Mapping with zoom feature
Hi everyone, this may seem like a basic question, but thought I would throw it out to everyone to see the answers.
If I want to use the zoom in my M3E Thermal for mapping grids (assume 2x zoom), I know I can set the camera zoom in the commands section of a plan, however the mapping overlaps will all be worked out on the 1x basic zoom. So if I want to get a 10% side overlap with video transects at 50m, if I use a 2x zoom command and have the drone at 100m (to avoid obstacles), and bump up the horizontal overlap to 55% instead of 10% will this be the equivalent?
Also when I pause the mission to do a battery change, when it resumes the map, will it automatically go back to 2x zoom, even though the command for that is before the mapping command?
As I have the DJI RC pro as the remote, I cant seem to put dronelink into the classic config rather than the modern config, therefore I cant change the cameras from wide to zoom to thermal through dronelink, and have to open the DJI app after each battery change to setup the cameras needed, then force quit the DJI app and continue on with dronelink. Is there a way to get the classic view on the RC pro or is this not available?
Cheers,
Comments
7 comments
It's an interesting question. But...a question that occurs to me is..why do you need to do that?
Unless I'm mistaken, the zoom on the thermal camera is a digital zoom, so by zooming in you are loosing quality. I believe you could capture the same mission, at the same altitude, without zoom and basically get the same quality after you had processed everything.
re. the classic dashboard. I don't believe that is available anymore. I don't see it on my iOS device either.
Happy to be corrected...
I can confirm the old Classic dashboard went by way of the dodo sometime ago. 🦤
classic doesn't show on my Android either, think it's been gone some time
Thanks guys, the rationale is basically we will be flying in fairly rugged areas, purely to identify feral deer. So we are using the mapping missions as such to get the transects, but using the video to record everything. We aren't actually producing maps at all.
We are doing some trials this week, but was preempting the need to fly closer to the ground to identify the deer with the thermal camera, without actually flying closer, alleviating the risk associated with tall trees, power lines, deviating altitude due to mission length etc.
Our baseline is 60m height, if this proves to be too high to confidently ID the deer, then I want to be able to get closer to the ground to get the confidence, without actually getting closer to the ground. So instead of dropping down to 50m, if I can go to 100m with 2x zoom, that may solve the problem. Similarly if this is still too far away, dropping to 80m with 2x zoom for the equivalent of 40m height would be feasible.
Didn't realise about the classic dashboard, all the help pages still refer to it as to how to swap cameras in a multi camera drone setup... Anyone know if this functionality is on the cards for the new modern dashboard? Would solve a lot of problems with these enterprise drones that have thermal and multispectral cameras in them.
Cheers,
Michael Porritt
Got it.
Are you aware of the target distance field?
By default, this is set to the altitude of the flight, but allows you to change it for situation such as flying above a roof where the target distance (and therefore changing the overlap requirement) is closer.
It seems to me you could use this feature to adjust the overlaps for your situation.
For example, if we assume that at 2x zoom it is the equivalent of flying half has high then you could change the target distance to half the flight altitude and the overlaps will be recalculated based on that. In your case, if you are flying at 60m, you can set the target distance to 30m and that should give you what you need (I think).
Hope that helps.
Thanks Barry - I wasn't aware of that feature - will definitely be helpful in certain situations - we do a lot of 3D modelling of reservoirs, and we just upped the overlaps to ensure we were getting enough of the roof areas. With this we can just change that distance and keep the overlaps at 80%.
By using this feature as well as the zoom we could potentially do what's required for the feral deer trial. Ill do some test flights today with the zoom command to see if it resets after a battery change or if the zoom stays constant.
Cheers,
I don't think it will solve your issue with the zoom resetting. But it should allow you to automatically adjust the overlaps to accommodate flying higher but with the overlaps working as necessary.
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