# Capturing Your First Field Data

In this tutorial you will learn how to:

  • See your location shown on background maps on your mobile device
  • Capture field data with their locations, photos and notes
  • Query and edit field data

# Install Mergin Maps mobile app

Download Mergin Maps mobile app to your Android device, iPhone or iPad. You can find it in the app store of your platform:

Download on the App Store Get it on Google Play Available on Windows

# Creating a project in Mergin Maps mobile app

Data are stored within projects. We'll now create a new project to save our data into.

Using Mergin Maps mobile app is the quickest and easiest way of creating new projects. Alternative methods offering much greater flexibility are introduced in later tutorials.

  1. Open Mergin Maps mobile app on your mobile device

  2. Go to the Home tab of the Projects screen and press Create project
    Mergin Maps mobile app Home tab Create project

  3. Enter the name of your project
    Entering project's name

  4. Press Create project. You might need to minimise the on-screen keyboard to see this button.
    Create project button

Your new project should now be visible on the Home tab of the Projects screen. It can be opened by tapping the project's name.
Created project listed in the home tab

# Capturing field data

In the last step we created a project which will be used for our field survey. Let's now practise capturing some field data.

Note that the background map used in this project requires network connectivity. To display it outside, you need to be connected to the internet.

  1. Open the project by tapping its row in the Projects screen. You should see your location shown over the background map:
    Current location shown on OpenStreetMap

  2. Pinch the map to zoom in to your current position. If needed, recentre the map using the GPS button in the bottom navigation panel.

  3. Tap the Record button
    Mergin Maps mobile app Record button

  4. Press Add to capture a point
    Capturing point in Mergin Maps mobile app

    TIP

    You can override the position of the point being captured at this stage by pinching and dragging the background map.

  5. Enter the date of your survey and notes about the feature. Tap Take a photo to attach a photo using your camera
    Attributes form (left) and taking photo (right)

  6. Press Save when you're happy with the details you've entered:
    Save feature with filled attributes form

    The feature you just captured should now be visible on the map:
    Surveyed feature visible on the map

  7. Tap on the feature to see its details. If you want to change these details, such as rewrite the notes or take a new photo, tap the Edit button:
    Feature summary info with edit button

# Summary

In this tutorial you learnt how to start capturing field data with very little effort, entirely from within Mergin Maps mobile app.

You may be wondering how you can survey line and polygon features, use other background maps or define the forms. These things are all possible with Mergin Maps!