Pre-trip preparation. The Kit – Software and hardware

You may assume that the equipment for collecting worms is straightforward, a garden fork, a bag and a pen to label your specimens. Well if this was your assumption you would be wrong…….you need much more. The simplest item, such as the fork, is replaced by a specialized `hamock`, a three progged hoe which would look just as much at home with a Roman gladiator as a 2001st century worm collector. The simplest processes needs to be thought through to make the field sampling process run as smoothly as possible. We even pre-printed bar codes on sticky labels (thanks to Dan – its amazing what a tech guru is asked to do in the pursuit of science) so even the process of sample labelling could be controlled.

Saying things are restricted to simply worm hunting would be miss leading, we also took a bunch of specialized equipment including an XRF for elemental analysis of soils in the field and an oxygen micro-sensor to investigate how the worms delt with the low oxygen and high carbon dioxide levels in some areas of the volcanic caldereas. We are also reliant on a local team from the University of the Azores who will be supplying a raft of geochemistry equipment to help us characterize the impact of the local volcanic activity at our sampling sites.

However, one of the most important things for me is ensuring we collected the meta data in an efficient and consistent manner. We aimed to split into at least two sampling teams and I wanted to ensure that the observations they would make were consistent and that we didn’t spend weeks after the trip collating the

information from different lab books and photos from personal So as normal I turned to technology, with the my partners in this obsession, Kevin and Dan to advise. We had the challenge of selection both hardware and software to enable this activity. There was the immediate Mac / Android debate which plagues most mobile device discussion…..we decided that the software had to be cross platform but the hardware should be decided on utility and ease if use. So Luis and I had the tough task of touring the tech shops trialling tablets. The issues were immediately transparent, the Ipads were more sensitive but the Andoids .had mre utility – SD slots even USB connectivity and office compatible software suites. We had heard rumours that the new Asus quad core running the new Android 4 operating system that changed this dynamic……and eventually we found one. Just when we had lost hope….there it was in the St Davids 2 branch of Curries, and it was worth the wait…..the responsiveness was at least as good as the ipads but it had so much more….including a keyboard with extra connectivity and extra battery life….and all for £499. However they were in extremely high demand, Insight (Cardiff Universities preferred supplier) had none in stock and Curries could only supply one begged off their Myther Branch, but we were saved by good old John Lewis who supplied and delivered one to the doorstep within 24 hours….just shows what you can achieve if your emploies own the business!!

As for the software, although we were very keen to use public domain / open source software….and found an excellent academic project in epicollect, it didn`t have the flexibility we needed. Eventually after testing a range of options we decided on `doforms’ a high flexible software that allowed forms to be designed through a browser, with no real technical skill, and the bespoke form to bre rolled out to registered mobile devices. The forms could be completed in the field banked off line and harmonised with on on line data base when on wifi later. The final data could then in extracted as pdf reports or csv files. The range of items that could be collected was amazing, from audio and video clips to auto filled date/time stamps and gps coordinates.