Need to decide on a plan

Data Processing - Discussion and Q&A
#1

Hi,
I work in the forest industry and ive been testing DD. My 1st flight was a big success so i introduced this option to my work. Theyvwere impressed. My 2nd flight DD app recommended an altitude and i set it and although collision avoidance was on it clipped a tree.
I fly manual now as i cant trust the flightvapp anymore but the annotations and stitchingbis what is important to me.
With the pro plan ive found you cant export the shapefiles but DD told me to get the ‘geoJson’ app and it did work…once. now ive tried exporting my polygons/lines and points and its inconsistent. Anyone else have this issue? I know with the business plan you can export shapefiles…anyone have success with that? (We put the polygons etc into arcmap for our forestry maps)

Also lately maps dont sew in some photos even though the photos were taken as i can touch on the dot and the source photo shows up…and finally im getting other media from different projects popping up in different maps.

This is frustrating to test in order to buy the licence needed as i need to get this right and glitches are not what we need.

Can anyone throw me some advice?
I need to be able to export annotations consistently and ive read here that there is a “fair use” block being put on people…i cant have that either.

Appreciate any help/tips.
5

#2

Hi @Fivebyfive, welcome!

Sorry to hear this, but unfortunately it is something that the majority of us go or have gone through. As part of a preflight check I would highly recommend that you takeoff from the planned home spot and with the camera at 0-degrees horizon level rotate it 360-degrees looking carefully for anything that may be near the horizon. If something is in question then manually fly there without changing altitude and check again. We do this the first time we visit any project and every time we lower an altitude. I suspect being in forestry this is going to be particularly important because even if you had used terrain following you may not know the relationship between the growth and the SRTM elevations.

With regards to all the shapefile usage if you have ArcMap why not do all your annotations there rather than DroneDeploy? All you have to do then is load the GeoTIFF instead of trying to import various shaprefiles.

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#3

Great advice, thank you. And no i wouldnt use terrain follow as there are ‘leave trees’ left behind in cutblocks which can be distasterous.
Flying manual seems to be ok for now.
As for exporting the geotiffs, yes i did suggest that to my work yet we would be doing the job twice as i draw in the annotations in DD. I guess all could be done in arcmap but gis and uav are separate departments and we are trying to do this within the new uav dept.

Ive read that folks are getting “fair use blocked” in the pro licence so that alone scares me so most likely we would just go with a business license and thatvway shapefile exporting is supported.

I appreciate your reply and tips, thanks so much.

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#4

I had this happen a few years ago. In my case the problem was I had to launch from near the low point on a steep hill side. I thought I had set the altitude high enough for the hill, but I did not include enough additional height for some tall trees remaining on the top portion. The battery died before the locator option could home in on the downed craft. An expensive lesson.

Michael’s suggest is great. Start with a 360 sweep to check.

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