Visualisation and Annotation of 360 Degree Imagery.

{pannotator}

pannotator

The Panospheric Image Annotator in R (pannotator) software package provides an easy-to-use interface for visualising 360 degree camera images on satellite imagery and annotating the images with data selected from user-defined drop-down menus. It is designed for use in ecological and biogeographical research but can be used to extract data from any spatially explicit 360 degree camera imagery. This vignette provides an overview of the functionality of the package, including setup and configuration, interface layout, image selection, drop-down menu specification, annotation of image files, and exporting data.

Installation

Minimum Requirements

To use this package, please ensure your system meets the following minimum requirements:

• R version: 4.4.0 or higher

• RStudio version: 2024.04.2+764 or higher

• Shiny version: 1.9.1 or higher

Additionally, ensure that all necessary system dependencies are installed for optimal performance.

Below is some code to help ensure all dependencies are met:

The software makes extensive use of ExifTool by Phil Harvey (Exiftool.org). To make installation of ExifTool accessible in R there is a package exiftoolr that you must install by running the code below.

# First check if you have exiftoolr installed
check_for_package <- system.file(package = "exiftoolr")
print(check_for_package)

# If not run the following code
if (check_for_package == "") {
  print("exiftoolr package not found .....installing now")
  install.packages("exiftoolr")
} else {
  print("exiftoolr package is already installed")
}

Now that you have installed exiftoolr we can check to make sure that ExifTool is on your system.

library(exiftoolr)  
check_for_ExifTool <- exiftoolr::exif_version(quiet = TRUE)

# Install ExifTool if not found
if (exists("check_for_ExifTool")) {
  print("ExifTool found on system")
  exiftoolr::exif_version()
} else {
  print("ExifTool not found ... installing now")   
  exiftoolr::install_exiftool()
}

You must also install the ‘remotes’ package which we will use to install the pannotator package.

check_for_package <-  system.file(package = "remotes")

print(check_for_package)
# If not run the following code
if (check_for_package == "") {
  print("remotes package not found .....installing now")
  install.packages("remotes")
} else {
  print("remotes package is already installed")
}

You can now install the development version of the pannotator software.

library(remotes)

# to install from github use this code: 
remotes::install_github("nunzioknerr/pannotator_package_source")

Running the Package

To run the application use the following code.

library(pannotator)

options(shiny.port = httpuv::randomPort(), shiny.launch.browser = .rs.invokeShinyWindowExternal, shiny.maxRequestSize = 5000 * 1024^2)

run_app()

Once run, the above code will popup a browser window with the shiny application inside it.

Help Vignette

If you want help you can find it using the following code:

vignette('pannotator', package = 'pannotator')