Top down pano from a moving drone

Can the route gpx be exported?

Thats awesome but it doesnt work with the mini2. And for what I needs its also a ridiculous price.

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If you can do it with a Mini 2, I’ll be interested to see what the image quality is like - normally mapping is done with a camera with a mechanical shutter (e.g. P4P, Xenmuse) so that it can carry on moving when taking photographs without too much image blur.
I’ve only just started playing with Litchi and a Mini2, If you can ‘pause’ the aircraft at each picture location to take the image / it may be possible to get comparable sharpness, hmmm :thinking:

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Good point … I’ll check

edit: No :frowning:
But Pix4Dmapper still seems to be offering a 15 day free trial !

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I think on a good bright day with a fast enough shutter speed, and at a suitable speed, blur wouldn’t be noticed.

You can pause at waypoints to take pics in Litchi … but there’s a 100 waypoint limit, so limiting the area one can cover. Hence why suggesting using time-lapse mode so that only the turning points of each leg need be specified.

Obviously, a small area can be covered within 100 pics/waypoints.

Definitely worth a try, if a Mini2 can produce reasonable results it opens up loads of new sites to map :slight_smile:

Edit; and the higher the flight, the less relative movement of the ground image on the sensor for a given speed

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I don’t necessary want to map it I just want a nice picture.

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And nothing wrong with that :slight_smile:

(careful though … at first it’ll be a couple of top down images photoshopped together, then a couple of DroneDeploy missions … but before you know it you’ll be knee deep in QGIS files, surface maps, and trying to work out how you can get your hands on a Zenmuse P1 - UAV load gimbal camera - DJI Enterprise !! )

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Do you know me in real life LOL :rofl:

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I am new to Litchi and Mission planner but couldn’t you just plan a mission and take pictures, say like this

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That’s exactly what I’d been suggesting further up.

What one needs to do, first, is the calculations to ensure overlaps. That’s where the other platforms help.

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Yes, that was just a 5-minute knock together, but it can be done. Its given me an idea to do my local nature reserve

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Indeed.

The Mini2 has 83° FOV - from 120m high that’s 78.5m x 58m ground coverage - so the legs need to be max 51m apart along and photos a max 38m apart, along each leg, to ensure 1/3 overlaps.

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The Isle of Wight might be a challenge … on one battery.

:rofl:

It’s more than that. I have one framed the imperial War museum north and its wider than 78 meters.

Ah - I missed the “x 2” bit at the end of the maths.

83° FOV is the diagonal angle

Ground diagonal = drone height x tan(FOV ° / 2) x 2
=120 x tan(41.5°) x 2 = 212m

4:3 sensor means that’s 169m wide x 127 high

So the legs need to be max 113m apart along and photos a max 84m apart, along each leg, to ensure 1/3 overlaps.

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I tried stitching a standard pano from different points and it proved virtually impossible due to changes in perspective, I quickly abandoned the idea. It would be the same for straight down I would guess. But I will take at the link someone posted in this thread for new ideas :bulb: :laughing:

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Photogrammetry. Lots of articles if you Google photogrammetry with drone.

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If you don’t mind distortion, the wide angle pano works well from a single viewpoint, stitching 3x3 shots. A recent one from my Air 2S, just a lightly edited JPG as shot. Sky cropped a bit.

Imgur

If you point the gimbal straight down, you’ll get more obvious distortion at the edges, and the edges are a bit soft as they aren’t stitched.

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Lightroom won’t do this because the algorithms for stitching are expecting all the shots to be taken from the same point.
However it relatively easy to combine the images in any normal pixel editor like Photoshop or Gimp. Just bring each image in on a new layer then adjust and match overall position (variable opacity is your friend for that), then you can mask off overlapping areas and combine. Then you can get an improved resolution images.
When shooting you’ll need to keep exposures and colour temperature all the same. Shoot it all from the same distance above the subject, which may be tricky on a slope, it also helps to have the same orientation (N-S). Probably best to work quickly to avoid changing light too.
Make sure you use any optical lens corrections available in the software before trying to stitch too.

I’ve done this several times with a Mini 2 and it’s worked well.

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