Offline Pole Data Collection

I am excited to announce that Katapult Pro will soon be available offline for data collection in areas with poor or no cell service! Traditionally, our aerial data collection software requires a cellular connection to add design features and the "time buckets" that associate photos to the correct locations. Soon, designed jobs can be stored offline and accessed even in areas with poor cell reception. For years, our team has gotten around poor service by loading the job in areas with service and taking extra photos to aid design back in the office. Because "time buckets" can't be placed offline, we would manually associate the photos that we took. Manual photo association is less than ideal, especially for bigger jobs, but we never had a project that merited the development costs of an offline solution. With a new project in the northeast, we needed to document hundreds of thousands of poles, often in areas without service. Our Software Development Team began development a few months ago, and soon, users will be able to beta test Offline Mode before its official release.

Here's How It Works:

First, design your job on the desktop using a KMZ, aerial imagery, and Google Streetview. Once it is designed, you can open katapultpro.com/next/mobile on your mobile device.

Open the lefthand menu, then press, "Manage Offline Jobs."

Select the jobs you would like to store offline on the device using the job chooser. The interface will let you know it's working while you wait.

Once the jobs have finished loading, you can turn on airplane mode or enter an area with a poor connection. The interface will let you know when you leave service areas. New aerial imagery will not be loaded, but any design you add can be moved back in the office or snapped into place using a high-end GPS.

Once you have finished collecting your data and adding any additional elements to the design, it's time to come back online. When your device has a connection, you will see the design start to update.

Once the design has updated to the cloud, you can hop over to the desktop version to see the time buckets you added while offline. If multiple teams collected the same poles, both time buckets will be added upon sync, which means all photos will still end up on the right poles.

Interested in beta testing Offline Mode? Shoot me an email at aschmehl@katapultengineering.com!