Hey everyone,
My name’s Chaz, and I’m a 38-year-old programmer taking my first steps into drone piloting and 3D mapping. I’m currently studying for my FAA Part 107 certification and plan to take the test in early January. I don’t have my first drone yet (working on it!), but I’ve spent plenty of time in simulators, so I’m eager to get started for real.
I’m based in Houston, Texas, where the skies are wide, the traffic’s wild, and there’s no shortage of interesting places to fly. I’ll be exploring not just the city but all the surrounding areas (because who doesn’t love an excuse for a good day trip?).
As I’ve been learning about drones, I ran into something I think a lot of you can relate to: processing all the images you capture into orthophotos, 3D models, and other outputs is crazy expensive. I looked into setting up OpenDroneMap (ODM) on my computer, and while it’s awesome software, it’s just not enough when you’re trying to process thousands of images—it’s slow and doesn’t scale well on one machine.
That got me thinking: What if we could share the load?
Here’s what I’m working on: I’m building something I’m calling Group Sourced ODM Rendering. It’s a community-powered system where drone pilots can process their datasets for free by sharing resources. Here’s the idea in plain English:
- You upload your drone images and choose what you need—orthophotos, 3D models, mosaics, whatever.
- The system splits up the work and distributes it across volunteer computers running ODM.
- You get your results back for free.
Here’s where it gets cool: if you contribute your own computer power to the system (by running a lightweight rendering node), you’ll earn credits over time. The more you contribute, the more credits you get, which you can use later to process your own datasets—kind of like paying it forward.
My goal is to keep this completely free to use. If people want to chip in through donations or gifts to improve the system or keep it running, that’s awesome, but it’s not required. I want this to be something that anyone—whether you’re a hobbyist or a small business—can use without breaking the bank.
Right now, I’m in the early stages of development. I’m learning all I can about setting up distributed processing with WebODM and NodeODM, building the system for task-sharing, and figuring out how to track contributions and credits.
I’d love to hear your thoughts. Have you run into the same issues with high processing costs or slow local setups? Would you be interested in contributing computing power or testing this once it’s ready?
Any tips on drone workflows, 3D mapping, or even picking a good first drone (within $1k) would be hugely appreciated too.
Thanks for reading, and I’m excited to be part of this community. Here’s to flying drones, mapping amazing places, and helping each other out along the way.
Cheers,
Chaz
