Bandwagon's Drones Thread
- Thread starter hodj
- Start date
Damn wish I had open expanses for more drone work. Been busy runnjjng t he co and tryjjnvv to build up the finances.
right now we are SLOWLY building up the funds.
just had to send our main total station for repair, construction worker took out a leg of t he tripod, the leg closest to to foundation hole(about 3 feet from hole) since the transit person is 6'4". The leg slid towards hole then toppled in. It full about 7 feet landed handle of TS down. Tribrach is toast. The total station (sokkia im50) SEEMS to work right EXCEPT for the laser pointer and the internal leveling sensors we slapped a new tribrach on it at the office and if the tribrach bubble is centered the TS is not and vise versa. Hopefully it just need adjustment and calibration The laser spins in a ~0.1 circle instead of not moving previously.
right now we are SLOWLY building up the funds.
just had to send our main total station for repair, construction worker took out a leg of t he tripod, the leg closest to to foundation hole(about 3 feet from hole) since the transit person is 6'4". The leg slid towards hole then toppled in. It full about 7 feet landed handle of TS down. Tribrach is toast. The total station (sokkia im50) SEEMS to work right EXCEPT for the laser pointer and the internal leveling sensors we slapped a new tribrach on it at the office and if the tribrach bubble is centered the TS is not and vise versa. Hopefully it just need adjustment and calibration The laser spins in a ~0.1 circle instead of not moving previously.
I wish. My firm is tiny 6 employees now we do between 7 and 10k in invoicing a week so about 450k annual.
Payroll, work car payments etc eats 90% of that plus I was on vacation for 2 weeks this not as much came in while I was gone(only I do invoicing). I have ~12k in outstanding invoicing out atm and another 30k in upcoming invoicing for ongoing projects but the city(Boston) is killing me on turn around on submittals it is taking almost 2 months post submittal for approvals. Prior to COVID approvals were taking 2 weeks post submittal.
My office manager imo makes too much but I cannot do anything about it. Step mother and one stipulation in the will for me getting the company is she has a job until she doesn't want it anymore.
Payroll, work car payments etc eats 90% of that plus I was on vacation for 2 weeks this not as much came in while I was gone(only I do invoicing). I have ~12k in outstanding invoicing out atm and another 30k in upcoming invoicing for ongoing projects but the city(Boston) is killing me on turn around on submittals it is taking almost 2 months post submittal for approvals. Prior to COVID approvals were taking 2 weeks post submittal.
My office manager imo makes too much but I cannot do anything about it. Step mother and one stipulation in the will for me getting the company is she has a job until she doesn't want it anymore.
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What's the best drone for under $1,000? It would be for doing great pics and videos of the wonderful spots around my island.
Bandwagon
Kolohe
- 23,100
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Vepil
Gamja
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Yeah at this point we are increasing everything nearly 100% and getting it signed and paid on delivery. Crazy how much money is being tossed around. Working 60 hour weeks for months and still 3 weeks behind, fuck I worked my one day a year I was supposed to be guaranteed to be lazy fathers day.
Vepil
Gamja
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Bandwagon
Might want to take a look at Rock Cloud trial. They have figured out how to strip align the L1 for a tighter more accurate LiDAR result. Harrison the founder taught the guy that designed the L1. He says he also knows the algorithm and the issues it creates and has fixed it on the Rock Cloud. Dunno how much is true but worth checking out since they give a 14 day trial account.
"The Rock Cloud makes your L1 lidar data better than by just using DJI Terra. This is by a process of Strip Alignment. Over time the L1's onboard Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) drifts and causes alignment issues across your dataset. By combining your LiDAR data and the SBET trajectory that DJI Terra generates we are able to mitigate the IMU drift and apply corrections to your LiDAR data!"
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Bandwagon
Kolohe
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Vepil, this is the same thing that my friend has me doing in microstation/terrascan with some custom scripts. I'm still on trial version of all the software though. Since I'm getting ready to buy the licenses, I wouldn't mind trying out Rock cloud. Do you have a share link you can send me to a project?
Might want to take a look at Rock Cloud trial. They have figured out how to strip align the L1 for a tighter more accurate LiDAR result. Harrison the founder taught the guy that designed the L1. He says he also knows the algorithm and the issues it creates and has fixed it on the Rock Cloud. Dunno how much is true but worth checking out since they give a 14 day trial account.
"The Rock Cloud makes your L1 lidar data better than by just using DJI Terra. This is by a process of Strip Alignment. Over time the L1's onboard Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) drifts and causes alignment issues across your dataset. By combining your LiDAR data and the SBET trajectory that DJI Terra generates we are able to mitigate the IMU drift and apply corrections to your LiDAR data!"
And if I send you some L1 data, can you upload it to the cloud and give me access to the processed results? or does it cost you money per-project?
Vepil
Gamja
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It will cost me money to process it and we let our account expire as we don't use it enough to justify it currently. That may change with the addition of GEOSLAM that they are offering with the lidar package we have. The biggest reason is I am reviewing a software that auto generates breaklines on point clouds. I am trying to determine with VR Mesh and TopoDot if we even need it besides for geoslam stuff.
I would email their support and see if they will give you some tokens with the trial account. They usually are pretty good about that stuff especially if you have a small site to try it on.
here is their community forum for the L1
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Bandwagon
Kolohe
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Gotcha, thanks. I'll just try it directly through them.It will cost me money to process it and we let our account expire as we don't use it enough to justify it currently. That may change with the addition of GEOSLAM that they are offering with the lidar package we have. The biggest reason is I am reviewing a software that auto generates breaklines on point clouds. I am trying to determine with VR Mesh and TopoDot if we even need it besides for geoslam stuff.
I would email their support and see if they will give you some tokens with the trial account. They usually are pretty good about that stuff especially if you have a small site to try it on.
here is their community forum for the L1
Good luck with the auto-breakline generation. I have yet to see anything that comes even close to being useful, other than from terrestrial scans. Let me know if it works well for you.
I'm installing Microstation right now, still planning to go the Microstation + Terrasolid route.
Let me know if you want some GeoSLAM datasets to play with. We rented one last month and I think got about 16 scans out of it. None of them are georeferenced or colorized though. Here's 3x I had uploaded - GeoSLAM – Google Drive
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Vepil
Gamja
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Thanks downloading them now just in case. Come August firmware update these rock drone lidar will do geoslam. Will be interesting to see how they work, we are more interested in using them to walk up/down each creeks bank tops during the summer when canopies are so dense filling in the lidar data.
Bandwagon
Kolohe
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I spent most of the day going through the L1 workflow again, getting all set up in Microstation and terrasolid. You should let me run one of your point clouds through here too
Vepil
Gamja
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If we are above the area we are flying we can get over a mile, if we are below it with a lot of tree's between us we see about 3000. In the mountains when we were above the drones flight we got a mile plus.
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Bandwagon
Kolohe
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Hmm. Maybe I was just having a lot of interference this week on my site.
I have so much fucking work stacked up for this thing. Just got notice to proceed on a 14 mile corridor a couple hours ago, too. This is the one that's a gravel road going into the Raj'neesh/ Wild Wild Country site, and they want it yesterday. I'm in desperate need of some backup all of the sudden. I'm trying to steal 2x of our survey party chiefs to be 100% UAS, but the survey departments are really short staffed right now too, so the survey managers keep telling me I can have the guys "after things slow down", which is never.
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Vepil
Gamja
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I feel ya, just finished 20 miles of lidar and ortho delivered today. I'm tired and grumpy between having worked way too much overtime and having to help in the field. We are staying super steady and anything that comes in as a surprise, remember this old job well we need exhibits and legals done for 40 parcels in a week just crushes moral. Just as I think I am catching up, I have another three projects dropped on me with a smile. I cant complain too much just got a $9k surprise bonus and will get a bigger one at the end of August.
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Bandwagon
Kolohe
- 23,100
- 60,500
Yea it's tough to bitch too much when it's stuff I like doing, but all of the sudden I can't keep up with the requests. I think I've had a pretty efficient, assembly-line workflow for the past 7 years or so. But the ramp-up in need is kind of breaking the process and I don't have anyone ready to help out.