What's the best moethod for capturing many acres of land? With my height limit of 400'?

The property I'm working with is 800 acres in total, and the idea of capturing it ALL and stitching it together seems a bit nuts. But I was wondering what suggestions people might have for capturing as much as possible.

What's a good app for creating waypoints in advance?

Try a few panorama shots. The app should stitch them together

Do you want to shoot straight down and make a map ?
If so you need to look at mapping apps which will help with the planning and automate the flights and shooting.
But 800 acres would be a big task.

As an example, to fly an 800 acre square at 400 ft, you'd need at least 6 flights and the app would shoot about 1700 overlapping images that could be used to create an orthophoto map.

Forget waypoints, that's not what you need at all.
You'd need a mapping app such as DroneDeploy.

OK, I am going to give Litchi a shot, just testing it out for a smaller 100 acre property behind my studio. This could work, even for all 800 acres, if I break it up into digestible chunks!

A DroneDeploy subscription might be overkill for what my client wants. If I can get away with putting together Waypoint missions with Litchi, I'll let you know!

Try the drone deploy trial.

Drone deploy for proper mapping but if you just want to get a taste of the area then do a spherical pano and upload it via sky pixel

Thanks for the tips.  Didn't know about DroneDeploy.

Neo Supreme Posted at 7-22 10:38
Thanks for the tips.  Didn't know about DroneDeploy.

You're welcome - not sure if a sphere is what you would want though reading it again. This is what they look like. If you zoom in on the horizon you can see the shard in central London 12 miles away.

Hi. Thank you for reaching out to DJI Forum. With regards to this matter. I hope that our valued DJI co pilots can provide you the best recommendation for this query. Thank you.

DRONE DEPLOY for capturing.......split the area into 2 to 3 battery sections.

Use Maps Made Easy to handle the stitching.......if you are flying something that large, you are getting PAID.......pay for the ortho maps, and charge the client.

Randy

Maps Made Easy looks great!

What I've been doing to give a feel for a large area is shoot spherical panoramas, stitching in PTgui and assembling it in Pano2vr and uploading to a WordPress site.  

http://www.vu-real.com/tours/725 ... acungie-pa-18062-2/

But I'm new to the idea of "mapping" a large area, i.e. taking photos straight down and stitching. I've done a half-dozen acres or so, but that's about it.

But I just tried Litchi, and found I can get great results. I did a test taking photos with a 30 waypoint grid, and I can get 20 acres easily. It might be a case of just breaking the property into sections and going through section by section, maybe by increasing the grid to 50 photos. Any more, and I might be pushing the battery!

danmckinney Posted at 7-29 16:31
Maps Made Easy looks great!

What I've been doing to give a feel for a large area is shoot spherical panoramas, stitching in PTgui and assembling it in Pano2vr and uploading to a WordPress site.  

But I just tried Litchi, and found I can get great results. I did a test taking photos with a 30 waypoint grid, and I can get 20 acres easily. It might be a case of just breaking the property into sections and going through section by section, maybe by increasing the grid to 50 photos. Any more, and I might be pushing the battery!
Forget Litchi, it's not what you need at all.
For mapping, you need much bigger overlaps.
Use a proper mapping app to plan, fly and acquire the images.

As I tried to explain back in the 3rd post, 800 acres would be a big mapping exercise.
To fly an 800 acre square at 400 ft, you'd need at least 6 flights and the app would shoot about 1700 overlapping images that could be used to create a huge orthophoto map.

Yes, 800 acres would be a big undertaking. I just signed up for a Drone Deploy trial, but unless I get more commercial work, paying $99/month for a year isn't worth it for me. Right now, I am only doing real estate listings - with one corporate project!

But tomorrow, I am going to take the Mavic up to the site and capture a chunk using a waypoint grid created with Litchi and I'll let you know how it goes. I'll post the results, too.

Dragging the points for the route in Drone Deploy is cool, for sure!  I will most definitely use the trial when mapping out the site. But I am also going to try Litchi, and experiment with Google Sheets to futz with the waypoint paramaters instead of editing point by point on the Litchi Mission Hub.

I figure that I can create a waypoint grid template that will work anywhere by simply altering the coordinates in a spreadsheet. It would be simple to enter the coordinates of the start point, and let the spreadsheet calculate all the rest. I can make up a grid that will work safely within a single battery's life, and shift that grid around the site to get what I need. Until I actually have a roster of commercial clients, that might be the way to go.

danmckinney Posted at 7-30 03:37
Dragging the points for the route in Drone Deploy is cool, for sure!  I will most definitely use the trial when mapping out the site. But I am also going to try Litchi, and experiment with Google Sheets to futz with the waypoint paramaters instead of editing point by point on the Litchi Mission Hub.

I figure that I can create a waypoint grid template that will work anywhere by simply altering the coordinates in a spreadsheet. It would be simple to enter the coordinates of the start point, and let the spreadsheet calculate all the rest. I can make up a grid that will work safely within a single battery's life, and shift that grid around the site to get what I need. Until I actually have a roster of commercial clients, that might be the way to go.

Dragging the points for the route in Drone Deploy is cool, for sure!
It's also has a free 14 day trial.
After that, it's still free to use the app but you have to pay if you use their processing of the maps.

Definitely planned on taking advantage of the free trial! Love me some free trials!

Thanks!