Survey & Mapping operations RTK

Are there any members that conduct survey and mapping operations? What RTK machine are you using and are you using the RTK base station also.

I am looking in to P4RTK and Matrice 210RTK, also what is the better survey camera for the Matrice.

I recently saw a review saying that the crystal sky monitor was a bit fiddly because of the small screen.

Thanks in advance for responses.

It might be worthwhile going away from the closed DJI ecosystem and investigate self build airframes using something like the open source Pixhawk controller - used in a klot of commercial vehicles. There are RTK modules available for it and a host of software solutions for mapping.

Having said that you only have one manufacturer to argue with when your mission goes tits up if you go the DJI route

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Do we have any members that are involved in mapping and 3d photogrammetry? This is another topic that has lots of potential. Is there a dedicated discussion topic to this area of drone operations?

Hardware (Drones)
Hardware (Processing)
Software
RTK/PPK/GCPs
Planning
3D modelling
Lidar

I am now getting involved in this particular area of operations and I have used the past 2 weeks to look at photogrammetry processing.

Moved your post to your previous thread on the identical topic.

Thanks, is this a dedicated topic you may consider setting up as it is a growing part of the industry!?

There’s a webinar happening later today, might be of interest to some of you:

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Cheers for the heads up.

Another webinar tomorrow, could be an interesting series:

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HI,

I have been fly drones for work related activities, generating survey drawings for mining companies, does anyone else in this network do this ?, i was hoping to have a chat regarding methods and software experiences you may have

Moved your post over to this thread on a very related topic.

I don’t do mining. Just getting started and trialling the processing software for the Ortjo and LAS. I am currently using QGIS to develop the maps. Which seems to work well.
QGIS is free and some great tutorials to take you through it.

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Qgis I tried, i thought it was overly complicated and time consuming, maybe I should spend a bit more on learning the software,

I’ve been learning through it this week and once you know your way around it can be simple. Obviously there are more complicated processes but I haven’t yet started at that level.

Hi t,
I’m new to the club, having joined earlier in the month. I’ve not flown a drone or even got my first one yet, but I’m looking forward to flying asap. I do have an ulterior motive however. My background is in environmental science, geography and GIS, but I’ve recently struggled to get work. So, I’m looking to learn some new skills and I’m taking some baby steps into drone surveying and mapping etc. I’m hoping it might be a way to make myself a more employable ‘package’ in the future, or even go self-employed again. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks doing research about drone surveying and mapping, but any advice about what I need to be studying and how to get started, from you guys on here, would be great. I do know quite a bit about the GIS apps so may be able to reciprocate the support.

Cheers, Chris

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Just wondering if there are any GIS experts about here. I’ve been playing with QGIS for travel time maps but have realised it might be very useful for the 150m buffer from congested areas.

Seems to be that you can plot areas, for instance a boundary on green space then tell it to buffer inside that area by 150m and generate a new shape on the map. That would be ideal for importing as a fence area or generally plotting on Litchi or similar to plan legal areas to fly. Ideally a buffer at 90m too which is acceptable at max altitude could also be made visible.

Do you have the boundary of the congested area? Adding a buffer in QGIS will be easy if you have the boundary as a polygon or line feature in the map.

We (the company) are currently looking at mapping planning software and wanted to ask those who do mapping what their opinion is.

I am not particularly looking at the software to use to upload maps to to process into nice 2D and 3D maps (I have someone else doing that bit). I am just looking at the planning and flight control.

I have used DroneDeploy whilst on my PFCO course and found it easy to use and gives some great planning features and I am able to plan on the PC and open up the projects on the tablet / mobile device connect up and go. So this is my finding so far.

DroneDeploy
I have just flown a mission today using DroneDeploy using the M2P. Planning the two missions, one over a field at 60m (9 Hectares) and the second over farm buildings at 50m. Easy to plan and able to access on tablet when I flew.

I found (after a bit of troubleshooting) that I need to open the DJIGo4 app to check connection. Then close the app and open DroneDeploy app, open project, connect drone and fly. The Field had a brief stopover to change the battery (which the software said it would) then straight back on the job to finish it off.

The same with the farm building all nice and straight forward.

Pix4DCapture

I am planning on flying the same mission with Pix4D capture to compare the same results. First thing I found was there is no way of planning the mission on the PC in advance so I have to do it on the Tablet.

The issue I found here was that Pix4D capture to get a 3D image it requires a double grid mission and to fly at the same height of DroneDeploy (60m) it says it would take 47mins and not able to fly because the M2P battery will not fly that long. So to fly in one mission I have to take it up to 95m so a lower resolution.

I did a test connection with my tablet (which works with DroneDeploy) and it would not connect. Opened the CTRL+DJI app and it said it had connected to the drone, but I could not connect the drone when I moved to the Pix4D app.

So I then installed the apps onto my phone, opened my account and the missions I had planned on the tablet does not transfer across. I then added the missions (again) and did a test. I got connection to the app and all is good… just need to find a window in the weather to fly and compare.

Summary

So far DroneDeploy is the preferred option over Pix4D but I need to do a full comparison and test all options before I go back to the boss with my findings.

Your thoughts?

My question after all that droning on, is what is your opinion? DroneDeploy? Pix4D? Pro’s & Con’s? Is there an alternative you want to throw into the mix?

Thanks in advance.

:clown_face:

Moved your post to this thread that has a few posts around the topic of mapping.

These have now emerged in to the market. There are quite a few planning software companies out there.

I have only use DD but I think trialling several on a simple mission will sort out the better option.

Mid mission stop and restart seems to be the clincher and I know that DD had a few issues with restarting missions after a mission pause.

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Thanks @tchambers, my battery stop over today using DD went without a hitch and carried on nicely where it was. Not sure if Pix4d will do the same so I am going to give it a go and see what happens.

I will take a look at Hammer Missions and see if the do a trial version that works with the M2P.