No doubt I’ll have many questions in time … my initial questions are:
I’ve experimented with WebODM Lightning, and I was very impressed with the result flying a DJI Mini 2 (gimbal-90 deg) for a small ortho map way out in the Aussie bush. Even the 3D map option I thought was not too shabby considering the flight wasn’t even intended for it! Obviously, that can be hugely improved over time and experience. The drone is no match for a mechanical shutter machine but early days and all good experience.
Considering the upload size (into GB’s for larger maps) for the images to the WebODM servers and to save my data, I’ll look at the windows installer for the stand alone WebODM ($57).
Then I came across DroneDB ($29)! DB has very limited documentation and only seems to be a data storage area OR does it offer more than that? Is it to replace WebODM? I’m not looking for a cheaper option than the windows installer, just curious as to what it’s supposed to be?! I did give it a run but with the thin-on-the-ground docs I didn’t get too far!!
On the WebODM installer side my laptop has 8GB of RAM. What are my limitations ie how many GB’s of images will it handle before it throws the towel in the ring?
DroneDB is currently functioning as a platform to share and disseminate sUAS data. So, a place to put your flight’s images and the final products from WebODM so others can see them.
8GB RAM will be severely limiting. I’d say expect about 125 12MP images or less without much fuss. For context, a typical Lightning Node has 128GB RAM and we cap it currently at 3,000 image Tasks (for Business tier).
Try to keep the native aspect ratio of the sensor when collecting!
Most flight plan tools will not properly account for the change in aspect ratio and your data will have really low overlap despite you thinking its all good.
You can always increase the size of your page file, but this can be a bit less reliable than physical memory only, and will be orders of magnitude slower than working only in physical memory.
One last newbie question, please as I’ve your attention and UAV4GEO say they will not answer questions about OpenDroneMap/WebODM!!
Example: Say I used my full quota of 190 images and going by what I read on other threads am I likely to be tying my machine up for hours on end? And if that is the case, WebODM Lighting is looking far more appealing!
Yes, very likely. If you can, I’d try to get a sense of your machines limits and speed working on a typical Task size with typical options so that you have an idea of what you can expect when processing locally.
And yes, Lighting can be incredibly fast compared to local processing, hence the name, I suppose
The installers themselves come with the following:
Installer Technical Support. Delivered as a digital download, install on as many machines as you want.
For clarity, the installer comes with support for installation only, and this has been handled by UAV4Geo. We think the installers provide a lot of value, and in buying one you are directly supporting the project and a portion of the great support you see on the forum.
There are both free & open source (FOSS) and closed-source models which provide full end-to-end support: think Red Hat Enterprise Linux at $349 - $5000 per year or that one French photogrammetry tool for $292/month.
That said, I think the support here is often better than many such models: we have an open forum where you can post your data and it is quite likely that if you have a challenging dataset or a question, someone will answer it, whether from experienced users, developers, etc…
Furthermore, if people see issues or bugs, those get squashed quickly. Finally, you can have a lot more control over what happens in the project for much less cost: for $3500 a year, you don’t get any say over someone’s proprietary solution. But for participating in the forum, raising issues, challenges, opportunities, growing documentation and collective knowledge, or even adding features yourself or hiring someone to add features, you have a lot of control over what we build together – much more than you get when you pay someone to fund their software monopoly.
So, no: UAV4Geo doesn’t provide support beyond installation. But I hope we can do a great job here together.
