pedestrian icon appears on the layer.

Move around to confirm that tracking is working correctly.

To stop tracking, tap the pedestrian icon in the layers panel, then tap the Stop button that appears in the center of the screen.

You can also stop tracking by double-tapping or touching and holding the layer to open the layer options, then tapping the Stop tracking button.

After you stop tracking, you can confirm that the recorded feature is saved in the layer.

Add features to a polygon layer

Tracking normally records lines, but it also works with other geometry types such as polygons. Polygons are useful for recording the boundaries of plots or forests and for calculating areas.

On a polygon layer, follow the same steps as above. QField records the outline of the polygon and closes it automatically when tracking ends.

Add features to a point layer

You can use the tracking feature on point layers too. In this case, QField records points automatically at the time or distance interval you specify.

This is useful for recording a point every 100 meters or saving a route by recording the position every 30 seconds. You can use it for sampling surveys, for example.

The time and distance interval settings appear just before tracking starts. For example, to record a point every 100 meters, turn on Distance requirement and enter 100 in Minimum distance [m].

When tracking starts, QField adds points at regular intervals along your route.

When you end tracking, the guide line disappears, and you can confirm that QField recorded a point every 100 meters.

Tracking options

The tracking feature has several options for data entry and for automatic tracking.

Tracking input settings

As described above, the input options screen appears before you start tracking. These options let you manage the accuracy of the data. The main options are:

1. Time requirement: Records a point, or a vertex of a line or polygon, at each time interval you set. A very short interval increases the amount of data and drains the battery faster.
2. Distance requirement: Records a point, or a vertex of a line or polygon, at each distance interval you set. Setting the interval to the accuracy you need keeps data size and power consumption down.
3. Erroneous distance safeguard: Prevents QField from recording vertices or points caused by GPS errors that exceed a set threshold. This helps in places with many buildings or weak signals, where the location jumps unnaturally.

Automatic tracking options

If you configure it in QGIS beforehand, QField can start tracking automatically when you open the project. You then no longer need to repeat the steps above each time, which saves time during the field survey.

In QGIS, open the properties of the target layer, go to the QField tab, and check Tracking Session. You can set the tracking options described earlier here.

When you open the project in QField, the attribute form for the target layer appears automatically, and you can start tracking right away.

If you do not need to enter attribute values in QField, you can also hide the attribute form. In QGIS, open the properties of the target layer and, at the top right of the Attributes Form tab, select Hide Form on Add Feature. With this setting, tracking starts automatically without any action from the field surveyor.

Conclusion

This article introduced how to use QField's tracking feature to record your route and surveyed areas during a field survey. Start by trying the basics on a line layer, then use points and polygons as needed. You can record your field survey more accurately and efficiently.

Data used

• GSI Tiles (Geospatial Information Authority of Japan)