I recently came across a really awesome app for my new favorite tech, the DJI Phantom 4. The app/service is called DroneDeploy and offers pre-planned autonomous flights over a specified area.
Firstly you install the DroneDeploy app (iOS & Android) on your phone, which allows you to plan your flight. Once you have done your planning, which can take a little while to get 100%, you then upload the images that have been taken to the DroneDeploy website.
The results of the flight are then published in a number of formats including 2D Mapping, 3D mapping & modelling, Agricultural Mapping & Terrain & Elevation Mapping. I recently did a flight over an area, called Sugar Rush Park, in Ballito, and here are some of the results.
You will see in the below embed you can zoom in quite a bit and get high a very high resolution image for the 2D Mapping
You can zoom in on the above image and pan around with your mouse. Although some of the textures seem to look a bit funny, you can fix this by uploading more images of the flight. All of this done with a drone!! Amazing.
The other great feature of Drone Deploy is very useful for the Agricultural sector. The software allows you to analyze crops using some serious technology. I don’t understand all the ins & outs, but the software offers a number of farming Algorithms such as NDVI and VARI to analyze crops. This is what the image looks like once it has been processed.
Obviously there is a cost for this software, which comes in at $99 per month for the Pro Package. They do offer a 30 Day Trial which is handy to get your head around the software, as well as a Free Package which allows you to do 5 flights a month but no exporting. Check out some of the FAQ’s
All in all, this is an amazing piece of software, unfortunately can’t afford it at the moment, but hopefully I will get to play around with it a bit more in the future.
Disclaimer: I was not asked to review DroneDeploy, and this is my personal opinion of the software