Comments

• 

  IronDOME April 29, 2016 at 2:16am

  Hi Trisan

   

  I do not agree 100% with your points.

  I have seen LiDAR system that are base on VLP16 which is a $8000 sensor, addition of GNSS and IMU and other few integration aspects suddenly the whole thing becomes 10 times more expensive? It is typical of technology, when something new comes out, it usually overpriced at the beginning.

   

  With rights to flight altitude, I'm not sure which country you are referring. But if you are from the US the FAA provides 500feet AGL as maximum flight altitude, so the 300 feet you are referring to is not really an advantage as you have tried to put. Because there are many cases when I have does my flight in remote places in Africa and I made justification to fly up to 1200feet and it always been accepted because it is unknown in those remote places there is almost no air traffic and if there would nothing would be flying anything below 10k feet. In situations like this I would not be able to take advantage of that.

   

  Thanks
• 

  Tristan April 29, 2016 at 12:58am

  Hi IronDome,

  I agree that lidar systems are expensive. However it not only includes the scanner, but also high grade GNSS and IMU, and software to get accurate survey a few minutes after flight.

  Flying as high is possible is efficient to cover larger areas, but at the same time UAV regulation often limits the flying altitude to 100m, line of sight, which is suited for small sensors.

  All the best,
• 

  IronDOME April 28, 2016 at 9:11am

  Tristan

  People know about the LiDAR units yours and others. The main problem is the cost. It at the moment really hard to justify the investment especially for most of us who are small businesses. For large corporations, it may not be a problem.

  I have looked at many different LiDAR sensor options nothing is below 75kUSD. The cheaper once have smaller range 50 to 100m, which makes it not cost effective as you have to fly pretty low, so covering large areas can be challenging.

  Thanks
• 

  Tristan April 28, 2016 at 6:47am

  Hi,

  We are producing Lidar mapping payloads (< 2 kg) since a few years.

  Big advantage compare to photogrammetry is that it can see and map the ground below vegetation.

  More infos here : http://www.yellowscan.fr
• Moderator

  MarioSpeedwagon April 10, 2016 at 6:25pm

  Has anyone been able to get vector layers or markers from a mapbox map to actually display on your mapbox map in tower? 

  I have a mapbox project with raster layers that DO display over the top of the basemap, but any markers or .kml, .shp files will not display in tower, but they will display in the browser. 

  Pretty damn frustrating. 
• 

  whynotflydisquad March 12, 2016 at 7:35am

  THANK YOU Michael !
• Developer

  Michael Oborne March 11, 2016 at 9:34pm

  put an ROI as the first point, at the center of the building, then use the wp circle like you already did
• 

  whynotflydisquad March 11, 2016 at 7:54pm

  i want to map this building how can i make the front of the multi rotor face inward to capture images of the building ?
• 

  Keith Geary March 19, 2015 at 6:42am

  Hi Aaron,

  I've yet to start using a multirotor, but I've also found it very important to overshoot the area you want to map and then manually delete any image that have the slightest angles, otherwise the edges and corners of the image are "curled up" and although the central part is accurate, the map does not look as good as when the roads, paths, hedges are lined up to the base map.

  Keep up the good work, it looks like we're flying similar kit, SW2013 and a multirotor, I've just got a SkyHeroSpy900Y6, fitted with a Pixhawk FC and Sony QX1 in a 2D brushless gimbal.

  Regards,

  Keith,
• Aaron Serafinowicz March 19, 2015 at 6:19am

  Another aerial map of a construction site that has sat for several years without progress. This is also a good representation of how satellite images are out of date online. This was flown on March 12, 2015. In comparison to the map I posted the other day, lighting makes a big difference. Some camera adjustments may help compensate. Flown with: Multirotor, Time: 11min 41 sec, Camera: Canon S100, Coverage: 51 Acres, Altitude: 100m

  Some interesting results I found. I pulled the geo-referenced tiff into Global Mapper and checked the GCPs. They were all correct. I then started looking at Google Earth Pro. When checking the outer edges the North and South are off. You can see how the roads and the houses do not match up. It turns out that because the camera is mounted on a fixed base vibration dampening mount and the flight path it flew with the top and bottom having the turns on the map North and South it gave some odd angels and threw off the top and bottom edges of the map. I flew this triggered by distance connected to the Pixhawk FC. This was a Multirotor HEX so I did not add overshoot like I would with a plane. I'm thinking with a fixed mount there will need to be overshoot of 10 - 15 meters?

  Tylertown Road 20150312

  Wings of Technology

  

  Tylertown Road 20150312

  Construction site