Orthophoto/Photomapping help (Relatively new drone owner)

[Kekeno_Air]

Hey everyone,

I am a marine biologist using the Mavic Pro to survey fur seal colonies in New Zealand. I am currently counting seals from video but finding that difficult to prevent double counting (stop / start video).

I would like to trial using a series of photos and stitching them together to make a single image/map to count from. I am currently using the DJI Go 4 software which allows me to manually fly the path and then I replicate it for recounts.

I guess I just need a bit of guidance of:
1) whether this can be done with the DJI Go4 app, or whether I need a 3rd party app.
2) Where can I learn how to do this? I've searched Youtube for MavicPro specific tutorials but not had much luck (but im probably not using the right keywords).
3) I am constantly flying along the coastline (where seals hang out) so i have been a little hesitant to use 3rd party software for that. Any reccomendations of reliable software would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks for taking the time to read my post, I really appreciate it.

Cheers

 

[JustinR]

I have used drone deploy extensively and can say it is great software to produce orthophotos with. I mainly use it in the construction business. I produce quite nice aerials at 200 feet agl and 100 agl very nice. The problem with lower flights is the data increases exponentially. 3 times the photos and 3 times the batteries. I would say, if you are taking surveys along a beach, you'll need to follow a few simple rules. Don't expect water photos to stitch. Fly high enough so that the software has enough information in overlapping photos to stitch them together. Go with the recommended overlap so that there is enough information in the photos to stitch. Over 15 mph wind? Don't fly. The software doesn't seem to move the drone fast enough in high winds. You end up wasting a lot of battery life moving slowly. For your purposes, you could use the $99/month plan and be fine. Good luck!

 

[bushie]

Do you use Android. If so Drone Harmony is free and does a great job of the photography you are after.
It can deal with stoppong to change batteries. The overlap is configurable
They can be stitched in many GIS aplications

 

[Kekeno_Air]

I have used drone deploy extensively and can say it is great software to produce orthophotos with. I mainly use it in the construction business. I produce quite nice aerials at 200 feet agl and 100 agl very nice. The problem with lower flights is the data increases exponentially. 3 times the photos and 3 times the batteries. I would say, if you are taking surveys along a beach, you'll need to follow a few simple rules. Don't expect water photos to stitch. Fly high enough so that the software has enough information in overlapping photos to stitch them together. Go with the recommended overlap so that there is enough information in the photos to stitch. Over 15 mph wind? Don't fly. The software doesn't seem to move the drone fast enough in high winds. You end up wasting a lot of battery life moving slowly. For your purposes, you could use the $99/month plan and be fine. Good luck!

Hey JustinR, thanks heaps for the informative reply. I'll have a look into Dronedeploy. Ever since I bought the Mavic its been on my Facebook newsfeed daily haha. I fly at 35 m height, any lower is distruptive to the seals and any higher detection begins to drop and identification suffers 100ft should be great. I very rarely fly over water, usually its on one fringe. Sometimes I have to fly out to small islands so do you think that it would be possible to use Dronedeploy in this situation also? Maybe delay recording until over land?

Thank you for your advice, once the weather here in New Zealand improves I'll get out and give drone deploy a go and let you know how it went. Thanks again.

 

[Kekeno_Air]

Do you use Android. If so Drone Harmony is free and does a great job of the photography you are after.
It can deal with stoppong to change batteries. The overlap is configurable
They can be stitched in many GIS aplications

Hey Bushie, Yeah I do use Android. Thanks for the recommendation, I will check it out as soon as the weather clears and let you know how I went

 

[JustinR]

I think drone deploy would work on an island just the same and on fringes as long as you have land to reference in the majority of the picture. The mavic has the range to keep a solid connection which is why I think it is the best consumer drone for drone deploy. Maybe the phantom 4 pro would be a little better, but with the cost of batteries and size, I went with the mavic and haven't regretted it. I use an iphone with the program by the way. Also, I just flew a quarry site at 100 feet, took over 1,000 images, came back to me twice to change batteries and resume, and took about 1 hour to do this. That is roughly 45-50 minutes of flying at 5-6 mph with 65-70% overlap on the pictures. Aerial turned out great at .4 inch pixels.

 

[Mossiback]

I have not done it, but you could make a panorama picture from a video. A google search "panorama from video" gave a lot of hits.

 

[FL1H1]

There is an app called count helper, helps you count objects in a photo. Never used it, just noticed it the other day, found it again. Might be of use to you?