Hello from Calgary — UAV mapping, QGIS and open-source flight planning

The Hangar Introductions
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Hi everyone,

My name is Salar, and I’m based in Calgary, Canada. My background is in geomatics, GIS, remote sensing, GeoAI, and UAV mapping, and I’m also an Advanced RPAS pilot.

Over the past few years, I’ve worked extensively with drone imagery, GIS, photogrammetry, and different DJI platforms.

More recently, I’ve been working on open-source tools for the drone and geospatial community. One of those projects is FlyPath, a QGIS-based UAV mission-planning plugin that I’ll share more about separately.

I joined this community because I see a strong connection between OpenDroneMap/WebODM, QGIS, and the UAV mapping workflows we are working on.

I’m mainly here to learn from others doing real-world drone mapping, contribute where I can, and hopefully collaborate on improving open-source mapping workflows.

If anyone is curious about FlyPath, the project is here:

I’d really appreciate any feedback, contributions, or thoughts on how the project could be improved and made more useful for real-world drone mapping.

Glad to be here!

Salar

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I have tested a couple qgis flight planner plugins before and they all pale in comparison. Great job. If I had a supported drone . I would use this plugin.

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Thank you, I really appreciate that!

It’s great to hear this from someone who has tried other QGIS flight-planning plugins. Which drone are you currently using? We’re gradually expanding FlyPath’s supported drone list, so I’d be very interested to know.

There will be a support coming soon for this drones within next week:
DJI M4E, DJI M4T, & DJI M3M . Is your drone within this list? If not please let me know.

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Oh I love that this exists and is endorsed by @onpointva. I’ll have to check it out.

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Thank you! Really appreciate that.

I’d be very interested to hear your thoughts once you’ve had a chance to try it, especially from the ODM/WebODM side. I think there’s a lot of potential to make the workflow between FlyPath, QGIS, and OpenDroneMap/WebODM even smoother.

We’re actively improving FlyPath and expanding support for more drones and more mission types, so any feedback or ideas would be very welcome.

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I would definitely look at supporting MAVLINK2 so platforms like PX4 and ArduPilot are supported.

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Hello,

I don’t know how easy it would be to add the Autel line of drones to the plugin because Autel’s software needs some improvements, particularly their terrain following capability, or lack thereof. I agree that supporting MAVLINK2 would be useful too.

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Thanks @Saijin_Naib. MAVLink 2 support is definitely something we should look into, especially since it could open FlyPath to PX4, ArduPilot, and a much wider range of platforms beyond DJI.

And thanks @falconensis. Autel support is also interesting. I need to look more closely at their mission format and what level of integration is realistically possible. Since FlyPath already handles terrain following on the planning side, that could potentially help with some of the limitations you mentioned.

I’ve added both ideas to our list for further investigation. Thanks for the suggestions!

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I just wanted to mention that there isn’t really a MAVLink 2 “file format” equivalent to WPML. But what you could use is the QGC .plan file format: Plan File Format | QGC Guide (Stable_V5.0)

That would be similar to the WPML that you feed to the DJI Pilot app: you could load the .plan in QGroundControl and upload it to your drone. Or even MAVSDK does support .plan.

Note that MAVSDK also supports importing a Mission Planner mission in “QGC WPL 110 format”, but I am not familiar with that one. The .plan should work for both PX4 and Ardupilot though, as MAVSDK is the one responsible for converting it to the corresponding MAVLink commands. I would personally go with the QGC .plan linked above :+1: .

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