Hello,

I'm interested to expand my bussines with airborne lidar (M350 + L2), and we have an inquiry for rather large area to scan. To be specific, about 60km2, and the result must be bare ground to detect some of potential archeological sites. Flight during low vegetation is understood.

Is this kind of job an overkill for M350+L2 combo? This specific taks is mostly plateau area.


If not, is 3 or 4 set of battery enough to work without charging brake? (I can handle the charging of empty batteries during the flight).

Thanks in advance.

N.

First of all, you need to find out how much such a survey costs using traditional "manned" aerial equipment, in your area.

Then you do your costing:

- Time spent in the field
- Travel time / cost per km * how many time you will travel
- Potential overnight accommodation..
- Time spent in post process
- investment in equipment
- investment in software


For this kind of task not requiring ultimate precision but a good density of point cloud, I don't put GCP, I systematically install a base station that sends corrections in real time to the drone, and which records the OBS as backup.

I count 500 ha per day. Flight + data process.

After 12 days you have a complete product to deliver to your customer.


But at 60km2 we are well above the drone/manned aircraft profitability threshold. It depends on your region and the associated costs !


I understand that you are not yet equipped with LiDAR. Don't forget that what does 80% of the job is the post-processing software.
L2 why not, but you will absolutely need software other than Terra. Besides, it is useless to buy a Terra license, the free version allows you to obtain a point cloud.


I recommend Terrasolid if you have the budget. Otherwise Global Mapper with the Pro extension to have the LiDAR tools will do the job.

About charging, you need at least 1kW output power. I have a 1.7kW generator in the vehicle, it works fine with 4 pairs of batteries (so you order 8).
Don't forget to order the additional batteries for the RC as well.

I see you have a Metashape license. Since V2 there are all the necessary LiDAR tools for what you have to do. The processing time is very long compared to other software recommended previously but it works.

I'm in TLS and photogrammetry business for about 10 years now. I have HW (workstations, NAS, ...) and some SW. It's not a problem to buy specialized SW for airborne LiDAR.  Do you have experience with LiDAR360 sw?

if you can do 500ha/day fiield+processing, does that mean that I can do 750ha/day field part only (in 8 day field work is done), and then process all the data at once?

Pro88Cro Posted at 12-4 23:43
I'm in TLS and photogrammetry business for about 10 years now. I have HW (workstations, NAS, ...) and some SW. It's not a problem to buy specialized SW for airborne LiDAR.  Do you have experience with LiDAR360 sw?

if you can do 500ha/day fiield+processing, does that mean that I can do 750ha/day field part only (in 8 day field work is done), and then process all the data at once?

LiDAR 360, at the time I tried it, was full of great promises concerning dedicated forestry tools.
Unfortunately with L1 it did not turn out to be as effective as the commercial announcement claimed.

Since then there have certainly been improvements, I will take this opportunity to ask them to do another test, I will tell you how is it going.


750ha day, yes why not. Even 1000 is largely achievable if you don't need great colorization quality (daylight only).
I warn you about the fact that it is DJI, it is not a LiDAR manufacturer, and sometimes there are very bad surprises.

I am talking about unusable dataset for obscure reasons, despite the fact that you can have RTK fix throughout the flight, that you have respected the recommendations for warm-up time, calibration...

Doing all the flights and processes only at the end, for me it is too risky. The loss of time can be enormous for such huge work.

When I have a mapping to do on a surface that will undergo a transformation in the very near future (forest felling, earthworks, etc.) I take no risks and I process the data immediately on site with a laptop. Only to be sure that the dataset is valid and that Terra will not impose an unresolvable error message on me.

What I notice is that these unusable datasets appear completely randomly and I can't figure out what causes this. To give you an example, for November, 344 datasets, 2 of them unusable. The traditional Pose data abnormal. I tried with multiple RINEX files from around, nothing works.

It's not too bad since they are small datasets, but imagine if they are large datasets, on the other side of the country... not very profitable as a business.

And DJI's response is often non-existent, when they don't try to blame your workflow. If you have the budget, I highly recommend contacting Yellowscan. In terms of software and customer support, its another world.

I've sent an inquiry to YellowScan. I wonder what the price will be

Okay, YellowScan is out. SurveyorUltra costs 65k+ euros (depending on configuration).

The update is that my potential job has been reduced to 'only' 10 square kilometers in the first phase. L2 will suffice.

Pro88Cro Posted at 12-10 07:10
Okay, YellowScan is out. SurveyorUltra costs 65k+ euros (depending on configuration).

The update is that my potential job has been reduced to 'only' 10 square kilometers in the first phase. L2 will suffice.

Well, the surveyor ultra is a higher level, it explains the price.

Equivalent of L2 is the "mapper" even if despit the fact that it is the lowest level of Yellowscan, its definitely more accurate than L2.

Have you seen this last thread of L1 user who has missing part in his point cloud ?
Be ready for such things happening. And be sure that nobody at DJI will rush to fix his issue.