Hi, please feel free to add to this with your own experiences and any other applications you have used.
So once I'd got my orange wonder and I'd flown a survey of the local park, I wondered what to do next with the images. I foolishly had thought that H520 would come bundled with some sort of Photogrammety software akin to Pix4D. Alas it does not.
So I started looking in to what there was available.
The first thing I realised is that all of the photogrammetry software is ridiculously priced.
There seem to be four pricing models out there:
After a bit of hunting I found 4 apps I wanted to try and here's what I found out:
For the test I used the same image sets, 150 of a school and about 700 images of a field, in each application.
For my money (or not), it's OpenDroneMap and I use this in conjunction with other opensource apps such as QGIS & MeshLab. Not because I'm some commy-hippy-opensource-loving-tree-hugger, I love throwing my money at salesmen as much as the next slave to capitalism, it's just that ODM seems to be the most feature rich and I suspect, that like me, what drew you to the Yuneec H520 as opposed to DJI (along with the lower price tag) was the freedom we get. We get DataPlanner, we don't get NFZ's, we are allowed to fly ATTI, etc and it's this sort of freedom of control over what I'm doing that I respect, enjoy (it is a steep learning curve but I love learning new things) and for my business, I feel I need this control over my processes and outputs. Pix 4D may give out the box fancy reports but I can make those myself later and I can make them look how I want them to look, or more importantly, how my client needs them to look.
Finally, I didn't use any GCP's in these test and I popped the final geo-tiffs in to QGIS and measured my car in each image. They were all within 5-10 cm's accuracy but ODM got it spot on. It may have been a fluke this one time but it impressed me.
Hope this helps any other noobs out there just getting going with it all.
If anyone has any others to add or wants to do something similar with 3D rendering software, I'd really appreciate it.
So once I'd got my orange wonder and I'd flown a survey of the local park, I wondered what to do next with the images. I foolishly had thought that H520 would come bundled with some sort of Photogrammety software akin to Pix4D. Alas it does not.
So I started looking in to what there was available.
The first thing I realised is that all of the photogrammetry software is ridiculously priced.
There seem to be four pricing models out there:
- Open Source, free or small dev support cost.
- Pay for a desktop version (workstation PC spec required)
- Pay monthly for a subscription either per annum or on a month by month basis.
- Pay using credits or tokens or some-such, per job very little up-front info on how much this could actually cost
After a bit of hunting I found 4 apps I wanted to try and here's what I found out:
For the test I used the same image sets, 150 of a school and about 700 images of a field, in each application.
Pix4D | PrecisionMapper | DroneMapper | OpenDroneMap | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Basic Cost | £3,400 one time or £175 monthly | Free | Free | Free |
(Free version) Limits | N/A | 5 Uploads per month | 150 images per project | N/A |
Pro Version Cost | N/A | £2640 a year | £750 | N/A |
Cloud or Desktop (important if you don't have a good PC) | Either (I think cloud requires the monthly subscription) | Cloud | Desktop | Either (cloud costs extra £25 per month or using token system) |
Pros | Great UI, probably the easiest to use out of the 4. Generates very professional looking results, does produce a report that probably has too much techno-babble to make it's self seem more important than it is. Good 3D rendering built in. Very much designed around the end result being a deliverable to a client/customer. Works seamlessly with Pix4D flight planning App which is also quite good and works on ST16s. On my PC (8 core processor, 32gb Ram, 8GB workstation GPU) it runs well, I can do other stuff whilst it's running and it doesn't take too long to process the image set. What I really liked was how intuitive it was. There is a lot of support online and in app to get you going. | Seems to work well, provides basic in browser functionality such as measurements and 3D render. Easy to use, very basic UI. Not a lot of support to give you guidance on what you're doing but none really needed as it's just; add images, press go, wait. Has multiple algorithms that can be added (some need pro version) for things such as roof survey, NDVI etc. | Easy to use but rather boring looking UI. It does the job. Progress is show on screen and there is a timer letting you know how long it's been running. Can be broken down into 3 seperate chunks (Preview, DEM & Ortho/Mesh) or all run at once (overnight mode). Not a lot of support in app or in forums etc but I did reach out to the devs who got back to me instantly and helped me to resolve an issue (the geotiff was outputting stretched when I looked at it in comparison to the other apps output, but was resolved once I had placed in GIS app).Free version is not limited in any other way other than the 150 image set limit. Good output results. | It's free (it can be free). Really lovely and customisable, easy to use UI. Granular control over every aspect of how you import you images, how they are processed and how the are output. Fast, this thing is the fastest to process the results. Fantastic output results. Can be installed on a local or cloud server if you have one. This can scale in power as you need. Very supportive and comprehensive forums, constantly being improved and updated. |
Cons | It's stupidly expensive. For a start up (like me) it's both not a risk I am willing or can afford to take. Probably something I might look at using later down the line once the business has become more established. | Not much online support (forums/youtube etc). No control over what is happening. It's all done for you by the algorithms. Lowest quality of the ortho-maps Need to export files to get the best results. To be able to take accurate measurements/get a good resolution on the image. Slow. What took an hour on another application took 6 with this. The download of the files from the server is painfully slow. My internet connection is around 75mbs and what should have taken no more than a couple of minutes to download, took 3 hours! Perhaps they throttle the speeds on the free version? Worst geo-tiff in regards to GPS accuracy results out of the 4. | No 3D unless you get the pro version and then I couldn't get it to work at all. I suspect it needs a cuda enabled GPU (Nvidia Quadro only, mine is AMD). The slowest and most resource hungry of the desktop versions. No 3D and terrible map view options in app, have to use the output files in other apps to be of any use. | It has to run inside a virtual machine, it barely touches the CPU or the GPU but needs a dedicated chunk or RAM to run on. This means that if you are trying to run a process which is too big, an hour in you may get an error saying you've run out of memory. This can be negated by using the 'lightning node' feature, which is cloud processing. This seems to cost extra but I've not used it). Complex set-up requires some command line knowledge or at least some good problem solving skills (can pay an extra £55 for an installer. Highly recommend this) |
Over all rating | Too pricey but good UI. No effort needed, the Apple/DJI of photogrammetry. | Seems like the exact same results as ODM (if ODM left on default settings), I wonder if they built it on the open-source code? | Meh, can't really comment too much as Pro version (devs gave me a two week trial) kept crashing so could not run large image set. | Great all round, worth taking the hassle out and buying the installer. |
For my money (or not), it's OpenDroneMap and I use this in conjunction with other opensource apps such as QGIS & MeshLab. Not because I'm some commy-hippy-opensource-loving-tree-hugger, I love throwing my money at salesmen as much as the next slave to capitalism, it's just that ODM seems to be the most feature rich and I suspect, that like me, what drew you to the Yuneec H520 as opposed to DJI (along with the lower price tag) was the freedom we get. We get DataPlanner, we don't get NFZ's, we are allowed to fly ATTI, etc and it's this sort of freedom of control over what I'm doing that I respect, enjoy (it is a steep learning curve but I love learning new things) and for my business, I feel I need this control over my processes and outputs. Pix 4D may give out the box fancy reports but I can make those myself later and I can make them look how I want them to look, or more importantly, how my client needs them to look.
Finally, I didn't use any GCP's in these test and I popped the final geo-tiffs in to QGIS and measured my car in each image. They were all within 5-10 cm's accuracy but ODM got it spot on. It may have been a fluke this one time but it impressed me.
Hope this helps any other noobs out there just getting going with it all.
If anyone has any others to add or wants to do something similar with 3D rendering software, I'd really appreciate it.
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