Site mapping with 6" accuracy

[Darcy]

Hi, I worked for a landscaper a long time and used DraganFlyers to pop up over a site and get video, then would pull frames from that and manually stitch them together for the background on a CAD drawing. They were accurate enough to be helpful. The DraganFlyers were flimsy, hard to fly, and video was more like CCTV than a 12 MegaPixel image.

I recently got this yard, can't call it a map or a survey, by hand-flying under the trees at about 75 feet, no ground control points, and sent the pics off to DroneDepoloy. I've done it a few times and hope to get better. You can see it's off a bit, but is this 'good enough' for what you're doing? I'm not working with landscaping anymore, but one like this was used by a tent company that put up a tent that pretty much covered the whole yard for a wedding. You can see the patterns in the grass between the tables in this shot, taken after the wedding and the tent was taken down. The owner was chagrined to see how far out of whack he got the fence around that fire pit.

Since most every yard I expect to be visiting around here is under trees I'd seldom get a chance to let the drone fly over the trees and get what I need, so I'm practicing this. I'm hoping Skydio 2 will be able to automate the task with its advanced obstacle avoidance, meanwhile I fly these by hand, watch the FPV and click the shutter button for about 2/3 overlap...

View attachment 2438

What model of drone did you use for this? I'd say the image detail is lots good enough for our application. But, like you say, it's off a bit, so any distance or area measurements may be skewed because of that.

 

[Earthman]

Thanks for the feedback! Yes, that's great advice to use longer distances for verification measurements. We might have to invest in a Leica Distance Measurer for taking those.

You’ll have less trouble with a 300-ft survey or construction tape. I have several laser distance measuring devices, including a high powered Leica that’s supposed to be good for 300-ft in bright sun, but it doesn’t always work. Take both like I do.

 

[Earthman]

Hi, I worked for a landscaper a long time and used DraganFlyers to pop up over a site and get video, then would pull frames from that and manually stitch them together for the background on a CAD drawing. They were accurate enough to be helpful. The DraganFlyers were flimsy, hard to fly, and video was more like CCTV than a 12 MegaPixel image.

I recently got this yard, can't call it a map or a survey, by hand-flying under the trees at about 75 feet, no ground control points, and sent the pics off to DroneDepoloy. I've done it a few times and hope to get better. You can see it's off a bit, but is this 'good enough' for what you're doing? I'm not working with landscaping anymore, but one like this was used by a tent company that put up a tent that pretty much covered the whole yard for a wedding. You can see the patterns in the grass between the tables in this shot, taken after the wedding and the tent was taken down. The owner was chagrined to see how far out of whack he got the fence around that fire pit.

Since most every yard I expect to be visiting around here is under trees I'd seldom get a chance to let the drone fly over the trees and get what I need, so I'm practicing this. I'm hoping Skydio 2 will be able to automate the task with its advanced obstacle avoidance, meanwhile I fly these by hand, watch the FPV and click the shutter button for about 2/3 overlap...

View attachment 2438

Nice photo. I have not had to fly manually under trees, but will probably have to someday. However, I've been tinkering with telescopic pole-mounted, gimbaled cameras for difficult to fly situations and 3D scanning using oblique photo photogrammetric techniques.