Introduction

Purpose: The Field Book app integrates with the camera on your Android device, affording the capacity to capture and organize images for each experimental unit in your trial. Here we review the protocol for setting up the “Photo” trait in the Field Book app, capturing images, and exporting and accessing the images in BreedBase.

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How to Capture Photos with Field Book

Setup

Step 1

In BreedBase, create a trait as part of your ontology that will be associated with the photos.

Include a brief description.

Example: For example, you may create a trait called “Plot Photo” that will be an image of each plot used for qualitative review at a later point.

Requirement: To comply with BrAPI standards of importing the trait into Field Book, the scale class of this trait in the ontology in BreedBase should initially be “text”.

Step 2

In Field Book, import the photo trait from BreedBase via BrAPI, just as you would for any other trait.

You should see that the photo trait initially is imported as a “Text” trait.

Trait Import

Complete instructions for How to Import Traits are available at Using Field Book with BreedBase Instances / Step 3. Importing Field Trials and Traits from BreedBase to Field Book.

Step 3

In the “Traits” list, tap on the ⋮ icon to the right of the photo trait and select “Edit”.

Step 4

A pop up window will appear. Beneath the word “Format”, you should see the word “Text”.

Tap the gray upside-down triangle to make a drop-down menu appear.

Select “Photo”.

Step 5

Select “Save”. Now, you should see a camera icon appear next to the photo trait in the trait list.

Image capture

Step 6

Return to the “Collect” page. The photo trait should now be visible between the green arrows. You should also now see a camera icon.

Press the camera icon in Field Book to access the camera on your Android device.

Press the camera icon in your camera app to capture an image.

Step 7

Once an image has been captured, the option to retake, keep, or discard the image will be provided at the bottom of the screen.

Multiple images can be captured and kept for each experimental unit and will be displayed in the bottom third of the screen for the photo trait.

Export to BreedBase via BrAPI

Step 8

When you are finished capturing images, you can export the images back to BreedBase via BrAPI, just as you would for exporting other traits.

On the BrAPI export page in Field Book, you should see the total number of new images collected under “New Images”.

After export, you should see the number of images now appear as “Synced Images”.

Trait Export

The complete instruction set for How to Export Traits is available at Using Field Book with BreedBase Instances / Step 5. Exporting Data from Field Book to BreedBase.

Step 9

In BreedBase, all photos for each field trial will be saved and visible under the heading “Field Layout Tools and Phenotype Heatmap” on the trial details page of BreedBase. Any plot that has photos associated with it will be designated with a “photo” icon in the upper left corner of the plot.

Step 10

By selecting the plot in this map, an option will appear to “View Plot Images”.

Step 11

You should see all photos here that were taken for each plot.

Photo Files during export to BreedBase

Each photo file will be labeled with the 5-digit plot id number, photo number for that instance of export, and the date and time stamp.

Field Book and BreedBase allows users to take and export multiple photos across different time points. Additional instances of exporting the photo trait for the same plot will result in new photos being added to the folder of existing photos in BreedBase for that trial unit.

Export Locally

Step 12

To export photos locally, go to the Export tab from the main menu, then select “Local”.

Select the “Bundle media data with export file” option (Fig. 12a).

Any trait such “Plot Photo” that has images will be exported to a folder. A .csv file containing the numeric and text-based data for each plot will be exported also (Fig. 12b).

Photo Files during local export

Just as with BrAPI export to BreedBase, multiple photos can be captured and exported for each plot at one time using local export.

Photos are labeled by the 5-digit unique plot ID number, the photo number for that plot, and a date and time stamp.

Step 13

Select “Save”. Options for exporting the data via available apps on the Android device will appear.

Select the preferred app. Options to export the data to may include Google Drive, BOX, OneDrive, or an email service that is linked to the tablet.

Your images will be saved to two locations:

In the app you selected
On the Android device under “Files” > “Images” > “photos”.

Requirements for local export via available apps

To export the data using available apps on the Android device (Google Drive, BOX, OneDrive, email service, or other), an internet connection or cell service must be available.

The app must also be downloaded on the Android device.

Capturing Photos with Field Book