P4Pro is a great solution. Just got it. We are a mapping company and I have flown them all, been doing this for 7 yrs. The enclosed quality report shows the results we have been seeing on average. This particular flight was at 45 meters altitude, avg. ground speed of 9m/s, flying a 65% frontlap, 60% sidelap, getting 1.3cm accuracy. Photos taken in 4:3 aspect ratio, but should achieve better sidelap at 3:2 ratio (tomorrows flight). Flight planning done in DD, flown with ios and processed thru Pix4d. We are happy with getting to a <1cm accuracy level.
In reply to the above post, do not use LITCHI! It will not allow for the following. For me, the most important is the ability to import a KML file. My polygon is already done and based on my parameters, the flight is created, i.e. DD or Map Pilot. No "drawing" points on a tablet, etc.or creating a waypoint flight on the tablet. Offline mission creating is done. Mission planner is great for Pixhawk applications, but be ready to have a PhD (we use MP also). The down and dirty solution (ease of use, workflow, etc.) is staying with the DJI product.
Its not too low ? The standard should be 80% and 60% sidelap but I think its better 80% frontlap and 75% sidelap... you can get very strong photo alignment in the first stage of editing (with only the onboard Gps data)
Also the speed of 9 m/s at 45 m is high... the speed should be like 1 m/s for each 10 m altitude...
And you can use Mission Planner and then Litchi with P4 without hardware mods
Pete, look at the attachment I posted above on my reply. It is a quality report of today's latest flight. With the current settings, I will get great data, 23 acres, 9:40 min flight time, 281 images with importing a ready to go polygon (KML). Look over my report and let me know if you find any problems with it.
Workflow: Create poly, creat flight plan in DD, fly, post process in Pix4d = done.
Workflow: Create poly, creat flight plan in DD, fly, post process in Pix4d = done.
Its a fairly natural, regular and "simple" morphology so, even with low overlaps and high flight speeds, you get good results.
If you fly over lands with high altitude changes and lots of "artificial things" if you do not keep high overlaps and low speeds you can't get good results.
Question! If I have the P3S and I want to do this field mapping, how should I approach it. It has limited range and sensors. Would I be better off getting a couple high up images to look at then have to send the drone on a mission and stitch a map? The size of the fields would require 2-4 battery's.
You can use a software like drone deploy or propeller aero and they will stitch it for you. I use drone deploy's mobile app for my automated mapping flights, also you could fly a little higher and that will reduce the number of passes to get the whole field
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Check out the Maps MAde Easy app. does a good job of stitching multiple images, allows you to design your mission before you go into the field and you can enter GCPs to increase geo-location accuracy. For small maps (< 50 acres at 2 inch GSD), you can process them in MME at no chartge. Only issue is that it is only available on IOS devices.
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