Advice Needed – Flying a Drone Around an Apartment Building for Specific Floors & Views

[jonny.smart1472]

Advice Needed – Flying a Drone Around an Apartment Building for Specific Floors & Views

Hey everyone,

I’ve got a client who wants drone footage from specific floors of an apartment building, capturing particular views. The challenge is figuring out exactly which floor I’m on while flying—without just counting windows, which isn’t always accurate (especially with varying ceiling heights and architectural quirks).

Does anyone have a more precise or efficient method for determining floor level while flying? Maybe something involving altitude settings, reference points, or even software that can help?

Any advice from experienced drone pilots would be much appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[mavic3usa]

Go into the apartment (with requisite permission) and find several of the community (common) windows and mark it accordingly to be seen from the outside appropriately.

 

[Meta4]

I’ve got a client who wants drone footage from specific floors of an apartment building, capturing particular views. The challenge is figuring out exactly which floor I’m on while flying—without just counting windows, which isn’t always accurate (especially with varying ceiling heights and architectural quirks).

That shouldn't be too difficult.
Will your launch point be at the same level as the ground the building is on?
How many floors does the building have?
If you can't get the building height from the client, it should be a simple matter to launch, fly to level with the top of the building and check the drone's height on the controller.
Divide that height be the number of floors and you get the height of a single floor to use for your calculations.
If there are significant variations in the heights of individual floors, ask the client for details.
But variations of a metre or so aren't going to be detectable in your imagery.

Years ago I had a similar job (except the building construction hadn't commenced).
Back then, drones only had wideangle lenses which make the distant objects appear further away than they actually are.
Because of this,the images from the drone at different levels failed to adequately show the difference in view with increasing height.
If I was doing a similar job nowdays, I'd avoid using a wideangle lens and use the short tele camera of the Air 3S or Mavic 3 pro.

 

[tstr14]

How many floors are you looking at? Launch the drone, fly up to, say the 4th floor and note the altitude. Use that number to decipher how many feet/meters to the floor you are looking at shooting photos from. Should be close enough.

 

[Bad Santa]

9-10 feet per floor is typical.

And, of course, you need Part 107 to do this legally.

 

[GroovyGeek]

Take a pic and look at the EXIF. The elevation above RTH is recorded there. Not sure if it is accurate enough to determine floor.

 

[tstr14]

9-10 feet per floor is typical.

And, of course, you need Part 107 to do this legally.

I believe the OP is in Essex, England. I've no clue what their laws require.

 

[Meta4]

Take a pic and look at the EXIF. The elevation above RTH is recorded there. Not sure if it is accurate enough to determine floor.

There are two different heights in the image metadata.
But the Exif info has only one ... and it's not the one he would need.
The height that's useful (the one you see on screen while flying) is in the XMP section of the metadata which does not show in most Exif info viewers.

 

[Cafguy]

Get with the people living in the building and have a few of them put some "props" in their windows. e.g.........Floor 3 could be a plant floor 6 could be a small decoration of some kind etc.... Then you could fly and just "look" for the appropriate object in the window!

 

[PHZ]

One last, but potentially important item:

Have the landlord notify all the tenants in advance: when, why and what you will be doing and what they can expect to see. Might save you some grief.