Simple ortho stitching app with free export

[2nd2non]

I’ve got some jobs where they simply want a stitch ortho image file for simple tracking construction progress. That’s it, nothing more, nothing less. Does anyone know of a cheap or free app that will do this (ie. Not Drone deploy)?

 

[Tennessee Drone Services]

How many images are you looking to stitch?

 

[2nd2non]

How many images are you looking to stitch?

Probably 50-100. I tried 250 with Microsoft ICE, but it didn’t work. So figure I should try with fewer images

 

[Dave Pitman]

I've successfully processed 375 images with ICE fwiw. They were captured with 80% overlap.

 

[2nd2non]

I've successfully processed 375 images with ICE fwiw. They were captured with 80% overlap.

What settings did you use in ICE? I tried it in auto detect and it didn’t show everything

 

[Rasit]

Maps Made Easy

 

[Dave Pitman]

What settings did you use in ICE? I tried it in auto detect and it didn’t show everything

Yes, Auto detect for me as well. What is the subject matter and what overlaps did you use on capture?

 

[Dave Pitman]

Maps Made Easy

MME is probably not going to be free with the amount of images he needs to process. But it would be reasonable.

 

[2nd2non]

Yes, Auto detect for me as well. What is the subject matter and what overlaps did you use on capture?

It was a new housing development. The problem is it only showed a vertical sliver of the overall area. I couldn’t get it to show a wider area. I only tried once, maybe I should do it again. Front/side overlap was around 70-75

 

[Dave Pitman]

Buildings should be a high enough contrast subject to work with that overlap. If you want to dropbox a sub-set of your image set, I could run them through ICE here to see if it will work. May give you another data point.

 

[Rasit]

MME is probably not going to be free with the amount of images he needs to process. But it would be reasonable.

I have used MME numerous times with less than 100 images for free.

 

[Dave Pitman]

I have used MME numerous times with less than 100 images for free.

Sure if a p3p or Mavic. A p4p not so much.

 

[2nd2non]

Buildings should be a high enough contrast subject to work with that overlap. If you want to dropbox a sub-set of your image set, I could run them through ICE here to see if it will work. May give you another data point.

I was able to run it again and got it to work after clearing space on my hard drive.
Which projection do you use; Orthographic?
Have you tried less overlap with success to reduce number of images and processing time?
How do you save as JPEF or tiff? I seem to only get option for Photoshop.

 

[Dave Pitman]

I was able to run it again and got it to work after clearing space on my hard drive.
Which projection do you use; Orthographic?
Have you tried less overlap with success to reduce number of images and processing time?
How do you save as JPEF or tiff? I seem to only get option for Photoshop.

I usually use orthographic or perspective for nadir, which ever looks better to me (subjective). I save as a .jpg at highest quality.

Note that the results from ICE are decent but not as 'nadir' as the processed image produced by the dedicated platforms. What I mean by that is that on some things you will get glimpses of the side of objects where as with a true nadir solution you don't see that if you know what I mean. For general use it is acceptable. If you are experienced at looking at orthoimagery this will be apparent but if you are not it probably isn't that noticeable.

 

[Oyibo VFX]

I've used Maps Made Easy a couple of times. But it crashed two drones. Just stopped flying mid flight and two birds dropped out of the sky. I've stopped using it. Although I have a full licence

 

[Richard R]

I've used Maps Made Easy a couple of times. But it crashed two drones. Just stopped flying mid flight and two birds dropped out of the sky. I've stopped using it. Although I have a full licence

I've used MME many times on all 3 of my P3As with no problems. Recently even had my stem students plan and fly missions to map the school property. They flew all of their missions flawlessly. BTW, the MME folks had no problem with my students setting up accounts and processing their maps for free.

 

[Rasit]

I have used MME for almost 100 missions, with a P3P and a P4P without a problem. 40% of these are over 100 acre/2battery flights. I always start up with the DJI app to run through my checklist first, then start up MME, and upload the mission. Once everything is good I close the DJI app before heading up to planned altitude.

 

[Oyibo VFX]

I use the mapping mode on Autopilot and processing on MME. Works fine for me

 

[HawkView]

I assume you are referring to their Map Pilot flight app?

It has worked well for me on a monthly project mapping 250 acres of a quarry for stockpile inventory.

My goto app is DroneDeploy, but this quarry has a 500' elevation variation so I need the Terrain Aware feature of Map Pilot (best $10 I ever spent!) It takes four batteries to complete each month and never had a drone drop from the sky. The only problem is that cell reception is almost non-existent and the Terrain Aware feature needs to download the data before the start of each flight, so I burn at least 5% of each battery waiting for the download to complete. Over time I have found the best pile to stand on top of to get any cell reception!

I've used Maps Made Easy a couple of times. But it crashed two drones. Just stopped flying mid flight and two birds dropped out of the sky. I've stopped using it. Although I have a full licence