I’ve never written a diary post, and for my first, why not write about a quick intro to my first experience of using the Mapillary app?

I’ve always been interested in contributing street-level imagery. I’ve always thought that you would need a lot of different and expensive equipment to do it. Little did I know that there was an app!

Using the app is super easy. I downloaded the app from the google store. I opened the app and chose the “Capture” option. Then, pressing record is all you’ll need to start capturing!

I use a magnetic phone mount on the windshield of my car, so all I had to do was point my phone’s camera towards the road. Now, before you start capturing, you have to make sure that the point of view with your phone’s camera free of obstruction like your dashboard or speedometer. I had to adjust my camera angle a bit to get the best view possible with my setup.

What’s great is that the app automatically pauses, capturing when you’re at a stop. I believe the capture frequency is dependent on GPS signals. You can also tap the stop capture button when you’re all done.

Once done capturing, you can go back to the main menu and choose the “upload” tab. Within this tab, you’ll see all of your sequences, with the most recent at the top. You can select the sequence and will have the option to upload! I chose to upload mine once I got home to use my wifi. It took a few minutes to upload all of the images and maybe a couple of hours for Mapillary to process. Once it’s done processing, you’ll be able to see your sequences live on Mapillary!

Overall, the app is straightforward to use! I don’t have to use a GoPro and go through uploading it to my desktop and then using another application to upload to the Mapillary servers. (Although, that method might be better if you’d like to use JOSM, etc.)

This first post may be a bit informal, but I promise the next ones will be better! Hopefully, someone can find this helpful :)