Tree Counting

I’m new to this forum so I apologize if this is not the right place to post a question. I have a client with 1500 acres of trees, (Walnuts and Pistachios). He wants to hire me to map all 1500 acres. DroneDeploy had great difficulty processing my maps of only 75 acres.

Any recommendations? Any suggestions on how to price this?

Thanks!

Kevin

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Grid the map out then combine the “tiles” in QGIS. I do 100ac plots consistently with ease. How many images would you have at 75ac?

Charge what you want to make and negotiate. I’ve had the best luck with a daily price. Hourly is inconsistent and hard to wrap your head around and a lump sum always shocks the client.

Thanks so much, Mike! Incredible info there for me mate! I was unaware you could do grids, that will solve my issue. I had 750 images for 75 acres, it was 3D and my overlap was 75/85.

I hear you on the lump sum, happens to me a lot. I’ve got to try a different method, something like you’ve suggested with a daily price.

I figure I can do 100 acres in an hour into 1500 acres = 15 hours flight time. That’s best case scenario, probably 1.3 times that and probably 3 days. I’ve not flown a job this large, probably should hit my newbie multiplier on this one as well. lol

Really appreciate the comments, Michael - thank you!

Regards,

Kevin

I was looking at the QGIS program, is it difficult to combine the tiles? Looks like an awesome program, nice to see something free these days. lol

Kevin

For sure, my pleasure. 750 images allot for 75ac. What’s your altitude? Flying areas like trees and fields are hard for the system to get enough keypoints to stitch so the usual recommendation is to fly higher than normal. I typically fly at 230-250’ and would probably fly something like this at 270’ with 70/75. There’s really no reason for such high overlaps unless you are trying to create a 3D model. My guess is that you are looking primarily for the orthomosaic. At my normal settings 75ac would produce about 450 images.
Once you have all of your grid maps processed download the 4in/px orthos to the same location. Then open QGIS and locate that place. Select and drag them all to the project in the bottom window. Then you can save that as on huge image. If the 4in is just to big for your system to handle you could try going down to the 8, but you will be able to see the loss of quality.
Pretty much the same theory of why quad maps are the standard in cartography. Just too much information.
Don’t forget to include processing time! I made that mistake once, oops.

…just wanting to suggest that for large parcels (over 100 acs) I have found that quoting by the acre is more what those guys are used to… lbs. of fertilizer/acre, gallons of water/acre, % of production/acre, etc.
Hope this helps.
MOGA