Welcome, Commercial Drone Pilots!
Join our growing community today!
Sign up

Ag Spray Mapping with P4 RTK

Captainrisky

Member
Joined
Sep 28, 2022
Messages
15
Reaction score
8
Age
54
Location
NSW Australia
Hi All,

I've moved along quite a bit with my P4 RTK and Agras T20, and have successfully mapped and sprayed about 50 acres or so. It's been a good learning experience, and the actual spraying results were excellent. If I was a paying customer I'd be happy, and that's what this will be all about soon as my licenses are close to completion.

I'd like to do a bit better with my mapping though, in particular my settings on my P4 RTK.

My first maps were at 1.5 pix/cm, and it's a bit hard to make out the finer branches on trees etc. My associate is using a Matrice 300, and his maps at 1 pix/cm are (obviously) much better. I realize he has much better/faster hardware, but I'd like to map at the same resolution even if it takes longer.

I'm wondering if someone here can take me through the settings and give me a list of what will work best for my drone. I'm not looking for cinematography or survey grade, just good maps that will work well in Terra Ag for the purpose of spraying with an Agras T20/T30/T40 drone.

Things like distortion correction... on or off? I think Terra Ag does it when reconstructing, but I'm not sure.

White balance (or was that exposure)... Cloudy, sunny or farmland? And do I set that in camera settings or when I actually plan the mission?

But basically I'm hoping someone would be kind enough to take me through, step by step and set this P4 RTK up with a simple/solid set of values that works for my application. I'm using the basic controller with the built in screen and app, which is fine for me. I've also got a more advanced controller that runs a tablet and external mapping apps, but I want to learn the basics first.

I'm actually a real farmer with a very good knowledge of the local weeds and the chemicals used to control them. I hope to be a successful drone spraying contractor.

Thanks very much in advance for any help offered.
 
And what exactly is the "farmland" setting? I can't find anything about it on the internet. Is that a one size fits all setting for open land that doesn't care if it's cloudy or sunny? That would be handy.
 
I do lots of survey grade mapping with the p4rtk. Distortion correction is always off. Ive used different software for creating the orthomosaic, dronedeploy, mapsmadeeasy, webodm, aerotas, recap photo. Aerotas is good but pricey. We have autocad, so use primarily recap photo. Its pretty good. For the photo settings, i just set to sunny or cloudy.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Captainrisky
I do lots of survey grade mapping with the p4rtk. Distortion correction is always off. Ive used different software for creating the orthomosaic, dronedeploy, mapsmadeeasy, webodm, aerotas, recap photo. Aerotas is good but pricey. We have autocad, so use primarily recap photo. Its pretty good. For the photo settings, i just set to sunny or cloudy.

Thanks mate,

I don't plan to use any software other than DJI Terra (Ag), as I pay for it already and it also sets up the flight paths for my spray drone. My associate uses UCGL or something like that, but he does extremely mountainous country and says it works best for that.

I re planned the map straight off the controller last night, and distortion correction is definitely off by default, so I'll leave it that way.

I'd just like to know if there's any advantage to using the "farmland" setting, as there's literally not a single reference to it anywhere, and it must be there for a reason... the firmware's been updated many times. Only one way to find out I guess...
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
4,277
Messages
37,605
Members
5,969
Latest member
KC5JIM