Greetings. I have searched the forums trying to find the information im after but after losing many many hours trying various things, downloading different programs, doing some field tests and not really getting where I want to, Im here to ask the dumb questions
I have a mavic 2 with the Hasselblad camera, a standard controller using an Iphone 6. And I use a normal windows PC at home


I am an arborist and lousy with tech, and part of my job is to map invasive trees growing on some rugged, thickly vegetated and steep public land, then go out with my guys and get rid of them. But I need to give others the GPS numbers and preferably an overhead map


I know if you open up the photos on the PC and go to propertys the GPS location is there, but I dont seem to be able to electromically highlight or copy it which is going to make it difficult to match hundreds of similar photos with GPS numbers that are not basically hand entered. (and mistakes that mean men with chainsaws end up on wild goose chases in rough country that woud easily hide a body with me is not a good plan)

I can also use the flight records that give me the ongoing GPS numbers. if I have the camera directly pointed down on the target tree and use left stick up and down a bit to show on the flight log the position on the GPS that I have taken the photo (and I know that is only the drones position but its close enough) but again a lot of manual matching of screen shots and GPS numbers.

And I have yet to find a way to get that wonderful, useful and very cool flight record to be anywhere but on my phone. (sending them to twitter just sends a detailess screenshot which isnt useful)
I have tried taking photos as the same time as setting waypoints to mark the photos but then trying to get the GPS off those waypoints and match them with photos also seems very messy.

I get the feeling my best bet is to take a photo with a second phone of the flight record at the point its in position above the target which displays the GPS numbers. Then whoever is hunting those trees will enter the coordinates manually to hunt out the tree and use the pic in the flight record as a rough guide map.

Or is there a better way to map out these trees?  (oh the next plan is to kill the envasive trees by drone, and im about 70% of the way to making that gizmo for the mavic)

Thank you in advance! this is a great forum.

I worked with a company based in Tauranga to do tree detection. The results were really very satisfying. They have drones to acquire the data but you can also provide then with your own data for post-processing and mapping. It's worth contacting him.

www.digisky.co.nz

Hi,

Mayby FRAP can help you.

FRAP can show pictures taken in flight, with timestamp + LatLon data.

see this > https://forum.dji.com/forum.php? ... p;extra=#pid2023752
cheers
JJB   [ chart by FRAP ; the 'best' software for flightlog analysis ]

You also may want to look at Airdata UAV. Everything you need and a whole lot more data you didn't know you needed.

Your both software are nice but it does not meet his needs. Unless each time a photo is taken, the coordinates of these are entered in the log. I don't know.

What he needs is to georeference the photos. It's pretty easy to do with an EXIF file editor. By asking it to extract the coordinates contained in the meta data.

Then he has to export these coordinates to .gpx .shp format ... everything depends on what he uses.

JJB just curious, what's the title of the csv column that FRAP tracks to get the "picture"  information?

Sean-bumble-bee Posted at 3-5 09:09
JJB just curious, what's the title of the csv column that FRAP tracks to get the "picture"  information?

from my memory:  CAMERA.isPhoto    but check it in the csv

LV_Forestry Posted at 3-5 06:20
Your both software are nice but it does not meet his needs. Unless each time a photo is taken, the coordinates of these are entered in the log. I don't know.

What he needs is to georeference the photos. It's pretty easy to do with an EXIF file editor. By asking it to extract the coordinates contained in the meta data.

what do you mean by georeference to a photo ?

Each time a picture is shot, the Lattitude and Longitude is known of the camera.
So fly above tree, cam down and usefull data in the log.

If you need to calculate position camera to tree flying some distance away from a tree,,,,nice challenge  ;-)
cheers
JJB

JJB* Posted at 3-5 11:07
what do you mean by georeference to a photo ?

Each time a picture is shot, the Lattitude and Longitude is known of the camera.

I don't really see where the challenge is, it's called photogrammetry. I doubt you don't know what it is.

What certainly disturbs is that it breaks your commercial argument, because yes you could specify by proposing the software that you are the owner. Just out of honesty...

Nevertheless thank you I discover that taking a photo is recorded in the log, I did not know.

For the OP, I recommend you to try because after all why not. But from experience, extracting the logs is not a very pleasant workflow.

JJB, can you confirm that you have to connect the drone via USB to DJI assistant each time you want to extract a log?
It's a little more painful than taking out the SD card in my opinion. Everyone is the master of what suits them.

LV_Forestry Posted at 3-5 11:15
I don't really see where the challenge is, it's called photogrammetry. I doubt you don't know what it is.

What certainly disturbs is that it breaks your commercial argument, because yes you could specify by proposing the software that you are the owner. Just out of honesty...

can you confirm that you have to connect the drone via USB to DJI assistant each time you want to extract a log?
It's a little more painful than taking out the SD card in my opinion
The flight data is contained in the phone or tablet you fly with ... not in the drone.
It's quick and simple to get using a USB cable.

LV_Forestry Posted at 3-5 11:15
I don't really see where the challenge is, it's called photogrammetry. I doubt you don't know what it is.

What certainly disturbs is that it breaks your commercial argument, because yes you could specify by proposing the software that you are the owner. Just out of honesty...

Hi,

As already said...Flightlog is on the RC or mobile device.

On my mobile device i use wifi transfer to xfer log from device to PC
On my RC i use

•   a USB cable to connect to PC (xfer via file explorer)
•   bluetooth xfer RC to PC is working as well.
  

cheers
JJB

Ah ok in this log there.  Thank you gentlemen for this clarification.

The GPS location of each photo is in the Exif info in each drone image.
There are lots of online Exif viewers, most of which allow you to copy and paste the lat/long data.
Search for Exif viewer and find one that you like.
The data appears to be in the degrees, minutes, seconds, decimal seconds format, so you'd need to have your GPS set to that location format if you enter it directly to the GPS unit.

If entering lots of locations, it might be easier to use software to upload many waypoints as one file.

If you were wanting to get the flight path to share, upload your flight data to Airdata.. and right-click the KMZ or GPX links below the map window and you can copy a link to a KMZ file that  you will open in Google Earth like this:
https://app.airdata.com/kml?flig ... dth=2&color_width=3

Or a .gpx file that you can import to Google Earth or upload to a GPS unit.

For more serious work you could get into photogrammetry and create your own high detail maps which could be opened in Google Earth.
If the trees you are interested in are easily identifiable in photos, you could capture their locations from your desktop.
The possibilities are endless and there is plenty of software available to work with.

JJB* Posted at 3-5 11:02
from my memory:  CAMERA.isPhoto    but check it in the csv

Cheers, that's what I thought but was looking at some of my csv's and it seems wrong, maybe my csv's have got screwed up. I have been messing with a few of them.

Sean-bumble-bee Posted at 3-5 15:14
Cheers, that's what I thought but was looking at some of my csv's and it seems wrong, maybe my csv's have got screwed up. I have been messing with a few of them.

yeah, PhantomHelp had some difficulties with this field to get the correct values.....

JJB* Posted at 3-5 23:56
yeah, PhantomHelp had some difficulties with this field to get the correct values.....

It might have been that, I have just processed all my Mavic 2 logs with TXTlogToCSVtool and the ones I have checked are looking better. Some of the old csv's could have been Phantomhelp csv's  ..... or my screw ups lol.

Sean-bumble-bee Posted at 3-6 02:57
It might have been that, I have just processed all my Mavic 2 logs with TXTlogToCSVtool and the ones I have checked are looking better. Some of the old csv's could have been Phantomhelp csv's  ..... or my screw ups lol.

But is TXTlogToCSVtool does not convert latest FlyApp versions logs...

so i do not use that anymore

JJB* Posted at 3-6 04:40
But is TXTlogToCSVtool does not convert latest FlyApp versions logs...

so i do not use that anymore

TXTlogToCSVtool  does not convert ANY FlyApp logs.

TXTlogToCSVtoolMM converts pre 1.2.something FlyApp logs, which is why I tend to fly my Mavic Minis with 1.something FlyApps.

Sean-bumble-bee Posted at 3-6 07:39
TXTlogToCSVtool  does not convert ANY FlyApp logs.

TXTlogToCSVtoolMM converts pre 1.2.something FlyApp logs, which is why I tend to fly my Mavic Minis with 1.something FlyApps.

oke  but many Fields are added, so you miss alot of data in MM csv...

Well, this thread is interesting. I'm starting to learn about the log file. I had never really been interested in it other than with Airdata shares. I also did not know TXTlogToCSVtool.
Thank you guys.

I have been trying to experiment but life has been getting in the way! Thank you so much for your time and suggestions, I have taken what you guys have said on board.

Getting other guys in on it is tricky due to there being unhelpful flying conditions much of the time (most of this week for example)  and as it takes a certain "eye" to be able to spot various species by air, of course this is easier when they are species that display colour change over Autumn, but thats a small window and there are a few on the bad list that are evergreen that I would like to target as well. I talked to another arborist who had done something like this 20 years back while working for our Department of Conservation, he and another arborist were able to spot 5 pest species for every 1 that anyone else identified on the same flight. (we are pretty good at spotting stuff that people have camouflaged to).
This is a bit of a passion project for me as its so depressing just how fast invasive species take hold and spread. I supplied gear to some volunteers who were going out to target certain area and species by hand, and for all there good hard work and struggle, they just dont get enough of them. At times if feels like a loosing battle. Hence my crazy idea to eventually kill them via drone dropped herbicide.

When Im more confident with the whole thing I might go for the Litchi app as Bird suggests, I am still very much on the learning phase in all this, and am enjoying going through various forums trying to learn.

So again, thank you for your generosity of time and ideas, I do appreciate it.

Just thought I would update

Things are going well for the tree mapping, been going out on my E bike with drone in pack and enjoying the new challenge. Things I have found out so far (that are probably very obvious to all here) and in some cases could be wrong but I havent worked that out yet.- so feel free to correct me

If trying to search for things on what is over 500 acres of bush covered mountain, that its best to keep the drone at the same altitude and fly with the camera at about 35-60 degrees facing the hillside but flying sideways, with careful panning occasionally to make sure your not running into a tree. Then once you have done a sweep one way, change your altitude by however number of meters you need to get good coverage and sweep the other way.

Keeping a note of the altitude will make it very easy to resume the search pattern after a battery change.

People must love tomato's to be planting them in isolated bits of bush. Best leave them be.

Thick socks seem to make pretty good battery bags and protective padding

Hand launching and landing is a vital skill to master if your operating over rough ground, scrub and trees