Bandwagon's Drones Thread

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Bandwagon

Kolohe
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Most of our UAS mapping is done side by side with traditional survey. At least for all of our Surv/Eng projects (Natural Resources doesn't need survey on their flights).

Collecting imagery and/or lidar isn't really the problem, It's how to use it afterwards. Everyone can trace an ortho for 2d linework. Pulling out 3d linework is a lot tougher and, at this point, pretty much has to go through me because I can't get anyone else to dedicate enough brain power to learning how to use point clouds themselves. If we could get 2 or 3 drafters really up to speed on digitizing 3d point clouds, we'd be using them a lot more often (from the drone, but especially from the Trimble SX10).

As far as GIS goes, I think that we're pulling ahead of a lot of survey and/or engineering-only firms that are about our size or smaller. But we also have geotech, environmental engineering, natural resources, etc and I think it's inexcusable that these guys weren't already balls-deep into GIS before I started. There are so many calls I get now that are absolute bottom of the barrel/simple GIS requests that save project managers a huge amount of time on their budgets compared to how they were planning on doing it (and always have). This is stuff that I've been telling them about for at least 3 years, but they're just now seeing other PMs use it and call me to ask if I can help. It literally takes me about 3 hours to teach one of their staff how to do and often ends up saving somewhere in the ballpark of 4-16 hours per project. I have to keep myself from yelling "HOW FUCKING LONG HAVE I BEEN TELLING YOU...." every time I hear something like "Oh this is cool....".

So that's just the basic stuff, but the cell/tablet apps are really catching on and I'm trying to get a few more people to volunteer to learn that process. I think it takes someone that is actually interested in learning this and the efficiency gains it brings to the table, though. You're not going to have any luck tasking someone with this and expecting them to be useful if they don't find it personally interested. This is what the XLS forms look like to build a form for the mobile app
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And the automation scenario to add it to the geodatabase, generate a report, and *finally* export a KMZ file with locations, as well as make all of the photos available for download.
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This stuff is boon to field work on multiple levels and takes more work to maintain. I'm a little nervous about getting too many people using it before we have a real GIS-P with enterprise experience hired and running the show.

Plenty of other stuff like site suitability analysis and traffic hazard studies that really make sense to do in GIS over CAD. There's just really no excuse for not having a robust GIS group already up and running considering all of the different markets and services we serve. If it was only a survey shop? Sure.....GIS isn't quite as useful.
 
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Bandwagon

Kolohe
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We're tracking some excavation work here, but it's cool to see the vegetation changes. Really tight control on this one.
Excav.jpg
 
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Vepil

Gamja
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If you get a chance check out Terraflex by Trimble. We use it on 3 of our GPS receivers for data collection on our GIS projects and its pretty slick. Very easy to setup the worksheet for them to work off of, the data is uploaded to the cloud and office has it linked to the GIS before they leave the site to review.
 
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Bandwagon

Kolohe
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If you get a chance check out Terraflex by Trimble. We use it on 3 of our GPS receivers for data collection on our GIS projects and its pretty slick. Very easy to setup the worksheet for them to work off of, the data is uploaded to the cloud and office has it linked to the GIS before they leave the site to review.
Thanks vepil, I'll go take a look
 

Vepil

Gamja
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Thought I would let ya know we purchased a LiDAR unit for our drone, should be in next week. Couple engineering/survey companies around GA have the same one so we felt comfortable in buying it and having some other support local than one no one was using. We went with Rock Robotic R2A unit for our M210. We knew we could get management to sign off on a unit but not a new M300 and a LiDAR unit. This one we can at least change the mounting system if we ever upgrade the drone.

Once I have some sample data sets I will let ya know what I think. So far I know one guy with this setup and he loves the data he gets from it.

 
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Bandwagon

Kolohe
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Thought I would let ya know we purchased a LiDAR unit for our drone, should be in next week. Couple engineering/survey companies around GA have the same one so we felt comfortable in buying it and having some other support local than one no one was using. We went with Rock Robotic R2A unit for our M210. We knew we could get management to sign off on a unit but not a new M300 and a LiDAR unit. This one we can at least change the mounting system if we ever upgrade the drone.

Once I have some sample data sets I will let ya know what I think. So far I know one guy with this setup and he loves the data he gets from it.

Please do, thanks.

The photogrammetrist/ lidar tech i talk to all the time speaks very highly of the rock robotic setups.

I'm curious how much time it adds to jobs. Most flights with the phantoms are 1 field day + 0.5 - 3 office days, depending on the needs and what the site looks like. We've really got an assembly line set up and I'm hoping that lidar will fit into it well when we get there.
 

Lenardo

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Lidar SHOULD imo speed it up significantly. Most of the office time for photogrammerty is spent analyzing the pictures calculating all the point cloud and classifying what the point is tree curb car grass etc., with lidar, all the raw point cloud data should be there already. The analysis/initial office run will just by the classifying part, not compare picture 1 to 3 and 5 find same point calc xyz coord. Repeat for all pixels. It will be at POINT 5546789.87,3453456.76,123.43 what is THAT? Repeat for 10 million+ points.


My worry with lidar AND photogrammetry, you get too many points. Helps a lot for precision, but I don't NEED to know a curb is .5 high here, .45 there .55 there i need curb runs from here to there and is .5high that is 5 maybe 6 shots in 200'.


Won't stop me from eventually getting a lidar total station- like the Trimble sx10 - when the cash reserve is built back up though.


The company is mine now in all but name, our accountant suggested, for tax purposes, that we don't officially transfer the company until january. That way the year won't be split between 2 owners.
 
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Vepil

Gamja
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You don't use all the points to make the contours at least we don't. We use TopoDot to create a grid from the ground classification on non hard surfaces and map anything we need from the point cloud to create those. We plan on combining our Leica P50 scanner with the LiDAR from the drone on substations and the LNG plants we do, should be a slick setup once working together. I started out selling the Cyrax 2400 and 2500 so for me I completely comfortable working with millions of points.

As far as time it should be a bit faster in the field. You don't have to overlap paths as you do when only using the images to create a point cloud. You only need about a 20%-30% overlap to get in the 0.1' accuracy range at 60m altitude. Office time processing is a breeze if the field is collected correctly. Upload the raw data, rinex from base and photos to color the points, click one button and walk away. The software corrects the LiDAR and classifies it in one process. The issue I see is how slow the pc is processing a cloud and how slow mapping by the tech goes. The last job I mapped I did 240' x 2500' in two days at a 0.5' contour mapping.

Demo those SX10s they are very slow collecting a scan, wasn't impressed with it at all.
 

Lenardo

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trust me the sx10 would be fast compared to how we current do most of our topo's my area -most of it- is too wooded for drone topo except late fall to mid spring.
 
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Fucker

Log Wizard
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Thought I would let ya know we purchased a LiDAR unit for our drone, should be in next week. Couple engineering/survey companies around GA have the same one so we felt comfortable in buying it and having some other support local than one no one was using. We went with Rock Robotic R2A unit for our M210. We knew we could get management to sign off on a unit but not a new M300 and a LiDAR unit. This one we can at least change the mounting system if we ever upgrade the drone.

Once I have some sample data sets I will let ya know what I think. So far I know one guy with this setup and he loves the data he gets from it.

That's f'in cool.
 

Bandwagon

Kolohe
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I still prefer to do most of my surface building in a 2D view, and normally have 3 layers I switch between when I'm digitizing. It's a lot of switching back and forth, but I just started combining all 3 layers (Ortho, elevation and slope) into a single mosaic instead. Wish I'd started doing this a long time ago because I'm moving a whole lot faster without having to switch all the time. I do really want to try out a high-end 3d compilation station, though. I tried out a low end one at a tradeshow and it gave me a headache.

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Bandwagon

Kolohe
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We've been doing a ton of flights lately. 4 different pilots flying 7 large sites just this week. A lot of it is being driven by 2 project managers that, all of the sudden after 5 years, realized the value and have been including it in all of their projects. Seems ridiculous to me because one of them has had most of his team asking for it when they see other PMs use it for the last 5 years, but he was just never interested until he had a project over on my side of the state during COVID and UAS was just the best option to get what he needed on that one. I guess it's my fault for not being more convincing when pushing for adoption over the last 5 years, but I've talked with him about a dozen times over that period and he was just never interested. All of the company leadership is "very happy with the success of the UAS program" and I guess I'm happy it's had a big impact as well, but all I ever think about is how there's still a lot of untapped potential and it's never progressing as quickly as I want. There's a few specific areas of that, but one of the biggest ones is always that we have a miniscule amount of GIS users at the company and we're always going to be wasting some of the potential applications of UAS without a larger GIS userbase.

Also, I finally hired a "GIS Guy". He has about 25 years of GIS experience in the public and private sectors, and he's also a part-time GIS and UAS instructor at a community college. He's absolutely obsessed with the same stuff I am, as far as efficiency and deliverable improvements by way of new GIS tools and processes, so I'm hoping he's the right guy for the job. He'll be in a Project GIS-P role for the first 3-6 months, then transition over to a GIS Manager responsible for building our GIS group if everything goes well. If all goes well, I just hired my new boss.

edit: I was introduced to the new hire by a Photogrammetrist/GIS Developer that I met at an ASPRS workshop and have been trying to hire for the last 18 months. That guy lives on the other side of the country, but he put me in contact with the new hire because "Both of you are in driven with your 'vision' of GIS & UAS in AEC"
 
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Lanx

Oye Ve
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Bandwagon Bandwagon , i'm cleaning my gutters and having what seems like years of leafs fly over me (i'm using long extension pressure wash on ground), and i don't want to climb up so i'm thinking drone, i just ordered this, it was the cheapest 4k one for 80bucks


should be simple right?
 
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Bandwagon

Kolohe
<Silver Donator>
22,501
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Bandwagon Bandwagon , i'm cleaning my gutters and having what seems like years of leafs fly over me (i'm using long extension pressure wash on ground), and i don't want to climb up so i'm thinking drone, i just ordered this, it was the cheapest 4k one for 80bucks


should be simple right?
Uhhhhhh what now? Just to inspect the gutters?
I haven't touched any of the little cheapo drones for about 8 years now, so no idea what's decent and what's not. In my experience, everything in the $100-$1000 range is dogshit unless it's DJI.

If you're planning to blow the gutters out with the prop wash from that thing, make sure to have your wife film & narrate the experience.
 

Lanx

Oye Ve
<Prior Amod>
60,072
131,374
Uhhhhhh what now? Just to inspect the gutters?
I haven't touched any of the little cheapo drones for about 8 years now, so no idea what's decent and what's not. In my experience, everything in the $100-$1000 range is dogshit unless it's DJI.

If you're planning to blow the gutters out with the prop wash from that thing, make sure to have your wife film & narrate the experience.
actually i went ahead and got the model up with "hover" now