Monitoring software - suggestions / recommendations?

[StevieBee]

One of our many services is bin counting - monitoring the recycling bins left out for collection by each property in any given area.

Traditionally, our teams simply tick a box on a printed data sheet. We then decant this into an Excel spreadsheet for analysis.

We're looking for a bit of software that can be used on tablets so the monitor team select a road, then against each property number, press a button for 'box', 'wheelie bin', etc.

We then download that data into an Excel spreadsheet saving the need to manually enter the data.

Would any one be able to recommend a bit of software or provider of software that could do this

Or

Is this something that could be done within Excel?

Pointers gratefully received.

[Tuna]

I'll send this to my BIL who might be able to provide a solution. What budget is there for solving this?

[944fan]

I would look for an app that provides generic and configurable data collection tools with export tools. E.g.:

http://quicktapsurvey.com/use/offline-data-collect...

I'm not recommending this as I haven't used it but found it via a quick search.

Getting a piece of custom software written isn't cheap and it sounds like with this that the costs savings to be made by having the software aren't huge.

[Efbe]

if you can run excel on the tablets, this is dead easy to do.

a spreadsheet, with buttons on and a tiny bit of VBA behind it.
It would look professional, work well, and be straight into excel already, so easy to manipulate.

like so:

of course you could make this look much better, and have any functionality you wished, as excel is pretty easy to work with.

edit:
just because I am laid up at home with man-flu today, had a quick go. took about 1 minute to build this with working buttons.

Edited by Efbe on Tuesday 21st April 12:28

[jonamv8]

944fan said:

I would look for an app that provides generic and configurable data collection tools with export tools. E.g.:

http://quicktapsurvey.com/use/offline-data-collect...

I'm not recommending this as I haven't used it but found it via a quick search.

Getting a piece of custom software written isn't cheap and it sounds like with this that the costs savings to be made by having the software aren't huge.

We build custom software and the above advice is true, if off the shelf can work them use it

[silent k]

944fan said:

I would look for an app that provides generic and configurable data collection tools with export tools. E.g.:

http://quicktapsurvey.com/use/offline-data-collect...

I'm not recommending this as I haven't used it but found it via a quick search.

Getting a piece of custom software written isn't cheap and it sounds like with this that the costs savings to be made by having the software aren't huge.

If you can get this to work for you then it looks ideal, no point paying for custom software if there's an off the shelf solution. But if it doesn't I'd be happy to do you a quote to develop an app to do it.

I don't think Excel has VBA on the iPad btw, so it's pretty limited in how much customisation you can do.

[StevieBee]

Thanks chaps - top stuff as always.

Quick Tap Survey looks to fit the bill but I may get in touch with some of you if not.

[Tuna]

A lot depends on how detailed you wanted the data to be. Best solution I could come up with would be 2d barcodes on bins - they'd allow you to scan them with a phone app which could capture which bins came from which house/street/postcode/whatever and dump it all to a spreadsheet. Forms with buttons tend to be a bit prone to operator error or outright fiddling ("How many bins did we do, I dunno... tap... tap.. tap.. that's probably about right")

[StevieBee]

Tuna said:

A lot depends on how detailed you wanted the data to be. Best solution I could come up with would be 2d barcodes on bins - they'd allow you to scan them with a phone app which could capture which bins came from which house/street/postcode/whatever and dump it all to a spreadsheet. Forms with buttons tend to be a bit prone to operator error or outright fiddling ("How many bins did we do, I dunno... tap... tap.. tap.. that's probably about right")

Ooh...that's an entirely different thing! We've done some similar stuff before on a small scale pilot. It's bad enough counting bins but attaching a code to them and we'd be in the Daily Mail as Bin Nazis before you could say bring back weekly collections!

[maffski]

Tuna said:

Forms with buttons tend to be a bit prone to operator error or outright fiddling ("How many bins did we do, I dunno... tap... tap.. tap.. that's probably about right")

Pull in the GPS as you go and it allows you to sanity check and make sure it's being completed as people go round rather than 50 bins added at the end of the street.

Plus you can then heat map bin density etc.

[Tuna]

As I said, depends on how detailed you want it to be. The barcode could be as basic as 'this is a bin', or 'this is a bin in East London', or 'this is a bin in Ramsey Street' or 'this is a bin for 34 Ramsey Street'.

What usually seems to be the case for stuff like this is it's easy enough to solve, but each customer has just enough bespoke requirements to make it not cost effective for a professional developer to tackle and support. So they end up with their own cobbled together solution based on Excel, web forms or whatever, and someone who has the task of fixing it when it breaks.

[StevieBee]

Tuna said:

As I said, depends on how detailed you want it to be. The barcode could be as basic as 'this is a bin', or 'this is a bin in East London', or 'this is a bin in Ramsey Street' or 'this is a bin for 34 Ramsey Street'.
.

We need to end up with a report that shows that on three separate dates, 34 Ramsey street put out 1 x Wheelie Bin, 1 Recycling Box and 2 bags for Plastics.

[eliot]

If the devices have internet access, then another approach is a simple web page with relevant buttons that feeds into a database or even a comma separated file. Still needs someone to code and host - but may be easier than writing an app.