Hi all

I have a project at work where I need to do some photogrammetry and create 3D models of areas.  I am curious to know who has used a drone for photogrammetry and what software did you use?  To give a little background, I'm a software engineer who is edging into the drone space as well as software for image processing.  

There seems to be three paths a person can take, each seem to have some good and bad.

A full blown service like drone deploy or pix4d that does flight planning and image processing.
Would be good for a lot of people who want a full blown solution.  There seems to be a lot of extra functionality with these solutions that I simply don't need for what I'm wanting to accomplish.

3rd party flight plan software and some other 3rd party photogrammetry software running on a local computer.
This is my initial desire.  Is there reliable flight plan software geared towards photogrammetry that's not a full blown service?   A flight software that knows how to fly the path and generate the proper images at the right time?  Then, when the drone lands, I can take those images and put them into a different software app alltogether to generate my 3D model.

Full manual flight or 3rd party flight software, open source photogrammetry software running on a local computer.
Being so new to this I'm strongly wanting to avoid option 3.  Ultimatly, I'd like to get here, but, to get started, I'd like to take the quickest rout to results.  There does not seem to be a lot of 3rd party open source photogrammetry software SDKs out there.

So, I guess my questions are:
1) Have any of you done photogrammetry with a drone
2) Did you use a full blown solution like Drone Deply or Pix4D?
3) Do you know of any flight planning software that is more concise that does not include all the extra functionality that apps like Drone Deply have incorporated into them?  
4) Do you know of any good open source Photogrammetry SDKs?

And lastly... I have seen on other websites talkign about various software that there is a Phantom 4 Pro and a Phantom 4 Pro +.   Apparently some 3rd party software does not work with the Phantom 4 Pro + model.   

I have been on the DJI site looking at the Phantom 4 models but don't see a Phantom 4 Pro +.  Did they do away with this? I would want to stay away from this model if it's going to cause problems with 3rd party software.

Any insight and help will be greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks
Rick

Hi Rick,  I have not done this but have looked into it some.  There is a website called phantompilots.com.  There is a lot of discussion about many aspects of drone technology and applications.  Take a look, there is a lot out there.  

https://phantompilots.com/forums/phantom-4-pro-discussion.130/

Hey, thanks I'll cut copy and past it over on their forum!