Mapping Survey options

[Steelcover]

Hello New to flying. Have a Mavic 3 T. Looking to use it to survey our south Texas property. This will be to count the deer population. I’m thinking we will use it once or twice a year. I’ve seen Terra and Deploy but hard to justify the cost for our use. Is there any other options for casual/personal use?

 

[MAvic_South_Oz]

Welcome to the forum.

Deploy = Drone Deploy ?
I haven't used it at all, but they do / did have a free basic version, at least when I downloaded it some years ago.
Pix4D also have a free or subscription type service for mapping etc, depending on the level of programme required.
Advanced use and things like cloud type mapping 4D etc requires a payment, and it's not cheap for casual type use.

How will you use the M3T to survey for deer population ?
Just fly over and monitor manually when you spot deer, assuming at night with the thermal vision ?
Or some sort of high end part of those apps that might be able to capture certain parameters to count and map various 'objects' ?

 

[mrwagdog]

You can use drone deploy to fly and take your images for free. Map Pilot is also usable for free for flying.

You can then use open drone map (ODM) to stitch the images together, for free.

There is a bit of a learning curve for ODM, particularly when it comes to installing it, and to some extent running it. There is a version called WebODM that works well, but again, a bit of a learning curve.

If installing and configuring software is something you find interesting, that’s the route to take. There are videos on YouTube covering all of the above packages.

 

[Gagey52]

Agree with mrwagdog, have never used thermal myself and look forward to seeing the results of your efforts. You could also place your query with the Commercial pilots forum.
Regards

 

[Steelcover]

Thanks for the info. To answer a few questions
Deploy does = drone deploy
When I have flown, cooler weather, the thermal images are clear enough to distinguish between deer, coyotes, rabbits etc. So I was hoping once the images are stitched together, I would be able to take a good head count.
I’ll have to do more research on drone deploy. All I seen at first look were subscriptions packages
Thks again.