Cicada Safari Hack 1.7.7 + Redeem Codes

Along with other outlets, I credit Cicada Safari for igniting an unexpected excitement for the anticipated invasion of (of all things) bugs. The night they emerged we were borderline giddy uploading pictures and video to the app. After the waiting period I was low-key traumatized reading submissions were rejected. Are they rejected because images were poor quality, or because app was unable to collect enough data from the transmission. Or do they feel my entries are deceptive stock art? Just stating my submissions have been rejected is a bit vague, cold and disengaging. Maybe I missed something but I found no avenue to directly contact the organization with my questions. Nevertheless, I’m hoping the weather warms up again soon to allow this brood to bounce back and give me another chance with this app. Otherwise, I’ll look forward to seeing these winged wonder again in 17 years.

This is a great idea to track the cicadas and crowd source data for research. However, the execution is not user friendly. You have to take photos through the app which, in my opinion, doesn’t seem to be great photo quality. When I try to upload from my camera roll for better picture quality, it says there is no Geotag. Once you finally get a good shot, it seems the photos sit for awhile in “pending approval” status which doesn’t make it much fun for the user. Perhaps they have “favorite” scouts because if you look at the leaderboard, there are folks with thousands of approved photos and I can’t even get a few through. Oh well. I’m still enjoying the cicadas on my own...

The app needs to tell people their photos won’t be approved anytime soon due to the large volume of pics being submitted right now during the emergence. After 4 frustrating days of wondering why mine were continuously “Pending Approval,” and no communication from Cicada Safari, I had to come here to the App Store to read reviews (and the App developer’s replies) as to why pics weren’t being approved quickly. Apparently it’s the sheer volume of photos being submitted right now and each one has to be looked at by an actual person. Ok, fine, now I get it. But while that’s understandable, do you think the app could COMMUNICATE with people when they submit pics, or a message popping up when it’s opened, that there will be major delays right now due to so many photos being submitted at once. It wouldn’t be hard to do that. Please communicate with the users about this, as all it’s doing is annoying everyone and turning people off. Thanks.

I downloaded this app thinking that it would actually work, be user friendly, so on and so forth. Rarely do I take the time to give any app a review unless it blows my mind in either direction. Obviously I’m not happy with its performance hence the 2 star rating and my review ( if one wants to call it that). So anyway, even with 4GLTE, the app is sluggish and very time consuming to even complete the simplest tasks such as pinpointing my location to share where the critters have been sighted and sharing my photos of them.
If things on here happen to improve where an amended review would be warranted, I’ll be sure to take the time to do so, otherwise I’ll let it stand as written and carry on.
Thank you to all involved and have a wonderful day!

Quote of the day - “It’s definitely better to burn out than fade away”.

That is easy to use and awesome that we can help collect data for the cicadas.

Knocked off two stars because of the following: It looks as though you can take your own video and upload it (which is different than taking video within the app) but so far I have not been able to successfully upload videos.

I have run out of data this month submitting photos and video to Cicada Safari (I am in the top 200 on the leaderboard), so to continue to contribute I have been taking photos and video and then once I am home uploading them.

The photos upload fine, and it appears as though the videos upload. But when I go to check under the user tab, the videos I uploaded are just blank. They appear as still photos which is frustrating because the videos have sound files that are useful to the researchers.

I also got some great videos of adult cicadas feeding on a persimmon tree, but I can’t seem to upload them. Would be great if this was fixed (or let us know if we are doing it incorrectly).

I have been snapping away AND getting messages that my photos have been approved but they don’t appear on the map add still say, “Pending Approval.” I sent an email and still nothing. It’s been over 5 days since a photo was actually approved and on the map.

I’m assuming millions of cicadas makes for a long approval process but a quick glance should take about 3 minutes to get through the 100 pics.

The app is fun. Just wish it worked.

I really liked following and using this app during the crazy cicada season this Summer 2021! Now I wish the exact same thing would be used…. A mirrored app…. All about sightings and getting counts of the increasingly (beneficial) invasive species… the JORO SPIDER! Please and thanks! 😁

Checking back in. With all the Joro spider on the East Coast talk that is going on, I’d love to see a version of this app made for tracking sightings of Joro Spiders as time progresses 2022 and beyond. These things will invade much of the US. Having a reporting system would be amazing!

But it would be nice to have an idea of how long it takes for photos and videos to be approved. I get that folks may have a lot of work going on with this, so perhaps just putting in some additional info in FAQs or something so we know how long to wait. If users feel like their efforts are just going into a void, they will likely stop tracking or find another app to use that’s more “responsive”.

This app goes against intuition / UX standards, puts multiple unfortunate and really odd barriers in place, and does a really poor job of explaining its use which should be obvious. The concept was good, the execution was terrible. Really wanted to like it and use it, been waiting to upload pics / share for weeks. Now that it’s time it’s too frustrating to try to use. It’s no surprise IT peeps get primary creative credit — IT doesn’t understand how to blend people with tech, and disregards user experience as superfluous. This is like a WIN95 nightmare. What a shame. Happens once every 17 years … deserved far better.

I’m a devoted cicada enthusiast, excited to contribute my photos and videos to the Cicada Safari app but for the last ten days (since emergence started in NJ on May 15) the app has not been accepting or uploading my photos.... they seem to be in limbo, awaiting emergence onto the map! I would love some guidance on how to get my photos approved, or are the developers just too overwhelmed with the Brood X emergence happening right now to fix the app?