I have a instance of webodm up and running as well as a drone set up to take pictures (non-geotagged unfortunately…gps issues on the drone). I am able to recognize enough features (sand bars in creeks etc) to recognize where each photo should go but have not been able to find a way to manually sort them out.
Is there a way to do this with ODM without having to manually fudge some fake gps coordinates and manually create a geolocation spreadsheet?
Mmm… I don’t think we have a way to do Manual Tie-Points at present.
Its alright. I isolated some of what was going on. My gopro had a bad battery and my solo only takes pics while in radio range so combination of a better battery and transceiver antennas seemed to take care of it.
Are you on OpenSolo4? GoPro clock should sync at GPS lock now.
And it shouldn’t only take photos in radio range using most apps…
How are you planning/collecting?
Solex is quite good, IMO
(HI from another Solo 
)
Yep, solex is pretty incredible imho. Nice to meet another soloer. I just had the gopro 3+ hero and after reading about lens distortion issues and that a gopro 3 wasn’t really as “controllable” as a gopro 4, I’ve just ordered a 4 off ebay to be able to test and maybe modify one of them purely for mapping purposes should i not find any significant differences.
It sounds like from these forums a camera angle that points forward a few degrees helps with the dem generation. Are you aware if solex is able to do the survey runs but not point straight down? I work in an area where the wind can be quite gusty and ive been concerned with the gymbal’s ability to keep the camera on track if it’s operating at an extreme position
Edit… Yep I’m on opensolo 4
Hit send too soon a second time.
I’m using solo at pretty standard settings as I’ve only been at this a couple months and weather in canada is sketchy enough that I’m becoming more constrained in when i can get out and fly.
I see the gps sync worked for the yesterday with a bad gopro battery so it only took 30ish pics instead of over a hundred. With a dead battery and limited time i threw the gopro in the gymbal without a battery, saw it powered up and took a couple pics and ran half the previous mission on a new solo battery (shorter since i know that solo battery had a bit less capacity and it would also be powering the gopro). It took about the right number of pictures but i see now that the dates on first run have synced dates and times where the second run is 2013.
The second issue i found while going through the workflow to geotag in solex was the first, smaller batch of images kept showing up in solex even though I was feeding it a zip file with only the second trip. I couldn’t the first batch to stop showing up so I ended up just manually matching them… Luckily there was only about 60 and it was easy to match them. So it seems like a bit of weight can be saved by not carrying a gopro battery but at the expense or not getting a synced camera and a however mich flight time would be sacrificed to running the camera
Hero4 Black is a much nicer platform, especially with the GoPro ProTune helping keep the JPGs from blowing out.
I have my Gopros modified for Agricultural work by Ilija at Kolari Vision Infrared. I do an internal Full Spectrum conversion, and then use an external filter so I have the flexibility to shoot however I want after the conversion. If you like what he offers, let him know that Brett sent you.
MapIR/Peau Productions also make very nice kit for the GoPros.
You should be able to set the survey via Solex to point slightly up, yep. The Solo Gimbal will really fight to stay where you set it. If it can’t due to wind, it’ll just go as far as it can towards the set-point. In practice, it isn’t as bad a limitation as it may sound. I’ve gotten quite good reconstructions from days where I wasn’t anywhere near nadir due to wind 
Yeah, I just run with the GoPro battery, so that things are more likely to stay stable/working. I used to not, but I found on very very hot days that sometimes the GoPro would disconnect from the Solo during mapping without the battery in it. Maybe efficiency loss due to heat caused the voltage to dip too low?
The few grams of the battery are worth it, IMO. Plus, it balances better in the gimbal.
Thanks for the pointers.
My plans for the winter were to get my licensing out of the way so I can fly it for commercial purposes and get some practice with the workflow. I’ll be buying the madhacker battery mods and some bigger 10kmAh so I can eliminate the concerns about the older batteries and short flight times so it’s possible to get some decent amount of work done between battery swaps. I’m still learning solex and kelly (the dev) seems like a great guy and has been very helpful. I’m unsure where the line is between what opensolo and arduocopter stop and solex begins so I guess I have a bit more research to do while the weather stinks.
Upon some closer inspection of my captured pictures without the gopro battery installed it seems it took about 80 rather than 100 and that left me with a bit of a dead spot so I guess it must have cut out or something as it still flew one last zigzag over the area before rtl. I’ll just need to get in the habit of keeping some gopro batteries charged and maybe making my survey area in solex a bit bigger to be sure the area of interest gets the shots it needs for webodm to do it’s work.
Yeah, Kelly is great. I’m always bugging him to add things haha.
That line is quite blurry, but mostly everything can be done in ArduCopter/OS, without leaning on Solex (which require constant connection to send commands).
Yes, always overfly a few meters if safe (10m sufficient usually), and make sure that the Solo is set to take pictures during turns on the Survey. Some survey modes don’t do that (only taking photos on straight sections), which leads to gaps on the edges.
pictures on the turns? Is that the spline mode? I thought that just had to do with other drone types (fixed wing).
I’ve read the manuals but obviously there’s a few things left to learn.
Without the lens upgrade (which I hope to have done once the gopro 4 black shows up), what other settings do you recommend? Here’s what I’m currently understanding as best practices:
I’m really using the drone for missions so I started cautiously trying to keep my overall distances reasonable (<2km) and it seems like the batteries etc are doing well up to about 3km of survey type work.
The stuff I haven’t quite ironed out yet (particularly with the solo/solex)
No, Spline mode should mainly be just smooth transitions between command waypoints, not sharp navigation. It is settable easily via Mission Planner, I’d have to dig into Solex to see what the equivalent setting is to ensure pictures are taken on turns/out of Area Of Interest/Overfly.
Yep, higher is generally better, so you have more likelihood of extracting good tie-points.
Overlap is free, provided you’ve got good storage. I’ve had no issue writing 12MP GoPro ProTune JPG to 32GB SDHC reliably at about an image every 1.25s. So, set your overlap/flightspeed to ensure you’re not collecting a photo faster than that.
Sidelap costs you flight time, and that is what you really need to manage carefully for.
Correct, from @smathermather-cm’s documentation, about 5deg above nadir (85deg down) is optimal.
I think the recommendation for overlapping survey is closer to 20deg offset, though I think he might have new guidance on that.
I never got a mission to resume haha.
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