Wisconsin Road Trip

Benediction. Ingress portal submission in Eau Claire, WI. Click to Enlarge.
Benediction. Ingress portal submission in Eau Claire, WI. Click to Enlarge.

We’re on a road trip back home in Wisconsin this weekend, and I didn’t bring any miniatures or painting stuff this time. We’re here on a secret mission, but while we are here I’ve gotten some gaming in in the form of Ingress, of course.

I play ingress daily where we live now, Omaha NE. But it’s always fun to play in a “new” area. (I put new in quotes because Eau Claire, WI is my adopted home town, where I’d previously lived for 14 years.) I even got to submit a portal right on Water Street! Pictured above, Benediction was submitted yesterday in the scanner. Chances are someone’s already submitted ahead of me, unfortunately, but in Ingress there’s no way to know so I try to submit every worthy item I find.

More New Portals – and a Tutorial!

Below are another couple of portal submissions from the trip, and at the bottom of this post I decided to put together a little tutorial to illustrate how to submit portals from your photo gallery (which can be much safer and easier!)

North River Fronts Park, Eau Claire, WI. Click to Enlarge.
North River Fronts Park, Eau Claire, WI. Click to Enlarge.




Another Ingress Portal submissio, Kid's Community Garden. Click to Enlarge.
Another Ingress Portal submissio, Kid’s Community Garden. Click to Enlarge.

 

So I recently learned from the Ingress help site how to submit portals from your photo gallery. Since then I’ve discovered I’m not the only active, long-term player that didn’t know how to do this and I also didn’t have the easiest time using the instructions, I’ve made the following pictorial step by step tutorial on how to do it. Enjoy!

Quick Tutorial; How to submit Ingress portals from your photo gallery.

When you’re out and about, it’s much easier to snap pictures of portal worthy objects and submit later. It can also be a lot safer if taking a good photo requires a vantage point from in the street or other places where you don’t want to spend a lot of time at. Here’s how:

Open the Gallery app on your droid phone:

Gallery app on Android. Click to Enlarge.
Gallery app on Android. Click to Enlarge.

Navigate to the picture you want to submit, and select it.

(In this example I am submitting my favorite video-game/pinball bar; Beercade)

Beercade, Omaha, NE. Click to Enlarge.
Beercade, Omaha, NE. Click to Enlarge.

In the photo above, there’s an Ingress logo. The first time I did this, it was not there. To access this menu option the first time, tap the share icon, and from the share menu, select NIA Super Ops.

(On my Droid Maxx, that menu option is now showing to the right of the share icon now that I have done this once. I no longer have to go to the share menu, I can create a portal from any photo in my Gallery app using that Ingress icon.)

Clicking/tapping that icon will bring up the portal submission screen, with no geo-location associated:

NIA Super Ops, Portal Submitting from the Gallery app. Click to Enlarge.
NIA Super Ops, Portal Submitting from the Gallery app. Click to Enlarge.

Next tap inside the square that says Location Required, that will bring up a Google Maps view with the Ingress scanner’s GPS location reticle on it. Use the cross-hairs in the reticle to precisely place the portal exactly where it should be:

New Portal Discovery view, NIA Super Ops. Click to Enlarge.
New Portal Discovery view, NIA Super Ops. Click to Enlarge.

Click OK when you have the position correct. Then fill out the name and description, and tap send:

Name, Description and Location complete. Click to Enlarge.
Name, Description and Location complete. Click to Enlarge.

And that’s it. I will be submitting a lot more portals now that I’m familiar with this process, hopefully you found this information useful also. Submitting Ingress portals can be frustrating because it’s a  very long wait (over 6 months in some cases) before you’ll hear back from Niantic if your portal is accepted or not. Once you have success with one, however, it’s very satisfying to know you contributed to the game is a real, tangible way.

(In so far as an imaginary portal can be tangible, anyway.)

Thanks for reading! Signing off from Wisconsin today, more to come when we get back home on Tuesday!