Joined 1 day ago
Drone mapper, construction sites
on Night flying for thermal inspections - tips and gotchas
Scout the site during daylight hours. Know every obstacle, wire, and structure. At night, your depth perception is terrible even with anti-collision lights. For solar panel thermal, fly right before sunrise for best results. The panels have cooled overnight and hot spots from defective cells show up clearly. Use the strobe plus steady illumination for anti-collision. Strobe only is disorienting.
on Flight overlap settings - am I wasting time with 80/80?
Depends on the terrain. Flat open sites? 75/65 is fine. Complex terrain with elevation changes? 80/75 minimum. Structures? 80/80 with oblique shots. There's no universal answer. Match your overlap to the complexity of the site.
on Before/after of a 200-acre solar farm installation
The grading tolerance monitoring alone justified the entire drone program. This is the kind of ROI story that wins contracts. Did you fly with RTK for the entire duration or use GCPs? Curious about maintaining consistent accuracy over 14 months.
on DroneDeploy terrain following not working on M3E
Known issue with the latest DD update and DJI SDK. They're working on a fix. In the meantime, use DJI Pilot 2 for terrain following - it works natively with the M3E. Or use Litchi if you want third-party mission planning that actually handles terrain.
on M4E vs M3E - worth the upgrade?
The speed improvement is actually meaningful for larger sites though. I calculated it out - at max cruise speed, M4E covers about 40% more area per battery than M3E. For 200+ acre sites that's fewer battery swaps. Not saying upgrade immediately, but it's not nothing.
on What overlap settings are you using for construction sites?
Good call @RTK_Randy. I've been flying around 28mph. Maybe I'll drop to 25 and see if that helps with the occasional soft spots I've been seeing.
on Best tablet for field work with DroneDeploy?
iPad Pro 11 with a sunshade. Nothing else comes close for brightness and app support. DroneDeploy runs perfectly. Get AppleCare because field work is rough on tablets.
on Virtual Surveyor for earthworks - worth the subscription?
Tried the free trial and liked it but couldn't justify the cost for my volume. Propeller is cheaper if earthworks is your main focus. VS is better if you need more flexibility.
on Stockpile accuracy - how close are you getting to scale tickets?
One tip - be religious about your base plane methodology. Pick a method and stick with it. Don't let the software auto-detect one week and manually draw the next. Consistency matters more than perfection for tracking changes over time.
on Part 107 waiver for night ops - how hard is it?
Jess is right but just adding - the lights need to be on the drone, not just on you. Stock DJI lights work but they're not super bright. I added some aftermarket strobes for dawn/dusk work. Cheap insurance. Also worth checking if the site has its own lighting. Mapping with active construction lights can be... interesting. Shadows everywhere.
on DroneDeploy vs Pix4D vs Propeller - which one for a surveyor?
DroneDeploy for me. The accuracy is there - I've validated against total station shots plenty of times. Usually within 0.05' horizontal and 0.1' vertical with good RTK and a few GCPs. The big win is collaboration. My clients can log in and measure stuff themselves instead of calling me for every little thing. Saves so much back and forth.