DroneDeploy Reliability Questionable - GPS Camera Triggering and Resume Missions

I work with several pilots and we are talking about abandoning DroneDeploy as a pilot app for two main reasons as over time they have gotten more and more annoying to us.

#1 GPS based camera shutter triggering - In many cases when flying jobs that have buildings or trees, you need to increase the side lap and front lap as the distance between the buildings and trees and the drone is less than the distance to the ground. Because the GPS has a significant error and the error may not be consistent throughout the flight, the photo spacing, as far as the front lap is very inconsistent, sometimes to the point of leaving decent size gaps that affect the accuracy of the surface model. If the DroneDeploy apps knows the parameters of the camera, the altitude, and the drone speed, it should use a timed trigger interval rather than using GPS positioning. We compared missions with a different app that uses that method and the results were SO much better.

#2 Failing to resume mission after batter changes. This appears to be problem that has a history of coming and going. As of late, more of the pilots I’ve talked to in the past month or so are complaining of DD not resuming the mission after batter swaps. Anyone else experience this lately?

I have been saying this for years… literally. The explanation has been that “They saw problems with timing based capture and wind.” which I have never experienced in any other software. A 2-second interval has been flawless elsewhere. The other problem that I experience on every flight is that there is uneven spacing and at least 2-3 missed images. This has everything to do with what you mentioned about the inaccuracy of the onboard GPS.

I have never had a problem with it not resuming with a P4 Pro, but there was a couple version problem with it not utilizing precise position return which has now been fixed as of v4.31 on iOS.

I think what we are running into is that they are trying to progress so fast and the application has gained so many features that it is inevitable that these bugs are going to keep popping up. I don’t see the feasibility of completely leaving DroneDeploy, but I approach software a little differently and there are more than enough options to fill the gaps.