ArcGIS Explorer Blog : Tasks

Adding Geotagged Photos To Your Map

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 22:03:00 GMT

One of the new tasks delivered with ArcGIS Explorer 480 is the Add Photo task. The Add Photo task places photos that have been geotagged on the map. Have a look at the video, then follow along in this post.

Let's take a closer look. First, add the task from the ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center. Choose File > Resource Center and from the Content tab choose Tasks. You can also open the Resource Center by choosing Help > ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center, then click on the Content tab, then Tasks. The Add Photo task is circled below, just click to add it to Explorer.

Your photos must have been taken with a GPS enabled camera that can capture the location in the image header (written to the EXIF header). An increasing number of cameras (like the Ricoh GPS camera, some Nikon models, and others) and even camera equiped cell phones (like the Nokia N95) are GPS-enabled.

If you don't have one of these devices the location can be added to your photos afterwards using applications like Google Picasa and others.

Activate the task and click Browse to navigate to a folder containing geotagged photos. The folder's contents are displayed in the task (note that only JPEG format images are supported). Just check the photos you want to add, and click Place Photos.

A collection of results will appear, and the photos will be placed on your map.

When you click the result the photo will open in the popup window. Here we've added a couple of geotagged photos taken during a recent search and rescue operation in the San Bernardino Mountains near Redlands. These photos were taken by a member of the SAR team, and are now placed on our Explorer map.

The Add Photo task allows you to specify settings which let you control whether subfolders are searched, and how various image sizes are handled and displayed in the popup window.

New Explorer Video Posted

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:21:00 GMT

An Overview of ArcGIS Explorer video has been posted on the ESRI Web site. The video captures a demonstration presented at the ESRI Business Partner Conference earlier this year. The demonstration shows adding various Web services, local content, and KML to Explorer, and also shows using notes and various tasks, including custom geoprocessing tasks published via ArcGIS Server.

Custom Task Lifecycles

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:06:00 GMT

(by Rob Dunfey, ArcGIS Explorer SDK Development Team)

Custom tasks have many different functions, but for all their differences they have much in common. For example, all custom tasks have a task lifecycle, and as a custom task developer it is important you are aware of what this means, and what it means to your task users.

As a task moves through its lifecycle, its status changes. At any given time a custom task has a status equal to one of six values, as listed in the esriE2TaskStatus enumeration illustrated below.

The current status of a task is displayed in the ArcGIS Explorer results panel when a custom task is pending execution, executing, or has been stopped. A custom task has default messages associated with each status value in the esriE2TaskStatus enumeration.

As a custom task developer you have full control over these messages, and are encouraged to set the message associated with a task status to give appropriate user feedback. For example, the default status message when a task is executing is 'MyCustomTaskName - executing' as illustrated below:

Using TaskContext.SetStatusMessage we can change the message associated with the Task executing status:

Having set the status message with the above code, the following is displayed when the task executes:

This message provides more feedback to the user, and is another facet of creating a well-implemented task.

For a comprehensive introduction to the lifecycle of a custom task, view the ArcGIS Explorer TaskContext Lifecycle Diagram which can be found at the ESRI Developer Network (EDN) site as well as in the Explorer SDK Help when you install it.

This is just one of several design patterns you can adopt when developing custom tasks to give your task a familiar look and feel. More tips and tricks can be found in the new ArcGIS Explorer Custom Task Style Guide.

Wikipedia Task

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 17:12:00 GMT

Many of us are heading to various places, some familiar some not, for the Thanksgiving holidays. It's always nice to learn a little more about where we're headed to. The Wikipedia task found in the Explorer Community Showcase is a great way to do just that, and also another great example of a task mashup. It was written by John Grayson of ESRI's Applications Prototype Lab.

To use it, start up Explorer, go to the Community Showcase, and look for the Wikipedia task. Just click to add it to Explorer.

Using the task you can point to the map or use an existing result to seed the Wikipedia search location. Adjust the search radius and number of results to suit.

The task makes use of web services available at geonames.org to search for Wikipedia entries that have a spatial context.

In the Explorer section on ArcScripts, Keith Fraley has also posted his own Wikipedia task, along with source code that you can download. Keith provides the source code and a discussion of the task on his Location Based Soup blog. Thanks Keith!

What's the Weather? Find out with the Weather Finder

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 21:52:00 GMT

Another useful and interesting custom task (written by Michael Waltuch) is found in the Community Showcase section of the Explorer Resource Center. It's a good example of a custom task that leverages an available Web service for use within Explorer.

Weather Finder locates the nearest weather station to a specified location and reports its most recent weather observations. The task is based on a reverse geocoding web service located at GeoNames.org. To learn more about GeoNames go to their web site and see the service description.

To use the task, first go the the Community Showcase, locate the task, and click to add it to Explorer.

We can activate the task and click on our map to find the current weather, or we can use a result as the input location. Let's use Find Place to locate Manhattan.

Now that we've found Manhattan, we'll right click the result and use Send To and choose Weather Finder from the list (we also could have done this via the result popup window).

Now that Manhattan is the Weather Finder search location, click Find. The nearest weather station will be located, and we'll automatically zoom to it. In this case the nearest weather station is found in Central Park.

The popup window associated with the weather station includes a link to the National Weather Service's Telecommunication Operations Center which includes a 24 hour summary for the weather station.

You can also click the link in the popup to show the National Weather Service's Web site for this location. Here we see that currently it's a balmy 57 degrees in Central Park under overcast skies, with 6-mile visibility and calm winds.

ArcScripts for ArcGIS Explorer

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 03:22:00 GMT

If you're looking for additional tasks for Explorer, and especially if you're looking for their source code too, then don't forget to check out ArcScripts. ArcScripts has long been a valuable resource where the ESRI user community and staff share code.

Currently there are eight entries for ArcGIS Explorer tasks (complete with their source code). Just open the ArcScripts Web site, and choose ArcGIS Explorer from the software list to view the submissions. Click on any entry to view additional detailed information, or to download it. Remember, these are unsupported...

Find Nearby Task

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:24:00 GMT

Here's another addition to the Community Showcase, one of the destinations on the Explorer Resource Center. This task is from Michael Waltuch of the Explorer Development Team, who also authored the Find GNIS task that we recently blogged about.

Find Nearby locates feature types you select that are within a specified radius of a place on the map. The task queries a subset of the features found in the large, international database maintained at GeoNames.org.

Here we've used the Find Address task to locate our favorite spot: 380 New York Street, Redlands CA. By right-clicking the result we can use Send To to use it as the input location for Find Nearby.

Now with the address as our input location, we can search for hotels within 10 miles of ESRI.

And here's our results:

Debugging Custom Tasks with Visual Studio

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 19:42:00 GMT

(Submitted by Rob Dunfey, ArcGIS Explorer Dev Team)

When designing the ArcGIS Explorer API, above all we wanted to make it as simple and easy to use as possible, so people with no development experience would be able to develop their own custom tasks. If this is the first time you have developed using Visual Studio, here are some steps that will help you debug your Explorer custom task.

Build your custom task.
Open ArcGIS Explorer and add your custom task to the map.
Save your new map.
Open the Tools > Options dialog, and set the application to "Open the last saved map" when ArcGIS Explorer starts, then close ArcGIS Explorer.

Inside your custom task Visual Studio solution, open your project properties dialog. This can be done from the project menu.
On the debug tab you will notice a start action to "Start an external program." Check this radio button and use the browse button to select the path of the ArcGIS Explorer excutable (E2.exe). It will similar to:

C:\Program Files\ArcGIS Explorer\Bin\E2.exe

Now click the Run button to start debugging, or press F5. Explorer will start, and open with the last saved map that references your custom task. You can now run your task and step through it using the Visual Studio debugger.

Find GNIS Task

bszukalski — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 20:41:00 GMT

A Find GNIS task has recently been added to the Community Showcase on Explorer's Resource Center. This task was authored by Michael Waltuch of the Explorer development team, who would also like to acknowledge Dwight S. Hughes of the USGS for his invaluable help.

For those not familiar with the GNIS, the USGS Web site states:

The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), developed by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, contains information about physical and cultural geographic features in the United States and associated areas, both current and historical (not including roads and highways). The database holds the Federally recognized name of each feature and defines the location of the feature by state, county, USGS topographic map, and geographic coordinates.

The task queries the GNIS database and returns results that locate physical and cultural geographic features of all types in the United States and associated areas. To return results, select a state or territory name, a county or sub-unit name (optional), and a feature type you’re interested in. There are over 1.98 million features of 65 types in the GNIS.

The task is easy to access from the Resource Center, just open it from Explorer (click Help, then ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center...) and then click the Share tab, then scroll down the list until you see it. Just click, and it will be added to your Explorer tasks.

Here's an example query shown in the Find GNIS task:

And here's the result: