Drones are good.. What do you use your for?

ozmo

I see drones are being used this year in Dublin to hunt down bonfire stashes...

RTÉ News (@rtenews) tweeted at 9:01 PM on Sat, Oct 29, 2016:
Dublin City Council is using drones to search for bonfire material in the run up to Halloween
https://t.co/cqd0iP2JC8
(https://twitter.com/rtenews/status/792456308804947968?s=09)

Anyone got any novel usages for their drones?

ozmo

I made this today... its Belcamp House ..

https://goo.gl/Y3dsfc

Link above is to the live 3d model- preview below



What you think?

Edups

Defiantly a good idea. Much better than the council spending hours trotting around Dublin for days looking, send out the drone to pick out the points, mark on the map, collect and dispose of.

ozmo

I've been using my drone to record a number of places around Dublin in 3D...
Here's another couple of places I've done.

https://goo.gl/fnUM9D



https://goo.gl/CZeutn

Dr.TV

@ozmo thats very cool! What app did you use to capture the 3d model?

ozmo

Dr.TV wrote: »

@ozmo thats very cool! What app did you use to capture the 3d model?

I've used several different apps and sites -

MapsMadeEasy, pix4d and drone2map - which are all ok - but I prefer DroneDeploy - it gives the best results.

I took those using a DJI Phantom 3
I take about 50 photos by circling the site - and up to 200 photos for the bigger sites to get every angle and feed the photos to the websites above.

I've upgraded my drone recently and waiting for some good weather to go out again...

Marlow

I'm actually taking a similar approach .. bit different though.

My first attempts were to lift 2 GoPro Hero 3+ Black with a DJI Phantom 2 about two years ago. Now .. that's pushing the limits of that particular drone. And I wanted to go beyond that anyhow.

I've been experimenting with 360 footage on the ground, but figured, it would be really cool to take some aerial footage with that in hi-res, so atm I'm building a DJI S1000+ Octo to carry either 6 GoPro Hero 4 Black (for 360) or 12 GoPro Hero 4 Black (for 360 3D).

/M

ozmo

Marlow wrote: »

I've been experimenting with 360 footage on the ground, but figured, it would be really cool to take some aerial footage with that in hi-res, so atm I'm building a DJI S1000+ Octo to carry either 6 GoPro Hero 4 Black (for 360) or 12 GoPro Hero 4 Black (for 360 3D).
/M

That would be a nice setup.
For a spherical 360 photo (like streetview)- you could also use the new site and app "hanger360" and just the one drone camera.
Not as fast as your setup- it takes about 10 minutes to take a photo in each direction- but its all automated and the results are very good. App is free also.
Litchi can do something similar but its not free and the processibg of the images is more manual.

Marlow

ozmo wrote: »

That would be a nice setup.
For a spherical 360 photo (like streetview)- you could also use the new site and app "hanger360" and just the one drone camera.
Not as fast as your setup- it takes about 10 minutes to take a photo in each direction- but its all automated and the results are very good. App is free also.
Litchi can do something similar but its not free and the processibg of the images is more manual.

The problem with using one camera is, that if you have a lot of movement in the picture, it never comes out great. (People moving around etc.) It works great, when the object is static with no movement. With 6 cams, I get an instant high res snap in all directions.

And I'm not only interested in 360 stills. It's mostly 360 video, I'm after. Can't be done with 1 camera.

/M

Damo 2k9

Dji Phantom 3 Advanced owner here, mainly just use it for taking a few pics, everything looks better from above :pac:

Elemonator

I know its unrelated, but thinking about getting into the drone interest. Can any recommend a starter model or (if needed?) training to handle the drone?

Damo 2k9

Elemonator wrote: »

I know its unrelated, but thinking about getting into the drone interest. Can any recommend a starter model or (if needed?) training to handle the drone?

I started with a Syma X5C-1 just to get the jist of the controls, nothing amazing but lots and lots of fun

Marlow

Elemonator wrote: »

I know its unrelated, but thinking about getting into the drone interest. Can any recommend a starter model or (if needed?) training to handle the drone?

It really depends on what you want to use it for.

/M

Elemonator

Marlow wrote: »

It really depends on what you want to use it for.

/M

Aerial photography sounds interesting, just recreationally really.

Marlow

Elemonator wrote: »

Aerial photography sounds interesting, just recreationally really.

Depending on budget, DJI's offerings start around 600 EUR for a Phantom 3 Standard (can even be got in Argos) and something more portable with a 4k camera would be DJI Mavic Pro.

There's a few other alternative arounds. But generally make sure, that it's a GPS assisted copter and preferable also with some down facing sensors, like the sonic sensors on the Phantom 3, for indoor flight.

/M

Elemonator

Marlow wrote: »

Depending on budget, DJI's offerings start around 600 EUR for a Phantom 3 Standard (can even be got in Argos) and something more portable with a 4k camera would be DJI Mavic Pro.

There's a few other alternative arounds. But generally make sure, that it's a GPS assisted copter and preferable also with some down facing sensors, like the sonic sensors on the Phantom 3, for indoor flight.

/M

Thanks, I will have a look into them so!