
ODKCollect: Android app for forms, designed for use in challenging environments - huangyz0918
https://github.com/opendatakit/collect
======
huangyz0918
I'm one of a developer for Open Data Kit. And This is the first open source
community that I have contributed to, I have to say, ODK is an awesome place
to get start with open source developments and all the ODKers are so warm
hearted and cool! ODK can teach many things you don't know and all you need to
do is to claim an issue and send a PR!

~~~
yanokwa
And it's been great to have you as a developer on ODK Collect. Your RTL
contributions to the UI have been a huge win for users!

------
jniles
Open Data Kit is an awesome tool! Our NGO has used it for public health
surveys and other data collection applications in the DR Congo where internet
coverage is spotty, literacy is low, and transportation is a logistical
nightmare. It does exactly what it says on the tin and enables our community
health workers to gather data in challenging places with just a phone and
extra battery pack. As a bonus, the development community is great as well!

Really glad to see this project getting some attention!

~~~
yanokwa
ODK founder here! This is exactly the use case we want to serve and I'm glad
to hear it's enabling your work.

------
not_the_nsa
The ODK ecosystem (build, aggregate, collect) has been in use for our Western
Australian flatback turtle conservation program since 2016, now being used by
Dept Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions staff, community programs and
Volunteers across the Kimberley and Pilbara regions. We've captured about 12k
turtle tracks/nests in ca 2k hours of logged survey work. Data is ingested
into a custom data warehouse, comes out via a RESTful API, is analysed in
RMarkdown workbooks with common steps documented in a custom R package.

Widgets for notoriously error-prone data like location and date/time as well
as replacing free text with dropdown options where possible made the
difference for us.

ODK works really well for us, and the fantastic developer community has been
greatly supportive addressing feature requests and bugs (quickest fix: Clint
Tseng fixed an ODK Build bug reported mid-workshop within 2h). I'd like to see
the industry heavyweights like ESRI being that responsive :-)

Cheers to the ODK community!

~~~
yanokwa
ODK founder here. Really glad to hear the tools have worked well for you, and
yeah, Clint is awesome!

------
k5m595
Yeah,I'm new to open source and really appreciate your post! I'm a bit
confused because we can use... you know, many kinds of online tools to build
forms and we don't even need a native application! So what's the special
feature for this App? I'm very curious about this :)

~~~
huangyz0918
We want to collect data in challenging environments around the world, maybe
some places without network connections. You can download ODK Collect and have
a try.

~~~
k5m595
Okey, thanks.

------
jfarlow
This is a great project for a specific kind of problem - and one that's not
the common target for silicon valley. It's hard to get good and useful data in
places where connectivity is low. And the (coding and social) logistics of
getting that data from ubiquitous non-smart-phones pose interesting challenges
that ODK helps address.

It's also run by great people.

------
dscpls
Also look at kobo toolbox and kobo collect. They're based off the odk and
forhub codebases I think.

Kobotoolbox provides a useful interface for previewing your data and building
forms. Also an api for pulling collected data into other platforms

~~~
pldpld
Kobo is based off of onadata,
[https://github.com/onaio/onadata](https://github.com/onaio/onadata) (which is
actively maintained) which was in turn the continuation of formhub (which is
no longer maintained).

See this readme
[https://github.com/kobotoolbox/kobocat](https://github.com/kobotoolbox/kobocat)
for reference

