This is the deal:
I’ve been flying lots of missions using DroneDeploy’s excellent, second-to-none service with my P4P 2.0, but due to high cost for the service and not that many customers I have to look at the expenses to get this to turn around. I have been discussing with DD about some kind of tickety based system as, for instance, Maps Made Easy are using. Pay per use. This would be so nice to me, beeing a small time drone operator living in a part of the world with only five flyable months per year…
I have give up discussing with DD. They are quite open telling me that their service is for big operators. No small actors, and definitely no ticket based system. The wont even consider a limited account for, lets say, four months.
I am, however, going to use the app and the post processing is going be done using RHINO, thanks to @SolarBarn who kindly pointed the direction and also provided me with a couple of Python scripts to use with the software…
Back to my question.
As mentioned I have been flying P4P using the app, but recently purchased a MAVIC 2 Enterprise Zoom, and wanted to give the drone a try doing some capturing. Do I have to change drone somwhere in the app, or is it just going to work? I don’t think I will leave P4P for mapping, but just wanted to give the new drone a try.
Is my MAVIC 2 going to work with the app, and do I have to change any settings?
This is in discussion for sure. There is allot of business out there if they can accept this kind of use.
As for Maps Made Easy there are a few things that need to be recognized.
Their 3D Models are not survey accurate. After testing a stakeout of the MME surface that we exported the variance was +/- 15cm and the same map surface from DroneDeploy was +/- 7cm.
Points clouds are decimated and still have noise. This is why stakeouts are further off and if you expect a really nice model with allot of points you have to edit it in another software.
DEM and NDVI geotiffs are reduced in size by 50%
Stockpile measurements were more than 5% off. Result of the above.
They only support iOS.
This one won’t matter to occasional pilots, but there is virtually no user or program management.
Of the 3 maps that I processed on the demo 2 of them did not process correctly (had missing tiles) and it took 3 emails to get someone to look at it.
GCP algorithm doesn’t seem right. My RMS values were always different than what I got from testing in DroneDeploy, Metashape and Correlator 3D.
All just my opinions and some of my experiences, but our use-case may be different than yours so just take it for what it is.
Hmmm…
I’ve only made two - three “unscientific” trials with MME, and didn’t see the poblems you are pointing out.
I like the Android app from Dronedeploy and going to cotninue using it for capturing. Haven’t even looked at MME:s app. Didn’t know it existed…
This is surely a problem for me. DD is second to none talking about customer support (for paying users) and quality of service.
But the problems are obvious: Too expensive for a small time drone actor. I simply don’t have any customers for six-seven months per year but still have to pay the subscription. Otherwise my account gets locked (and the items I paid for [=my property]) getting confiscated.
I’d be so happy if they could offer med either a ticket based system or, let’s say, four months subscription June - September.
Do you know of any other actors out there that could help me? (Might be a problem with this question thinking about who owns this forum…:-/ )
MME’s maps look fine on the surface and that suffices the majority of the needs of allot of people, but “scientifically” the numbers don’t add up and they didn’t seem to like corridor-type projects.
I would check out Carlson PhotoCapture. Very good pay/GB option. You can plan and fly with whatever you want. All they do is process and host for collaboration. I’ve been a customer of theirs for a LONG time in regards to other software and can vouch that they know their stuff.
the numbers don’t add up and they didn’t seem to like corridor-type projects.