User Guide & Documentation

Learn how to define your boundaries before a hunt. To create a search area, open the main map view, select the 'Draw Area' tool from the side panel, and tap the map to drop pins at the corners of your permission. Once closed, you can save the area and assign it to a specific landowner profile. This ensures you never accidentally wander out of bounds while detecting.

Tect O Trak allows you to overlay historical maps directly onto the modern GPS view. Tap the 'Layers' icon, select 'Import Overlay', and choose an image file from your device. You can adjust the opacity slider to see the modern terrain bleeding through your historical map. Use the pinch-to-zoom and drag mechanics to align known landmarks (like old churches or crossroad intersections) with the modern map for pin-point accuracy.

The Pathfinder is a highly accurate, compass-based navigation tool designed to walk you directly to a previously recorded find or a specific coordinate. Once activated on a waypoint, the screen will switch to a HUD displaying a directional arrow, your current heading, and the remaining distance in feet/meters. It works completely offline, relying solely on your device's internal magnetometer and GPS receiver.

Your track logs and find records are valuable data. It is highly recommended that you back them up regularly. Navigate to Settings > Data Management > Backup. You can export a compressed `.tot` archive file containing your entire database. Save this to Google Drive or email it to yourself. To restore a new device, simply download the file to your phone and use the 'Restore' option in the same menu.

Sometimes you don't know exactly what you've found until you get home and clean it. To edit a find's details later, go to your 'Finds Gallery', select the item, and tap the pencil icon in the top right. From here, you can retitle the item, update its classification (e.g., from 'Unknown Metal' to 'Roman Coin'), add new cleaned-up photos, and append detailed field notes.

Tect O Trak monitors your GPS signal while track recording is active. If no new track points are recorded for 60 seconds — even though recording is switched on — the app will sound a triple alert tone and display an on-screen warning. This helps prevent the frustrating situation of walking a long leg only to discover recording silently failed.

A single confirmation beep also sounds when the first GPS point of a new recording session is successfully captured, giving you an audible "all systems go" before you put your phone away.

To enable or disable: go to Settings and tick or untick "Lost GPS signal alert (Experimental)". The setting defaults to On. It is marked Experimental because GPS behaviour varies across devices and Android versions — if you find it fires false alerts on your handset, simply turn it off.

Pro tip: Switch on GPS and open Tect O Trak at least 5 minutes before you start detecting. Walk around so the GPS can get a solid fix before you begin recording — you should hear the confirmation beep within the first minute of walking.