Affordable photo stitching?

[speedster]

Im looking for an app that will allow me to draw a polygon on an aerial and then fly a grid pattern over that polygon taking systematic pictures. Im somewhat familiar with Drone Deploy and Pix4D but they are crazy expensive. I'd like to fly a 10 acre site and then have the photos automatically stitched into a large raster file. Drone deploy does this but as mentioned it is not for recreational use.

Any recommendations?

 

[Logger]

DJI GS Pro which is free will take the imagery. (It is IOS only). You can also capture the images in Drone Deploy without using their paid stuff.

Then for processing you could try Maps Made Easy to stitch them. In principal far more cost effective than DD.
Maps Made Easy Pricing

I opened an MME account and did a trial. The 500 free promo points only covered 60 acres so I think their pricing is a little optimistic. If I threw $150 at it I could buy 10,000 points which is a 1/6th of a DD subscription and do my whole 2500 acre place 4 times over.

Does anyone who uses MME know how to get output similar to the Drone Deploy orphomosaic? The 3D Google Earth (KMZ) create a terrible 3d model. I am simply after the high quality 2d imagery Geo matched to insert into Google Earth.


Map Made easy export options

 

[Aerial-Pixel]

I have to +1 the MME option. They also don't deduct points on maps below a certain limit too, it seems like its around 50 photos or so with the P4P and even more on the Mavic but I don't remember for sure.

 

[Dragonfly]

Try Drone Harmony if you are using Android. It will allow you to do what you want and you can specify how you want your pics to overlap by what amount on the plotted course of your rectangle, square, hexagon, polygon or what ever shape you draw over your Google map. Unlimited waypoints, adjustable height and area calculation automatic, and it's free.

 

[speedster]

Thanks for the replies so far.

I was not aware that I could use drone deploy to at least run the mission and take the photos. That might be a good option. I read a little about Maps Made Easy last night. It looks like a viable option. I envision most of my datasets will be fairly small so maybe this could work.

DJI GS Pro looks like it could also work. I watched a few videos on youtube and many comments made it out to be a buggy app. But you know how youtube vids can be.

Drone Harmony also looks interesting. Nice looking interface. I noticed there are warnings on the play store that it's in development and could be unstable. That gives me an uneasy feeling and not sure I can risk my brand new mavic to some glitch. But I'd love to hear and see more.

I also read about some window software called DroneMapper Rapid. Has anyone tried it? DroneMapper RAPID for DJI: Free Simple Photogrammetry Software | Drone Mapper Imagery Processing Looks like it could do what I'm looking for on the processing end with small datasets. And even allow you to create 3d meshes and DEM's which could be interesting. I'd love to hear from any of you that may have used this?

Please keep the suggestions coming.

 

[speedster]

Out of curiosity, anyone know the optimum height to fly for creating raster mosiacs with the mavic? I planned to run a few tests but was curious where I should start?

 

[speedster]

I finally got a chance to test some ortho mosaics today. I ran multiple missions and used both Drone Harmony and Drone Deploy to capture images. I ran them through drone deploy and maps made easy. The largest dataset I had was 124 images for 82 acres, another that was 23 acres and around 60 photos, and a third dataset that covered 13 acres and 44 photos.

As far as the capture software they both worked well. Drone deploy was more user friendly and quicker to use. DH had a lot more features and options but for taking top down photo mosaics it was overkill. It also had a lot of weird settings while launching. But it ran perfectly and I liked how it shows a photo icon on the route while capturing. Drone Deploys app was very user friendly and allowed for a quicker launch. Not nearly as many hoops to go through to complete the mission. Overall for capturing top down orthos I'd give DH a 6.5 out of 10 and DD an 8 out of 10.

For processing, Drone Deploy has a much nicer interface and was quite a bit quicker from start to finish when compared to Maps Made Easy. Select your files and upload them and drone deploy sends you an email when its completed. Their online software makes it easy to look at your mosaics, elevation maps, Agri Health, and 3D rendering. MME wasn't bad but it did keep beating you over the head making you click what seemed like dozens of checkboxes before compiling your maps. Their pricing structure is very nice. If you keep it under 100 pics on the mavic everything is free and I really like how they allow you to download all of the GIS related files for local use. Drone Deploys free version won't do that.

As for quality, I uploaded the same mission photos to each site and Drone Deploy was the clear winner in 2D orthomosaics, elevation/dem creation, and 3D rendering. It was a clean sweep. When comparing the aerials drone deploys image looks more natural and inline with top of the line Google imagery. MME images seemed to have a weird cartoon feel to them. They were still good but not as good as DD. On the elevation end, MME had a lot of trouble with tree canopies while DD handled them quite nicely.

Which one will I use? Well I can say with 100% certainty that I will not pay the ridiculous exorbitant prices of drone deploy even if it is superior in quality. They need to offer some different pricing structures that would allow enthusiasts and small business owners to actually afford it. Yes they have a free option but it appears the data has to remain on DDs servers and can not be exported. Big thumbs down there. For what I need it for I can get by with MME even though in my findings its inferior to DD.

 

[Logger]

Thanks for the comparison @speedster. After reading it I revisited Drone Harmony yesterday and used it too make a small 3 acre map. Uploaded to MME and successfully stiched it all up nicely. I am still hamstrung at getting the imagery into Google Earth Pro though.



Pale background is Google Earth, saturated green is a Drone Deploy map I made. Whereas the Maps Made Easy DEM (TIF) is greyed . 3D Google Earth (KMZ) option also looks gross



There is an option in MME to download GeoTIFF (TIF) but that is a 200MB file for 3 acres!! Maybe that is the file I need overlays into Google Earth nicely? But 200mb for a 40 image 3 acre map seems a lot.
A 200 image 60acre run totals 424mb for the GeoTIFF. Shame they are such large files if indeed they are the ones I need. By comparison the Drone Deploy orthomosaic files are much smaller

 

[speedster]

I downloaded the geotiffs from my project and used them in ArcGIS. They work pretty well but I've noticed the the edges and margins of the maps are highly questionable. I see where these could really be much better by using ground control points.

One problem I've noticed is that in all of my maps when you zoom into maximum detail all the edges of buildings, roofs, etc have a weird sweated or messed up edge. Like that weird look you get in the 3d modeling realm. I tho k the 3d models are kind of neat but they are useless for me. My biggest concern is highest quality 2d ortho mosaics. And these weird stations or ragged edges make the images look scrappy at max zoom.

 

[speedster]

Look at the roofline. The ugly edge is very noticeable. The individual photos donw have that weird edge

 

[Logger]

Yeah I see what you mean



Thanks for the tip. I Will download the large geotiffs as you have done when my bandwidth permits.

 

[kodiak1120]

I finally got a chance to test some ortho mosaics today. I ran multiple missions and used both Drone Harmony and Drone Deploy to capture images. I ran them through drone deploy and maps made easy. The largest dataset I had was 124 images for 82 acres, another that was 23 acres and around 60 photos, and a third dataset that covered 13 acres and 44 photos.

As far as the capture software they both worked well. Drone deploy was more user friendly and quicker to use. DH had a lot more features and options but for taking top down photo mosaics it was overkill. It also had a lot of weird settings while launching. But it ran perfectly and I liked how it shows a photo icon on the route while capturing. Drone Deploys app was very user friendly and allowed for a quicker launch. Not nearly as many hoops to go through to complete the mission. Overall for capturing top down orthos I'd give DH a 6.5 out of 10 and DD an 8 out of 10.

For processing, Drone Deploy has a much nicer interface and was quite a bit quicker from start to finish when compared to Maps Made Easy. Select your files and upload them and drone deploy sends you an email when its completed. Their online software makes it easy to look at your mosaics, elevation maps, Agri Health, and 3D rendering. MME wasn't bad but it did keep beating you over the head making you click what seemed like dozens of checkboxes before compiling your maps. Their pricing structure is very nice. If you keep it under 100 pics on the mavic everything is free and I really like how they allow you to download all of the GIS related files for local use. Drone Deploys free version won't do that.

As for quality, I uploaded the same mission photos to each site and Drone Deploy was the clear winner in 2D orthomosaics, elevation/dem creation, and 3D rendering. It was a clean sweep. When comparing the aerials drone deploys image looks more natural and inline with top of the line Google imagery. MME images seemed to have a weird cartoon feel to them. They were still good but not as good as DD. On the elevation end, MME had a lot of trouble with tree canopies while DD handled them quite nicely.

Which one will I use? Well I can say with 100% certainty that I will not pay the ridiculous exorbitant prices of drone deploy even if it is superior in quality. They need to offer some different pricing structures that would allow enthusiasts and small business owners to actually afford it. Yes they have a free option but it appears the data has to remain on DDs servers and can not be exported. Big thumbs down there. For what I need it for I can get by with MME even though in my findings its inferior to DD.

How did you use Drone Deploy for processing only? When I sign in and go to my dashboard, all I see is a way to plan a mission, but nothing about processing photos I've already taken.

 

[larlec]

How did you use Drone Deploy for processing only? When I sign in and go to my dashboard, all I see is a way to plan a mission, but nothing about processing photos I've already taken.

On your dashboard look for a "+" sigh in the lower right corner. If I recall correctly right click it and you will get the option to do four operations - one of which is to upload photos.