Hi you all, this is my first post. I am a noob in drones and aerial mapping, but I wanted to share my first thoughts with Mavic Air and Drone Deploy for basic agricultural mapping.
Yesterday I made my first maps with Mavic Air and I have to say that I am quite impressed with the experience. Everythig worked flawlessly and the quality of the map, at least in my opinion, is quite good.
If you are looking for a cheap alternative of mapping equipement Mavic Air is deffinetly a go.
I don’t have any experience in mapping so I am not the guy to determine objectively how good are the results. All I can say that, for me, this is a very good outcome that will be very usefull for my crop analysis.
Attached is a JPG of one of the maps I did yesterday (18,3 hectares) ¿what do you think?
Thanks for the comment Michael! How did you get the controller to work? Did you have any issues connecting the controller to the app in the pre-flight check?
Absolutelly no issues. As soon as I turned on the remote it said “drone connected, waiting for GPS lock”. Once I turned on the MA, after a few seconds it received the GPS lock and I was ready to start the mission
Are these crops planted on a precise X and Y grid? I have a Rhino App that analyzes pistachio orchards which are planted on an XY grid with 16’ x 20’ spacings with an accuracy of about 1’ over a distance of 1300’. The precise location allow placing a grid over the site with a tree in each grid. Then the height and canopy diameter can be automatically measured for each tree from the 3D mesh model and from these the volume and yield can be estimated. But this only works well if the crop is on a well defined grid. I would be interested in doing this analysis on your crop if you like and it meets this requirement. I am retired and have no commercial interest in precision agriculture (or the software for it) but want to help those who do.
Congratulations Glaso. I am estimating that the Air could handle more or less 20 hectares, considering the short battery life and the control remote maximum reliable connection. I will appreciate you can specify the following data: Site temperature, how many batteries the flights took, wind conditions, reliability of the radio (wifi) connection.
As you are doing, I am also making my first steps in drone mapping but for constructions. Very encouraging is your post. Thanks.
Actually I used just one battery for my example. The temperature was about 32 degrees celsius and almost no wind.
I have managed to map 26 hectares (100m height) with one battery, but with almost no wind. In Chile the Mavic Air operates with CE, so the range is not that good as in the US (FCC). With good conditions (countryside) I have decent signal up to 800 meters.
Thanks for your replay German. I am from Paraguay, so I though to write in Spanish, but certainly we should keep writing in English in respect to our fellow forum members.
On the matter of your flight, what uses the map will has? What about the resolution and accuracy. At a 100 I think is compromised.