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Giornale di Scavo — User guide

The digital excavation diary for iPhone and iPad. 100% offline: your data stays on your device.

In a nutshell

One idea drives everything: every dig day is a page that fills itself in. You record things wherever they belong — a GNSS point in Survey, a photo in Media, hours in Site — and the day's page in the Diary collects them all automatically. At the end of the week, or of the excavation, reports build themselves from the pages.

A typical day

1. MorningOpen the day's page, note the weather and diary (or speak it with Dictate)
2. CrewIn Site, record who is present and their hours
3. SurveyCapture GNSS points; check a benchmark first if you use RTK
4. PhotosShoot from Media: coordinates are attached automatically
5. DrawingsTrace the section or plan over a photo (digital tracing sheet)
6. EveningFrom Reports, generate the daily report: a PDF ready to send

First steps

1. On first launch you'll find a sample site. To create your own, tap the site name at the top (the 🗺 icon) → New site… and give it a name (e.g. "Colle Sant'Angelo — Trench 3").
2. The active site's name is always visible at the top: every tab shows that site's data. Tap the name again to switch site: the list is under the “Your sites” heading, and Rename site… lets you fix a name without losing anything.
3. Grant permissions when asked: location (for points), camera (for photos), microphone (for dictation), Bluetooth (only if you use an external receiver).

The five tabs

📓 Diary

1. Tap a day to open its page: diary, weather, crew, points, photos and drawings of that day are already there.
2. Write the diary or tap Dictate and speak: transcription happens on the device and works with no network.
3. The weather can be typed by hand (e.g. "Clear, 28 °C, light wind") or fetched with Fetch, which asks the Norwegian meteorological service for the current conditions. It needs a network and only works on today's page: yesterday's weather can no longer be recovered. A second tap in the afternoon adds another measurement. Anything you type by hand always wins.
4. When fetching, only the area's position leaves the device, rounded to about 11 metres, and in reports the line appears in the report's language.

📍 Survey

1. The panel at the top shows the live position: coordinates, elevations, accuracy and fix type (GPS / RTK Float / RTK Fix).
2. If you use a pole, set the Antenna height (m): the point's elevation is reduced to the ground automatically.
3. Tap Capture point. Names are sequential (P001, P002…), but you can type your own (e.g. "SU 102 — pit bottom") and add a note.
4. Switch between List and Map to see points in place; from the map you can enable a cadastre or another WMS service.
5. Benchmarks (🏁) live in their own section: import them from CSV or create them, then use Check to watch the ΔN/ΔE/ΔZ residuals live before you survey.
6. Level books are the field book for the optical level: stations, backsights and foresights, elevations calculated from a starting benchmark, with a closure check. Levelled points enter the site with their elevation, just like GNSS ones.

Every point stores both elevations: ellipsoidal and orthometric (a.s.l.). With the phone's internal GPS the orthometric height may be unavailable: that needs an external receiver (see below).

📷 Media

1. Shoot with the camera button or import from the photo library.
2. Photos are named sequentially (F001, F002…) and are geotagged with the latest available GNSS position.
3. When you shoot, the app also records the shooting direction from the compass: the photo's detail view and reports show “viewed from SO — 214°”, and for shots taken straight down (plan view, the bottom of an SU) a nadir caption with the direction of the top edge. If the compass is disturbed, the app tells you.
4. Tap a photo to set its title and notes (e.g. "SU 102 from north").
5. Share photo record PRO generates the photo documentation record: the photo with the shot's data below it (site, number, date and time, coordinates, elevation, direction), a satellite view with a pin and the shooting cone, the map's scale bar and the north arrow. The map needs a network: without one, the record still comes out, with a larger data panel.

✏️ Drawings (in Media)

1. Create a new sheet and pick a site photo as its background: that's your digital tracing sheet. A drawing can continue across several days.
2. Trace layers, cuts and stones with a finger or Apple Pencil; adjust the photo's opacity to see your strokes better. Pinch to zoom (up to 6×, two-finger double-tap to return to 1×).
3. Automatic tracing PRO recognises the outline of the object you tap (a stone, the edge of a layer) and turns it into a stroke: colour and thickness can be changed without leaving the mode. Everything happens on the device, with no network.
4. Add text boxes for labels (e.g. "SU 1002"): they can be moved, resized with a pinch, and come with four fonts to choose from.
5. With the Scale tool (ruler) you tap the two ends of a known measurement — a length of the ranging pole — and enter the true distance: the photo picks up the scale, and from then on exports speak in metres.
6. With Point with elevation you place the crosshair of a GNSS point from the site (or a hand-entered point) on the photo: name, elevation and coordinates appear in a draggable label with a leader line.
7. Export with legend PRO: the image comes out with a white band underneath — a metric scale bar (if the scale is set), a north arrow for photos taken straight down, “viewed from” for frontal ones.
8. Export vector PRO: SVG for the drawing, or DXF for the GIS. With at least two points with elevation and coordinates on a photo taken straight down, the DXF comes out georeferenced in UTM and positions itself in QGIS automatically; with only the scale set it comes out in local metres; with neither, the app says so and won't produce a file with no units.
9. When you're done, hide the photo: the clean drawing stays, ready for the report.

👷 Site

1. Record the day's attendance: each person's name, role and hours.
2. Keep the equipment inventory and who each item is assigned to.

📄 Reports

1. Pick the type: daily (free, watermarked), weekly, monthly or final with full appendices PRO.
2. Pick the report language from seventeen, independent of the app's language: the report can come out in German even if you use the app in English.
3. Generate the PDF, or export DOCX with your logo and photos PRO, CSV of the points, GeoJSON for QGIS PRO.
4. With photos in reports switched on, you can choose Photo records instead of photos PRO: every photo enters the PDF and DOCX as a full documentation record with data and map, in the report's language.

External GNSS receiver and NTRIP

With an external receiver (centimetre-grade antenna) the app reaches RTK accuracy. The internal GPS always remains available as a fallback.

1. Turn the receiver on and enable Bluetooth on the phone.
2. In Survey, choose the position source: External GNSS (BLE/NMEA) PRO and pick your receiver from the list. MFi receivers (free) and receivers that stream NMEA over the network are supported too.
3. For RTK corrections configure NTRIP: caster address, port, mountpoint, username and password (stored in the device keychain). The app sends your position to the caster and receives corrections.
4. Wait for RTK Fix: centimetre accuracy. Check against a benchmark before you start.

Backup and exchange

1. From the site menu tap Export site (.zip): everything is inside — diary, points, photos, drawings, hours, benchmarks.
2. Keep the ZIP wherever you like (Files, Drive, e-mail…). It is your backup: the app has no cloud, by design.
3. Import site (.zip)… recreates the site on another device, even between iPhone and Android.

⚠️ Delete site… removes the site with everything in it and is irreversible: export a ZIP first if in doubt.

Free and Pro

Pro is a monthly or yearly auto-renewing subscription, or a one-time lifetime purchase. Manage or cancel it any time in your Apple Account settings.

Troubleshooting