Bandwagon's Drones Thread

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Bandwagon

Bandwagon

Kolohe
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I never heard of Mr. SID until yesterday, but I guess large files from them are a problem also.
I reduced the GSD to 12cm/p and sent them an approx 400mb tiff, which worked fine. It might just be his computer. I don't know.

Micasense is pretty much the go-to camera for multispectral now. They have lot of big, credible companies that are trying to get stuff for free from them without any luck. You're welcome to try and I wouldn't blame you, but I would give you about a 0.4% chance of getting a free camera.
Out of everyone that has a demo camera right now, we're definitely the ugly duckling. We're waaaaaay smaller than the other guys, and we only got one because I impressed their application specialist. We also had results within 16 hours of receiving the camera, which is one of the reasons they've let us keep it this long.
Not trying to talk you out of trying, just giving some feedback. I've gotten a lot of free stuff since doing this, but ALL of it was due to impressive examples. Those examples are a little more common to see now, and less impressive.

Vepil, what do you do again? I thought you just did survey work? If that's the case, don't get a micasense camera.
 
Vepil

Vepil

Gamja
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I do both survey and mostly civil engineering now, our company also does aerial mapping and airport design/updates.

Most recently completed design on a site with 2 x 1 million gallon water tanks and a 2 million water tank with a 24" potable water line and a 48" raw water line to fill a new reservoir about to come online. My department is mostly environmental design dealing with potable/raw water, storm, sewer and modeling of those services. We took over the GIS department and I run that now with 3 people and an intern handling the municipal utilities inventory's. I really don't have room to take on drone but if I can make it work me and the other guy are talking about starting our own side business and see if we can make it.

Figured it would not hurt if they see our portfolio and the types of clients we work with. Even a discount helps
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Bandwagon

Bandwagon

Kolohe
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You might aim for parrot and the sequoia instead.

I still think that a setup like a_skeleton_03 and lenardo is going to be the easiest, cheapest and best way to get started.

I think you guys should do it, though. This thread gets boring when I'm always rambling to myself.
 
Vepil

Vepil

Gamja
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We have been kicking around the idea of the DJI Phantom 4 just to get started and see what we can produce with using GCPs. I have a site right now they are wanting to see how much dirt they are moving daily I think it would be great for. We have to move 33k cubic yards of dirt so keeping up with that amount is very important at $75 a truck load.
 
Bandwagon

Bandwagon

Kolohe
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Yea, the phantom sounds like a good fit then.
You still need to worry about processing software, but a phantom + Drone deploy can do everything you need right out of the box. I still don't think that it's the best setup, but it's definitely the best, cheapest option that is *easy*.

I'm only just now starting to seriously consider the eBee, but it's mainly because it's the easiest way I can think of to make my plan/idea with the engineering guys work. If most of their work was at construction sides or involved stockpile estimation, I'd probably get a phantom 4 as well.
 
Bandwagon

Bandwagon

Kolohe
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The "Blade Inductrix" that I got for my dog finally died today. I really can't believe that it survived as long as it did. That thing was a blast.
Here's a few clips of my Dog attacking it -

 
Bandwagon

Bandwagon

Kolohe
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a_skeleton_03_sl said:
I sent it your way, it's only 15 pics, ~50MB.
Click to expand...
Haven't looked through much of it yet. I'm using remote desktop to connect to the workstation, and I have a ton of pictures uploading so it's going too slow for me to try to look through.
I'll edit in more results when I get home at lunch.

edit - see links in my post below
rrr_img_136240.jpg
 
A

a_skeleton_03

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Will definitely have to tweak it up a little bit for future runs.

My settings in Pix4D were a 60 degree angle, 80% overlap, slow mode on the capture, lighting set to auto. It was a DJI Phantom 3 Pro.
 
Bandwagon

Bandwagon

Kolohe
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Results will probably be better if you start with a straight down angle over the whole area, and then fill in the details with another flight(s) using that 60 degree angle.



You used the Pix4D capture app? How did you get the pictures off the drone after?
 
Bandwagon

Bandwagon

Kolohe
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No, I think that is the correct way to do it with these. I've never done it personally and it's been awhile since I read the "correct" way, according to P4D. It's just something to do with the way the DJI drones record elevation data into the image exif. You need to correct it with absolute altitude, instead of relative to launch point. It sounds like you did it the right way.

Edit: what altitude did you fly at, and what was your sidelap %?
 
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a_skeleton_03

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Bandwagon_sl said:
No, I think that is the correct way to do it with these. I've never done it personally and it's been awhile since I read the "correct" way, according to P4D. It's just something to do with the way the DJI drones record elevation data into the image exif. You need to correct it with absolute altitude, instead of relative to launch point. It sounds like you did it the right way.

Edit: what altitude did you fly at, and what was your sidelap %?
Click to expand...
50M and not sure where to see the sidelap setting just looked and didn't see that in there.
 
Bandwagon

Bandwagon

Kolohe
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It might just lock frontal overlap and sidelap to the same setting.

Anyways,HEREis a link to the map, so that you can zoom in on it.


HEREis the 3d model.

We don't have much to go off of since this is such a small set. It's obviously not great results, but it really could just be that it's a very small area and there was not enough passes to get good overlap.

The roof is a little worrying though, since it's the most central point and had plenty of identifiable features. The 60% tilt angle could have been a big part of the problem too, though. Let me know when you get a bigger set.
wink.png
 
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a_skeleton_03

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Yeah I need to figure out if I need to tweak my overall camera settings also. Photography is not really my thing, it all looks pretty good to me when I take any picture!!
 
Bandwagon

Bandwagon

Kolohe
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the bare ground area doesn't look too terribly bad. I see the same jagged triangles on my stuff that has poor overlap, typically at the edge of projects.

You should be fine with a larger area and camera pointing straight down. One of the main things that I'm looking for is rolling shutter problems, or "ghosting" around objects. Those are some of the issues I saw with the P2, and one of the biggest reasons I lost interest in DJI.
 
Bandwagon

Bandwagon

Kolohe
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Can't really say too much, but just a heads up in case there's any lurkers here:

Hold off on the Sequoia for a little while, if you're thinking about getting one. Still one of the best options IMO, just has some kinks to iron out.
 
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