Home / GPS Camera / Features

GPS photo capture

What it does: Opens the rear camera with a live preview and pinch-to-zoom, and takes a photo on tap at the highest resolution the camera offers the app on your phone.

Why it matters: It's the same one-tap capture your team already expects from a phone camera — nothing new to learn.

How it's used: Point, tap the shutter. A short flash confirms the shot, a "Saving photo…" note shows while it's stamped, and the last photo appears as a thumbnail next to the shutter. The original is saved first, so a photo is never lost to a slow GPS fix.

Project, Site & Activity organization

What it does: Every photo is filed under a Project you create, a Site within that project, and a construction Activity (from a list of common activities like Excavation, Shuttering, or RCC Slab Casting, plus your own custom ones).

Why it matters: Photos organize themselves as you shoot, instead of needing to be sorted into folders afterward.

How it's used: Pick or create a Project and Site once; switch Activity in one tap from the camera screen as work changes through the day. Optional Building and Floor notes can be added per selection.

Location: latitude, longitude & accuracy

What it does: While the camera screen is open, the app follows the phone's GPS so a recent fix is already in hand when you press the shutter. The photo shows both coordinates and the fix's accuracy radius (e.g. ±6 m).

Why it matters: A coordinate without an accuracy figure can be misleading. Showing both keeps the record honest about how precise the reading actually was.

Honest by design: A good fix is never silently swapped for a worse one. If the fix used is more than 15 seconds old, the stamp says so (e.g. "GPS fix 40 s before capture"); a location from a mock-location app is labelled "MOCK LOCATION"; and if no usable fix exists, the photo says "GPS unavailable" instead of guessing.

Battery: Location is used only while the camera screen is in front of you. It stops when you open the gallery or settings, switch apps or lock the phone — never in the background.

Limitations: Accuracy depends on device hardware, satellite visibility, and surroundings — it can range from a few metres in open ground to considerably worse indoors or between tall buildings.

Address lookup (reverse geocoding)

What it does: Turns the GPS coordinate into a readable short address ("City, State") and a fuller street-level address.

Why it matters: Coordinates alone aren't always meaningful to someone reading a report; a place name usually is.

How it's used: Looked up in the background when a network connection is available, and reused while you stay within about 150 m — the shutter never waits for it. If no address is available yet, it is simply left off; the app does not show a stale or guessed address.

Compass heading

What it does: Reads the phone's compass sensor and shows the direction the camera was pointed as both a degree value and a 16-point cardinal label (e.g. 134° SE).

Why it matters: Knowing which way a photo was taken helps reconstruct a site layout later, especially across many similar-looking photos.

Limitations: Phone compasses can drift and occasionally need calibrating (a figure-eight motion); the app flags when a reading looks unreliable rather than showing a false heading.

Source-labelled elevation

What it does: Shows an elevation value that is always paired with where it came from — GPS-estimated, or a Benchmark Reduced Level your team entered for the project.

Why it matters: Phone GPS elevation is meaningfully less reliable than horizontal position. Labelling the source stops a rough estimate from being mistaken for a surveyed figure.

How it's used: GPS elevation is attached automatically; a project Benchmark (a fixed reference code and Reduced Level, e.g. "BM-01" at 100.000 m) can be set once per project and is kept entirely separate from the GPS reading on every photo.

Photo stamping

What it does: Composites a data card onto a copy of the photo — project, site, activity, date/time, coordinates, accuracy, elevation, heading, and captured-by details — plus a small "Makkaddam GPS Camera" watermark. Templates and field toggles let you choose what appears.

Why it matters: The photo carries its own record wherever it's shared, without depending on separate metadata surviving the trip.

How it's used: Happens automatically right after capture, rendered on the device — no server round-trip. The stamped copy is saved as a lossless PNG at the photo's full size.

Original photo, always preserved

What it does: Keeps the unedited camera frame as a separate file from the stamped copy — the original is never overwritten, not even by annotations.

Why it matters: You always have an unmodified source photo, even after applying an overlay or drawing on the photo.

How it's used: In the photo viewer, open the ⋮ menu and choose "Show original (unedited)".

Project gallery & photo viewer

What it does: A three-column grid of every photo in the project, newest first, with a filter for each Site. Tap a photo to open it full screen, swipe left or right to move through the photos (the screen shows "3 / 25"), and pinch to zoom. A Details screen shows the complete record for each photo, including its file names.

Why it matters: Small thumbnails keep the gallery fast even with hundreds of photos, and you can find a specific photo and see everything captured about it, not just what fits on the image.

Select many photos at once

What it does: Long-press any photo to start selecting, tap others to add them, or use "Select all" for the current project or site. The bar shows how many are selected.

How it's used: With photos selected you can share them together, combine them into one PDF, move, rename, save to the phone Gallery, or delete them. The Android back button clears the selection first.

One PDF from many photos

What it does: Builds a single PDF with every selected photo, one per A4 page, in the order shown in the gallery. Each page carries the Photo ID, date and time, project, site and activity, and any remark.

Why it matters: Send a whole day's progress as one file instead of dozens of separate images.

How it's used: Select photos and tap the PDF button. A progress bar shows each page being added (with Cancel); the finished PDF is saved on the phone and the share sheet opens so you can send it. The photos themselves are not changed.

Mark up photos

What it does: Draw on a stamped photo with arrows, boxes, circles, lines, free drawing, highlights, text and numbered tags, in seven colours or a custom colour, and add a remark that appears as a banner at the top of the photo.

How it's used: Open a photo and tap the pen icon. Select a mark to move it, resize it, change its colour or delete it; undo and redo any step, and preview before saving. Marks stay editable later.

What's kept: The marked-up picture is saved as a separate file. The original photo and the GPS-stamped copy are never modified.

Clear file names, rename & move

What it does: New photos get readable file names in the form PROJECT_SITE_YYMMDD_PHOTOID, e.g. HOTEL_HILTON_KALANWAD_ROAD_260924_MM26-KAL-000002.jpg. You can rename photos (the Photo ID is always kept at the end) or move them to another project or site.

Safe by design: A photo never silently overwrites another one, and if a rename or move can't finish, nothing is left half-changed. Deleting asks for confirmation with the exact number of photos.

Copies in your phone Gallery

What it does: Each new GPS-stamped photo is also copied to your phone's normal Gallery, in the album Makkaddam GPS Camera (Pictures/Makkaddam GPS Camera). Older or marked-up photos can be copied with "Save to phone gallery".

Why it matters: Photos in the phone Gallery stay on the phone even if the app is uninstalled.

Your choice: This is on by default and can be turned off under ⋮ → Account & Storage. Photos in the phone Gallery can be seen by your gallery app — and by Google Photos backup, if you use it.

Native sharing

What it does: Sends one or several photos — or a finished PDF — through your phone's own share sheet, to WhatsApp, email, Drive, or anything else installed, with an auto-built caption (project, activity, Photo ID).

Why it matters: No separate integration to set up for each app your team already uses to send photos. Nothing is shared unless you tap Share.

Backup of all photos

What it does: Under ⋮ → Account & Storage, "Back up all photos (ZIP)" packs every original, stamped and marked-up photo plus their details into one ZIP file and opens the share sheet, so you can keep it in Files, Drive or on a computer.

Why it matters: Uninstalling the app or clearing its data deletes the app's own copies of your photos. A backup keeps them safe.

Offline-first core workflow

What it does: Capture, GPS, compass, stamping, the gallery, marking up photos and PDF creation all work with zero network connectivity.

Why it matters: Construction sites frequently have poor or no signal — the core documentation workflow should not depend on it.

Limitations: Only address lookup is network-dependent, and it is simply left off when offline.

Unique Photo ID

What it does: Generates a sequential ID for every capture, e.g. MM26-RJK-000125 — year, a three-letter site code, and a running sequence number per site. Two sites that share the same three letters can never produce the same ID.

Why it matters: Gives every photo a short, referenceable identifier for reports and conversations, without needing the full file name or timestamp.