On-the-fly Facade Mission and Mavic Pro Zoom
I am going to rent a Mavic Pro Zoom for a plant survey of a vertical cliff face. We've done this before with the regular Mavic, and generating an on-the-fly Facade mission with your App was great. But with very small plants we need to get a closer view, hence renting the Zoom.
My question is, will your App automatically know if we are zoomed in on the Mavic Pro Zoom to set-up the proper overlap?
I know in your pre-planned missions I can set the camera for the Mavic to max zoom, but I don't see an option for that in the App. It does recognize whatever drone I am flying for the on-the-fly mission, but how do I make sure that it is "aware" of my zoom level when I have it generate the mission on the fly. 24mm vs 48mm will have a huge impact on the overlap required.
Thank you very much.
PS: As cliff faces unlike building are far from perfectly vertical, it would be great if there was an option for a tilted facade mission. Just a suggestion. I totally love the software. It's come a long way and is moving in the right direction.
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When it detects the Mavic 2 zoom, it automatically chooses the max zoomed fov, which I assume is what you want?
Thanks Jim. Yes, that is exactly what I would want.
The rental actually arrived yesterday and I ran a quick test. It seemed to me actually that the App is aware whether the camera is zoomed in or out when I set up the mission on the fly. Which would be fantastic.
I'll run a couple more tests today, but happy to hear that max zoomed in is the default.
Ok, 2 observations from my tests.
First, it seems the drone takes fewer pictures than what the mission plan calls for. When I open the mission I had created on-the-fly in the browser app, the Preview shows that the drone should take 446 images (that's NOT the Mission Estimate, which estimates 516 images). The actual number of images from the mission is 307, which is confirmed in the Asset Manifest. I also found a difference in 2 additional missions, which had smaller overlap and the numbers were 73 preview vs 57 taken and 131 preview vs 98 taken. That is not a small difference. Images were set to JPEG on a sufficiently fast card. Any thoughts or suggestions?
Secondly, no matter whether I am zoomed in or out, the Mission Plan in the browser app seems to show that for all missions, the camera was reported as Mavic Zoom Max, Lens: 17.6 mm. That's a bit of an odd number, considering that it really is 8.6mm or 48mm (full-frame equivalent). But at least that was consistent across the 3 test flights.
Can you post a link to the mission plans?
I don't think I can share a link to the flown mission, but here is a link to the mission after I copied it over into my repository: https://app.dronelink.com/sven-nebelung/checking-it-out/plan/lRDomGDzk0D80hCKMjrD/LYatcqHzSvAwUcM0asWE
Let me know if you need a link to the LZ file of the flown mission.
Thanks for checking it out.
Because of the high overlap, I have no problem stitching the images, even with the lower number.
It looks like you are up against the precision limits imposed in both the flight control and estimation algorithms (for distance and speed). I removed many of the rows so you can see how this manifests in the previewer timeline:
We may look into tuning the algorithms for this high precision use case but honestly, I'm not sure how useful that will be given the GPS and barometric altimeter drift that must surely be occurring during your mission. These consumer drones just aren't that precise.
Thank you Jim, even though I am not quite sure that I completely understand.
i agree 100% about the lack of precision in terms of GPS with the Mavic. I have certainly noticed that, and it's actually something we can live with. It's more about visually mapping hard to reach areas in great detail, rather than having exact GPS data (though repeatability of missions, even with some GPS variance is important).
Would I be correct in assuming that less frequently triggered images would help? Anecdotally at least it seems like I am loosing proportionally fewer images on the missions with only 60% overlap (57/73 and 98/131 vs 307/446). We are ok with 60% overlap, but I just can't be further away from the cliff.
Thanks again.
Yes, but then it would have to fly even slower.
Hi,
we are doing the same surveys on climbing rocks for Nature Conservation purposes. Can we get in contact for exchange of infos? Is there a PM possibility?
Now we´ll try the Mavic 2 Pro with the bigger sensor and different distances from the rocks.
When I get the app installed on a new device I´ll try it also with DroneLink ;-)
Best regards!
Steffen
You can email contact@dronelink.com for business opportunities, or support@dronelink.com for support, but we typically only private support for Pro and Team plans.
Hey Steffen,
In case you were looking to connect with me, there does not seem to be a PM option on this board, but if you access or copy the mission I posted a link to up above on DroneLink, I should be able to see your e-mail address (not a big fan of posting personal emails on forums).
Let me know if you do that or if for some reason that doesn't work. I am sure the Botanists I am working with would be glad to exchange information.
Best
- Sven
If you email either of those email addresses I will get it at my personal email.
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