[Solved] Why does duration of trip not match duration in eBird dialog?

Hi David,

Good question. This came up during beta testing and this was the best solution found.

The Trip duration is in text format and not reliable. We don't even know if the user creates a trip for their outing, or if BDMobile is set to download a trip; etc. etc. many other issues. So, any free-format text inside of a possibly attached trip (or multiple trips) is not reliable.

So, what we settled on, is to take the time difference from the first sighting to the last sighting in the sightings being exported and use that as the basis for the eBird Duration field.

It is up to the user to review this value and modify.

If you have a better idea, I am all ears.

Update:

I have decided, this is not a good solution. The correct solution is the following:

• Prior to this, Trips in BD Desktop have only allowed for dates without time. Starting with build 25, it will allow time as well.
  • Update BD Mobile to export start/end date-with-time for the Outing; which becomes the Trip in BD Desktop. v1.45
• Add Miles to BD Desktop Trips. 
  • Update BD Mobile to export Outing distance travelled in user-defined units. e.g. Km or Miles.
• Update BD Desktop, in the Export to eBird window, to correctly calculate the Outing/Trip Elapsed time from the Trip start and end times; instead of previous algorithm used above.
• Update BD Desktop, to auto-populate the distance traveled with the value from the Trip value.
  • Add Km-2-Mi button to this field in case you use KM in BD Mobile.

Coming soon...

Oh yeah...

And since the user can select any number of sightings to export to eBird, if that list of sightings references more than 1 trip in BD Desktop, then neither of these values will be set. Forcing the user to reconcile what values they want to use.

Ok - I have updated BD Mobile (v1.45) and BD Desktop (Build 25) with these changes. Not yet released.

In the usual case where you are uploading Sightings attached to only one Trip/Outing, and every Sighting is attached to that trip; these fields will be filled in with the correct values from the Outing as exported from BD Mobile to BD Desktop Trip.

Two other conditions:

• One or more sightings being exported are not associated with a Trip.
  • StartTime is set to the earliest Sighting date/time.
  • Duration is calculated from earliest to latest Sighting.
  • Distance is left empty.
• The list of sightings are attached to 2 or more trips.
  • all fields are left empty.

fyi... Happy 4th!

BD Mobile v1.45 has just been released. It takes from 1 hour to 24 hours for Google to approve and make it available.

BD Desktop, Build 25, is now available for download and install.

Both have the new features mentioned above to address this shortcoming in previous versions.

fyi