The latest articles on DEV Community by Sheikh Bashar (@sheikh_bashar_8fb0e1ddf8d). https://dev.to/sheikh_bashar_8fb0e1ddf8d https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4199047%2Fbb4c4ce6-1ffe-41d3-96c5-71914f95dad0.png https://dev.to/sheikh_bashar_8fb0e1ddf8d en Sheikh Bashar Wed, 21 Oct 2026 19:35:57 +0000 https://dev.to/sheikh_bashar_8fb0e1ddf8d/building-road-survey-pro-a-gps-road-data-collection-app-with-expo-22p0 https://dev.to/sheikh_bashar_8fb0e1ddf8d/building-road-survey-pro-a-gps-road-data-collection-app-with-expo-22p0 <p>I'm building Road Survey Pro, a mobile app for collecting road information in the field with GPS. This post covers the goals and the stack decisions so far. It is a work in progress.</p> <h2> The problem </h2> <p>Field teams need to record new roads: road name, union, ward number, and photos from the start of the road to the end. Paper forms and scattered photos make this slow and hard to verify.</p> <h2> What the app does </h2> <ul> <li>Collects road name, union, and ward number</li> <li>Requires a start photo and an end photo (mandatory)</li> <li>Stamps each photo with live GPS location</li> <li>Submits everything to a central database</li> <li>Scope: new roads only</li> </ul> <h2> Stack decisions </h2> <ul> <li>Mobile app: Expo (React Native). One codebase, fast iteration, easy device testing.</li> <li>Database: Neon Postgres.</li> <li>Admin web app: hosted on Vercel.</li> <li>Photo storage: I looked at Cloudflare R2 but decided against it for now and kept photos with the Postgres-based setup to keep the architecture simple.</li> </ul> <h2> Lessons so far </h2> <ol> <li>Make the critical fields mandatory in the UI, not in a later cleanup step. Requiring start and end photos at capture time removes a whole class of bad records.</li> <li>Tie location to the photo at capture time. Live GPS on the photo is much more trustworthy than coordinates typed in afterwards.</li> <li>Use real local data for pickers. The union list comes from the official upazila site, so field staff pick from a fixed list instead of typing names.</li> <li>Pick one mobile stack and stay with it. I considered a separate native Android build, then stayed with Expo to avoid maintaining two apps.</li> </ol> <h2> Next steps </h2> <p>Admin dashboard for reviewing submissions, offline capture for areas with weak signal, and export to CSV for downstream road datasets.</p> <p>If you have built field data collection apps, I'd love to hear how you handled offline sync and photo uploads.</p> expo reactnative postgres gis