00:01.43 archpodnet Welcome back to episode 2 ah 2 of the arche tech podcast and we are wrapping up this discussion with Paul about his time lost couple of months in Saudi Arabia and all the fun tech stuff. They got to use and not just that's just because they have it well sometimes it's because you have it but also because it man it really. Maximizes your time out there and and brings back the kind of data that you you can really do something with without having to go back and back and back you know something like that. It's not like doing archeology out here. You know, even here in Nevada you know what? Well I'm in California but anywhere around here. It's so big. 00:25.40 Paul Live. 00:33.94 archpodnet You know you got to drive 5 hours if you forgot to do something round trip just to go do something else but like how often can you fly back to you know Saudi Arabia and say oh we forgot to do this. You know so do as much as you can then ah and hopefully that's enough right? but a lot. Along those lines photogrammetry. You guys were doing you guys I mean along with laser scanning. You're also doing photogrammetry so it almost seems like the photogrammetry is um I don't know almost not necessary if you're going to the laser scanning route like what's the reason for doing both of them. Did you use them for different things. 01:09.19 Paul Ah, we used them in the the village documentation. We used them for the same thing. Ah but I also use photogrammetry with those burials and we use it in other cases too. So um, yeah, they're complementary I think that um that it's. 01:14.96 archpodnet Okay, ah yeah. 01:25.88 Paul In some ways. It's kind of like taking photographs and drawing even though these are both fully digital techniques. Um, as opposed to you know, photography and hand drawing. Um, it just doesn't hurt to take that extra day and not if it takes a whole lot of time either I mean the photogrammetry. 01:27.47 archpodnet Oh. 01:34.85 archpodnet Yeah. 01:43.20 Paul Ah, for burial I'd take a couple hundred photos 150 maybe and then spend no I don't know maybe 2 hours max absolute max processing the grave afterwards. Um. 01:47.92 archpodnet Um. 01:54.10 archpodnet Sure. 01:58.41 Paul You know and a lot of that was me learning I think it's really funny actually a couple years ago we had ah an episode talking about structure for motion and to me it was brand new at the time and I'm you know I'm a little scared to listen to that episode again because I'm sure I said a lot of really silly naive stuff and here I spent a lot of time working with Agisoft Metashape 02:05.71 archpodnet Um. 02:18.64 Paul Processing photogrammetry the stuff from the burials and the stuff from the village and you know got to be pretty comfortable with it. Um I've used other photographgrammetry programs too I've got on my computer here I've got web odm which I've used for drone mapping and I've used for building some ah some models of. 02:24.67 archpodnet Nice. 02:37.70 Paul Actually of a ah privy pretty exciting stuff. Um in some testing and so on. But and you know each program has its own strengths and weaknesses Meta shape if anything it's way way way too. Deep kind of in that thing of um of I was saying earlier about. 02:38.46 archpodnet Nice, yeah. 02:57.13 Paul What you need to show the user and what you don't need to show them. Ah, the terminology isn't always the same through things. Um, it's a little funky but I think that once you've settled on a particular workflow as being the best or at least the good enoughest. Um. 03:01.72 archpodnet No, how. 03:15.10 archpodnet Yeah. 03:15.39 Paul You run with that and and that's what we did. You know we tried a whole bunch of different things and then we figured out a way that we could really easily get the um, get our buildings aligned to the world and then you know, bring in the other photos that didn't lie themselves perfectly the first few times get. Ninety plus percent of the photos to a line and you know run through the processing to whatever point we had to get to so you know that was fun that was interesting. Um I definitely am much more experienced with it I still have no idea what all the different settings in meta shape. Allow me to do how they improve the the final product how they don't improve the final product how they? um how they take extra time or make things go faster. No real knowledge of that I just know that um that I had a workflow that was very consistent. It took me a bit of experimenting to get to that point. But that was that was ah that was fun. It was interesting to to actually feel like to to get a deep dive into that in a way that I hadn't before um and part of that and I'll touch on this a little bit is that you know when we're taking those hundreds of photos. We couldn't. 04:09.81 archpodnet Okay. 04:24.16 Paul Upload all that our cell connection our cell connection. Our internet connection is through sim cards through wi-fi hotspots. So you know yeah trying to upload gigs and gigs of data would just never work so we were instead stuck with having to process things to a certain point locally so that way. 04:28.75 archpodnet Oh right? Yeah well. 04:42.34 Paul Yeah, you know, somebody back home wanted to finish the processing for the report. For example, they didn't have to get you know those hundreds and hundreds of photographs. They could just get you know ah farther along down the road. You know, step of the the process and hopefully that's a lot less data. 04:57.21 archpodnet Right? So along those lines I mean you're talking about a lot of things that you guys were doing that is just generating like mountains and mountains of data. Um, were you. 05:07.11 Paul Live it. 05:10.45 archpodnet You guys I mean when you did have the ability to you know, maybe send this off and and upload it to the mothership um is was that part of the was that part of the data storage strategy or there're just like also mountains of hard drives out there where you're restoring everything as well. 05:22.58 Paul Yeah, so there are mountains of hard drives. Um, which makes me kind of nervous. There are also a couple qnap servers an older one that they had decommissioned but still had online because they're afraid to fully decommission. Um, which I've seen in companies and places before where you have some software or some piece of hardware that. 05:33.92 archpodnet Sure. 05:42.90 Paul I don't know Sony might still be using so it never gets turned offline and so they end up being zombies. We also had another qnap server that we were actively using and that's where all our data went for the photogrammetry as well as other things a lot of the gis went there Gis Data Shapefiles are particularly big. Um, but. 05:47.13 archpodnet Yeah. 06:01.67 archpodnet Ah. 06:01.92 Paul Photos especially those Dslr photos. Yeah, a lot of that stuff would um would live locally. We didn't yet have a systematized way for uploading things to the mother ship and and that's something that I really want to start thinking about because this is going to directly affect me in Lagosh where we also generate mountains and mountains of data. And we also have a very bad internet connection. So ah, what I ended up doing actually is I was really impressed with using that local file server and having I mean it's very old school now but having all our computers there in the office on ethernet. Talking to that same file I'm not all of them just the ones that had the huge amounts of data like the one that had to process the photogrammetry. The other ones could do it via wi-fi no problem. But I've been bumping up against the storage space of my own projects and things I've been doing for myself. Um. 06:41.50 archpodnet Sure. 06:57.68 Paul You you know and moving some things off of my computer onto hard drives using Icloud. So I have access to things on the go but it might not be loaded so I still need an internet connection to download them I've been ah I've been wrestling with this for a while I also call data right? So there's things that. 07:11.80 archpodnet True. 07:16.27 Paul You know a part of a project and a certain point like I don't need that anymore. You know these these antecedents to whatever I'm producing. Ah but I decided I wanted to try a different tack. So I got myself a server here too at home I just installed it still configuring it today just the parts all arrived the other day. 07:20.37 archpodnet Oh. 07:35.17 Paul I was initially going to get a queue nap ah because of my good initial first experience. Um I was going to get a 4 drive one and then raid 5 So I'd have you know if I did four terabyte drives I'd have twelve terabytes to work with. 07:35.39 archpodnet Ah. 07:38.80 archpodnet Yeah. 07:48.97 archpodnet Sure. 07:50.76 Paul In the end I went with a 2 drive synology 1 um, just kind of like the looks of its software better and and so I got two Eight terabyte drives and they're mirrored. So if 1 of them dies the other one will continue going and yeah, that gives me eight terabytes to play with and that's. 08:06.37 archpodnet Yep. 08:10.44 Paul Well more than enough room for any of the projects I do and then I can start to consolidate these disparate hard drives I've had onto this I still have to come up with a good strategy for how I deal with this long-term. Um, and it makes me a little nervous that I don't have you know a Cloud backup at the moment if I'm using this but I'll cross that bridge. Anyhow, the the whole point of this is that you know all that data that we were generating gave me a little experience in how to update how to. 08:24.21 archpodnet Um. 08:41.79 Paul Sync things back up to the mothership and made me think about how I manage my own data and so I'm going to be using that to experiment with I mean it cost me a few hundred bucks six hundred and fifty roughly for the um for the the synology ds Two Twenty plus and and those 2 eight terabyte drives um, but I think that at the end of it I'll have a much better sense of how an archeological project can really manage that data get the things that need to be. You know, put into you know, shared server space on Dropbox or box or ignite or any. Google drive or whatever the project as a whole is using where multiple people can access them and how it can also have that those antecedent data types. The photographs are using photographgrammetry for example, live locally so they can be worked on quickly. But. 09:29.74 archpodnet Threat. 09:34.80 Paul Don't have to in the end be uploaded that that stuff when you're done with it can be archived can be put on a couple hard drives put in a couple places and be done with um so you know this is this a work in progress is going to be an experiment a long-term experiment but putting my money where my mouth is here and I want to see how this actually plays out. 09:53.15 archpodnet Nice, nice cool. Well couple of more things to talk about here. Um, you mentioned iphone lidar scanning which came out on the iphone a few years ago but did you actually get to use it here where you just kind of play in with your own iphone out there. 10:03.47 Paul Right? Well, that's funny because I was playing with my own iphone. Um I also have an iphone 12 pro I bought it just before the 13 came out I mean like a week before the 13 came out because my other my other my other phone died. 10:15.12 archpodnet Ah. 10:20.63 Paul I initially bought the 12 which I liked the color of better than the 12 pro the blue I thought was really nice I got it home and realized it didn't have the lidar and so then took it back to the Apple store the next day and said whoops bought the wrong model. Um, and I've played with the lidar. 10:28.85 archpodnet Um, ah. 10:37.89 Paul In the past a few times I'd downloaded a whole bunch of different programs. Um and tested them out and they all had their strengths and weaknesses I ended up calling it down to just one program called Polycam one app called Polycam which also exists for Android um, and then. Continue to not use it because I didn't have any call for it. It was just a toy. Well this time on the burials. Um I actually did scans of the burials and you know you said you forgot to do this There are a couple of places I forgot to take measurements. 11:08.69 archpodnet Oh yeah. 11:10.86 Paul You know, fortunately, the burials were all in the same area. The the soils were exactly the same the depth of the top layer was you know a little thicker in some places a little thinner and some and others but generally around 40 to sixty centimeters and and the maximum depth was sixty centimeters to just over a meter depending on how far down we went in particular tren. But I yeah I failed to take the the proper measurements everywhere. Um, so what I did is I went and I scanned well I didn't know that failed to take them. But fortunately I had scanned ah these burials. Beforehand and this was what was absolutely amazing to me. Ah, you know I'm doing the the photographgram tree with metahape and it's making beautiful geo referenceferenced images ortho mosaics that I bring right into my gis and overlay on the on the the plan of the area. But the but with polycam I just go and spend maybe a minute scanning a burial another minute minute and a half as it processes and suddenly I've got that 3 d model right there on the phone I can take measurements on that three d model. 12:07.66 archpodnet Ah. 12:12.49 archpodnet Nice. 12:20.62 archpodnet Nice. 12:22.66 Paul I Took certain measurements you know to see how accurate was I had certain things I measured in real world with tape and I compared that against what I measured with the ah in the polycam model. They were the same so that meant that I could trust the depths that I forgot to take and so as I was. 12:27.13 archpodnet Yeah. 12:32.77 archpodnet Wow. 12:40.25 Paul Tidying out my notes last week I relied on those polycam models a lot and you can really see that that you know the detail isn't as good as what I was getting with meta shape but it is really phenomenally good regardless and that it takes just a few minutes this is absolutely 100% 12:47.38 archpodnet Um. 12:56.47 archpodnet Yeah. 12:59.79 Paul Going to be in my toolkit here on out and I think I have to pay for the full version of the program. So I can export my obj files. Um, yeah, it just you know and share them with other people if they need to look at them I can't see why one would not be using this. 13:09.49 archpodnet Um. 13:13.18 archpodnet Um, yeah. 13:17.93 archpodnet That's awesome. It's ah I just downloaded it actually I can't believe I hadn't download it before because I think you have talked about this when we first talked about lidar on the ah on the iphones. But I just again I Never really had a ah strictly good use case for it and I probably still don't but it's kind of fun. 13:23.37 Paul M. 13:34.26 archpodnet And I'm definitely going to play around with it but was there. Um, yeah. 13:37.33 Paul Yeah I mean somebody like you that mostly does survey I don't know how how helpful it would be on survey. Um, there may be if you find some interesting feature right? You know so I could see myself using it if I'm surveying in Arabia and and i. 13:41.80 archpodnet Sure oh. 13:52.14 Paul Come across a somewhat unusual cairn. For example I could definitely see myself scanning that karn just so I've got another record of it. It's not it doesn't take very long. The detail is much better than what you're expecting it allows you to spin things around and look at things and measure things. So again. 13:56.66 archpodnet Um, yeah. 14:09.53 Paul Forgot to do this whoops I forgot to measure the diameter of that cairn. Well now I can just you know I could my choices are either say it's about two and a half meters or I can measure it and say oh yeah, it's two meters 60 14:12.13 archpodnet Yeah. 14:19.77 archpodnet Right? right? Nice So wrapping this segment up. There's a lot of stuff on here that we've talked about but I didn't see one mention of drones. Did you guys not have him out there or was it regulatory. What's going on there. 14:36.76 Paul It's regulatory. Um, so they have them. They use them for a variety of projects. Um some of the projects I was on but they just did not use them and the phase that I was there so you know we'll see what else gets done but that you know it's regulars. 14:37.99 archpodnet Okay, that's what I figured. 14:49.12 archpodnet Ah. 14:53.78 Paul It's regular tool in the toolkit um to get some nice drone orthomosaics that that you can then use in your Gis you can use them for the planning whether it's excavation or conservation or you know. 15:00.54 archpodnet Yeah. 15:09.95 Paul Mitigation. Whatever's going on that those drone that drone imagery really helps. We just like that didn't generate any new drone Imagery I was there and that was regulatory that was because they need specific permits for specific projects and those hadn't come through well I was in in the field. 15:20.81 archpodnet Nica. 15:27.62 archpodnet Okay, yeah, well I also sense that our audience was getting thirsty. So I had to say it right here at the end. So yeah, indeed all right? So we just have a couple minutes left and I see one last little bonus point ah bullet point down here that says bonus Ashle and Hand axis. 15:31.46 Paul Thank you. 15:43.20 Paul Yeah, okay so this is where I'm going get in trouble if I talk about this too much. But I'm going to say holy cow we found a shin and Aes well by we I mean other people on the project I was not on the survey at the time but we found at least a half dozen and then I went out there what we measured. 15:44.89 archpodnet Let's hear about that. 15:54.30 archpodnet That's awesome. Ah. 16:02.20 Paul Them in with the with the gnss receivers we have exact precise locations on them and helped with the photography of them in c two and bagging them up and bringing them back into the the lab so they can be studied but this is around a Relic Lake Lake bed and and it's. Phenomenal to find something that old and so many of them I mean this is clearly a site around the sun this old Lake bed. 16:24.28 archpodnet Yeah I mean that's got to be pretty top of your list of some of the oldest things you've ever seen in the field if not the eldest but hard to say though maybe around lago. 16:33.26 Paul Yeah I think that is the oldest. No nothing like that nothing that old. No um, no no lagosh would have been underwater I believe back then. 16:38.48 archpodnet Nothing like that. Yeah, okay. 16:49.12 archpodnet Yeah, it's suppose. So I suppose so all right? Well this has been great Paul I'm glad it's glad to have you back and um, it's ah it's awesome to to keep this going. You got any plans for the summer we are going to be out at least out of the country. 17:02.94 Paul Um, actually I'm going to be out of the country later this week actually tomorrow so by the time you hear this I'm probably out of the country I'm going to copenhagen for the akana conference. That's the international congress on the archeology of the ancient near East and um. 17:09.24 archpodnet Ah, right. 17:13.26 archpodnet Nice. 17:18.65 Paul We have a workshop there on the site of logos. So I'll be giving a little talk and yeah, that'll be interesting. Um, we'll see most of the most interesting talks are going to be before I arrive of course and then you know other ones I really want to go to as is typical for conferences. 17:25.74 archpodnet Um, yeah. 17:36.39 Paul Conflict with each other but I'll make the best out of it. 17:36.93 archpodnet Of course. Okay, cool. Well again, we look forward to a lot more good podcast this summer and man if we can get this going. We've we've failed for various technological reasons twice in a row but I am really hoping that our episode. After this is with Paul Martin who was mentioned on the episode about doing the Louisiana um archeology just I mean a few months ago and he was the one that brought out the ah the dogs that he used for. You know, finding some of the fun some of the things they found there. So. 18:06.20 Paul Um, yeah. 18:11.59 archpodnet Just had some real logistical issues and we're going to try 1 more time to get this recorded so I really hope we can bring that because it sounds like it's going to be ah, an interesting interview. So all right? Well with that. Thanks everybody. We'll see you in a couple weeks and thanks again Paul. 18:23.73 Paul Thanks Chris take care.