How it works

Five steps, from opening the app to sharing a documented photo.

Create or select a project

On first launch — or any time no valid selection exists — you're guided through picking a Project. Create a new one or continue an existing one.

Select site & activity

Choose or create a Site within that project, then pick the construction Activity currently underway (Excavation, Shuttering, Plastering, and so on — or a custom one you add). Building and Floor notes are optional.

Open the camera

The preview appears immediately. While the camera screen is open, GPS, compass and address lookup run in the background, so a fresh fix is ready when you shoot — they never delay the shutter, and location stops when you leave the camera.

Capture the photo

Tap the shutter. The original is saved first; location, heading, elevation and your profile details are then attached and composited onto a stamped copy.

Save, organize & share

Both versions land in that project's gallery automatically, and a copy of the stamped photo goes to your phone Gallery. From the gallery, select one or many photos to share, combine into one PDF, mark up, rename or move — then send through your phone's own share sheet whenever you're ready.

Original vs. stamped photo

Every capture produces two files: the original, exactly as the camera sensor recorded it, and the stamped copy, with the data card and watermark composited on top. The original is never modified or overwritten. If you mark up a photo, that becomes a third, separate file — the original and the stamped copy stay unchanged. In the photo viewer, the ⋮ menu's "Show original (unedited)" switches between them.

GPS & sensor accuracy — honestly

Phone GPS is genuinely useful for site documentation, but it is not survey equipment. A few things worth knowing:

Horizontal accuracy varies with device hardware, satellite visibility, weather, and how open the sky is above you — readings in a few metres are typical in open ground; expect worse near tall buildings, indoors, or in dense urban areas.
The app always shows the accuracy figure alongside the coordinate (e.g. ±6 m), rather than a bare number implying more precision than the fix actually achieved.
An older fix is labelled, not hidden. If the GPS fix used for a photo is more than 15 seconds old, the stamp says how old it was; a position from a mock-location app is marked "MOCK LOCATION"; and with no usable fix the photo says "GPS unavailable".
Elevation from phone GPS is less reliable than horizontal position — often by a wider margin. It is always labelled "GPS-derived (Estimated)" and should not be treated as a surveyed value.
A project Benchmark is a separate, user-entered figure — if your team has a genuine surveyed Reduced Level for a site, enter it once in the Project's Benchmark setting; it is kept clearly distinct from the phone's own GPS elevation on every photo.
The compass can drift and occasionally needs recalibrating (a figure-eight motion); the app indicates when a heading reading looks unreliable.

Makkaddam GPS Camera does not claim centimeter or survey-grade accuracy. Where a measurement matters for an engineering decision, verify it independently.