Drone Grid Mapping Tool for Litchi!
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- Опубликовано: 18 сен 2022
- ancient.land
This video demonstrates how to use ancient.land to quickly design grid missions for use with drones supported by Litchi.
The tool generates a csv file which can be imported into Litchi mission hub.
ancient.land increases the workflow rate for drones such as Mini 2 much faster and easier than other solutions brought forward thus far.
If you need to swap batteries during the mission, ensure that your drone is positioned to avoid obstacles and your RTH elevation is also adequate.
Leave all questions and suggestions in the comments below and I'll do my best to answer them.
Please consider whether the flight you have designed is safe and lawful before undertaking it.
ancient.land provides the means to design a mission but in no way guarantees that the mission is safe or lawful to fly.
Этот веб-сайт помогает в разработке миссий для дронов, управляемых "Litchi". Вы можете собирать массивы фотографий для целей ортомозаики и фотограмметрии. 
Хобби
YOU DEVELOPED THIS?! Mate it’s incredible literal game changer for me!!!! Bro can I send you money?!!!
Great job James! Thanks for sharing this!!!
Works great! Thank you James!
Thank you so much for this. Been wishing Litchi had this ability forever
This is a totally awesome tool, I guess you just saved plenty of potential drone crashes around the world. well done James, good man!
Thank you so much for this video, it was to the point, clear and extremely useful.
Thank you for this tool!
Oh yes i love it. Thanks for taking time to build this.m especially when mini 2 (mine too) is the default.
Keep it up. Waiting for next update. For now will try this on an open field.
Excellent tool, I was able to create a crosshatch grid mission with this tool.
Excellent clear instruction on this helpful drone mapping tool. I just need to learn how to stitch them all together now.
This is outstanding! Congrats
Hi James , great tool and thank you.
Works great saved me a lot of time and money!
I'm from Brazil. Used to map using a Phantom 4 but now I started using an Air 2S to map. Before, I was manually drawing the flight plan and trying manually to pay attention at the SIDELAP. This way is very difficult and you don't have the best that the drone can offer to you. BUT NOW, USING YOUR SYSTEM, UUAAUUU!!!!!! Amazing ! Much faster ! And you can extract the best from the drone ! ! ! Congratulations ! ! ! !
Thank you! I'm really glad to help and have more features coming to make life easier
Do you use GCPs to increase your accuracy of images positions?? Or you have ppk kits ?
This is exactly what I've been looking for. Drone deploy is very expensive for personal use. You're my savior! Will buy Litchi and use your design!
GREAT JOB! I plan to try this out soon.
Excellent! Thank you!!!
This is fantastic! Super!!!!! This is exactly what I was looking for. Thank you very much I am very happy with this.
Glad to help! More things to come
I saw the changes in you site so beautifull. So I hope you can add the funtion I talk to you before (upload a polygon kml/kmz or geojson/shp to you site). It's best way for user to exactly their area of interest. I looking forward the change in your next update.
this is awesome you did such a great job! its so easy to use and it works great thank you so much for making this
Good..
Thank you..
Finally, I can do it by litchi about grid mission
This is really good and has saved me so much time. Top work mate! I'm really mpressed.
This is a life saver
Świetna aplikacja, bardzo dziękuję!
Today I try a mission and my DJI Mini 2 made some nice pictures. The problem was curved lines in Litchi mission.
The new mission today with straight lines works perfect. Thanks James!
Pretty good work.
thaaaaaaank yoooouuuuu 💞 have to try it in field on weekend, planing on pc works great so far 🤞 you are awesome 🤙
incredible tool
Thats well cool .thanks
I hope Litchi takes notice, your grid system input is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much better than the VLM's.
Amazing!
Big thank!
I agree with other about gps search. Great tool! Thanks for your hard work!
It's nearly ready!
It's ready now :)
This is very impressive mate. I am just educting myself on using Litchi, but I currently use Map Pilot Pro, which is fine, but Litchi im planning on using as a redundancy in case MPP doesnt work (ive had issues with errors in the past whilst on a mission). It seems Litchi is also more customisable. So thanks for this. You got a new subscriber today!
Hi James, Exellent piece of work and great video, informative and easy to follow.
Couple of observations.
The settings tab defaults to mavic2, perhaps it could remember the last choice.
It would be useful if missions could be reimported for editing.
One issue on a tablet / touch screen with zooming the map view, is that the controls disapear. Perhaps their position could be fixed within the browser window, irrespective of the map extents. This was more apparent in Edge than Ecosia.
Notwithstanding that easy to use and deploy, just what I was looking for. Many thanks.
@James De Rose, I subscribed! Great tool! It will save many people lots of time planning missions. Very kind of you to share with the internet drone community. Can't wait to try it out. Have made a couple ma[ping missions in mere seconds! KUDOS to you!
Thanks Jeff!
Please plan a small and safe mission first to assess whether the tool is working correctly for the model you're using. I've been working with other pilots to support all different modes/ways of flying due to different hardware capabilities.
You can find the thread on Litchi's forum where people are discussing issues/suggestions
Thanks for sharing this! You got a thumbs up and a sub from me. I will be giving this a try very soon. Thank you!
I've used Drone Deploy and switched to Pix-4-D (Capture and Mapper) with an academic license. Your app is easy to learn, powerful, and in my case it works almost instinctively. I'm just starting to use it with a DJI P4 Pro Multispectral (took a chance on a now unsupported drone - but I trust the P4 engineering and longetivity). I'll post again after I've had a chance to use this mapping tool for flight planning and execution and have made some first products using our Pix-4-D Mapper and ENVI image processing software. Thank you so much for your work and willingness to share.
Hi James,
Great tool. I used to use COPTERUS for this sort of grid work when I had my Mavic Mini (the original), however I had to replace it and now have the Mini 2. Tomorrow will be the first day I try this tool out ..
How did it go?
@@rogoflap it failed miserably. Got to the first point hovered there and didn't do a thing.
+1 on being able to search for an address, or input GPS location for Takeoff point to be able to centre.
Hi there James! Very useful development! Litchi CEO should have you in his team! :) By the way, a "double grid" option would be very useful and appreciated. Congrats!
Hi James - the software looks amazing, as an Engineer with surveying background the potential is brilliant!!
I am new to flying drones and have just in last year obtained a Mini 2 - am excited to try your software out and see the end product in Litchi, which I have just purchased. So the timing is great for me to test the package out, thank you for the work you have put in to your product - the package looks just brilliant and appears toproduces outputs quickly and effectively, again 'Brilliant' application! l look forward to hearing more from your site - thank you - Peter Jennings.
Thanks Mary! check out something like Open Drone Map to generate orthomosaics etc.
There are also resources online to help compensate for rolling shutter distortion etc if necessary for your end product.
@@flopasen Thank you James - Yes I have just come across Open Drone Map which looks good also, which I am investigating outcomes thanks for your feedback, will let you know how I go with your product you have introduced us to, again many thanks for your efforts!!
Thanks
Awesome! This is what I've been looking for!! Punching in all the numbers for passes with these fat fingers even on a PC was such a pain I completely stopped using waypoints all together!! =]
Cheers, I'm working hard on updates now to cover more use cases
A way to change craft orientation/heading in bulk and also individually would be useful. Great tool!
This is great. Any plans on adding support for the Air 3 and Mini 4?
Just want to say: Thank you. One more idea: to make a corridor flight plan (like drone deploy). To map roads, power line, river, using a line map (depart and return).
Great tool, thank you! It would even be better if it would show an up-to-date map :-)
Thanks for sharing a great free tool. I have a suggestion that you could allow the user to upload 1 region of interest (*geojson example) and possibly create a flight path based on the uploaded region.
Thanks I will probably do this for geojson and shapefile if it's not too difficult!
What a great tool you have created, it’s way easier than manually adding them yourself as I was doing. I did find a glitch where it stopped on the third waypoint and hovered instead of going on, Is this something you have seen before? I checked all the waypoints and everything seems to be ok. This is with an Air2S. Thanks again for a great tool.
Great tool, congratulations!
Mine was just a piece of Excel, with manual inputs 😁
Thanks! I hope you can give it a try and maybe speed up your workflow.
For sure! I will let you know 😉
Is there a way to manually set the elevation/altitude? Part of my mapping consists of doing 3D renders with ortho programs, but I would need to keep the drone level the entire flight. I see we can do that by the Z check but there's no way to manually set the elevation/altitude to start at.
James, it appears that data for the air 2s may be incorrect. For a test mission, it gave me the following for a 3.4 gsd: mini 2 (318'), mavic air 2 ( 636'), mavic air 2s (388'), mavic 2 pro (476'), mavic 2 zoom (609'). Would you mind checking the drone specs data, the air 2s and mavic pro(s) have the same 1" CMOS 20mp sensor. The mini(s) and air2 have 1/2" cmos sensors @ 12mp. The more capable sensors should have a higher collection altitude for a given gsd (400' FAA limits aside) than the less capable sensors. Otherwise, extraordinary product...much thanks!
Muito bom, contudo seria impecavel se tivesse opção de fazer grelha cruzar para 3D
Thank you for this video it was super helpful! Can I input coordinates into ancient land to use as home points?
I'm fairly new to Litchi, this looks amazing to me, great job! Just a minor suggestion on user friendliness (perhaps you've considered, but it isn't feasible to implement?), it would be extremely helpful if the user is able to search for a location like how Google map search function (I've noticed that the map version is different from what's displayed in the Google map)
Thanks! Yeah search and 'hybrid' map has been suggested strongly and it would make life much easier for the user. I'm exploring options at the moment.
Address search added :)
@@flopasen Awesome! I've bought the Webodm ebook (OpenDroneMap: The Missing Guide), let me know if you're interested to receive a copy.
Nice Work! Can I use the Mini 2 settings for a Mini 3? Any chance you might ever implement changing headings and vertical gimbal angles, for 3d modelling building?
Opaque background on menu items would help
@flopasen, When do you plan on having more DJI models available for planning?
Also, how would one take care of a battery change? I haven't quite figured that one out just yet.
As a third suggestion, I want you to add the area of interest to the summary information in the bottom left corner. Thank you so much !
I have seen this change on your tools. Thank you so much.
Hi James, it is possible to import my own polygon as a SHP or KML format? I think it will be helpful to define the position for the flight.
Hey James! Love your tool! Is it possible to change the base map to google maps instead of openstreetmaps? Or make it so you could change them like you want to. Openstreetmaps satellite is outdated so i cant see forest fellings like i do in google maps. Another sugestion would be to add feature to import shape/kml-file. Anyways, thanks for your work
Hi James, is it possible to create a flight route, grid pattern, with image position relative to the starting position?
Thanks for doing this, I will be doing some test runs very soon. A question about mission time and battery life. What happens when battery starts RTH and the mission is only 50% complete? Will the mission resume after a battery change?
Is there a newer version or have there been any updates etc? Sure looks good.
Great Tool Concept. Can you please add the spec for Inspire 1 Pro X5. Is there a newer version of your software ? My screen interface does not match yours. Example your screen shows the pixel range for the photo.
Thanks keep up the great work.
Thank you for this software. Would you be adding the mini 3/pro to the list of drones?
Great job James
Did you consider to add an 3D mission option to creat circular path around the objects?
Hats off for having the expertise to create such a tool, but if you don't mind me asking, what is the point of this over just using drone deploy or similar app?
When I follow this on my location in Norway. It looks normal when importing to Litchi mission hub. But when exporting to Google Earth pro the mission is more then 200.000 meter over ground level. I can also see it when I click a way point in the mission hub Next to the "above ground" the text write "Ground Elevation: 216266.5m (0m below first waypoint)" ...
Hello dear freinds.
Does Litchi lets to continue mission after low batterie changed?
Unfortunately it is not automatic. You can continue the mission by selecting which waypoint to start from, but you must remember the number of the waypoint when you return the drone for a battery swap.
@@flopasen thank for you
Nice! Does the photo amounts and locations get automatically set as you plot the space or is that something you decide in Litchi? Also, when I plotted my square i did not see orange dots and yellow lines. Is there something I need to turn on?
nice grid tool! I have plan to implement a very similar tool in Maven App, still lot to work. Maven can import the same "litchi CSV" file format, I will give a try with this tool. Question: how litchi take picture without a waypoint?(when you increase the Z check) do you set up interval photos frorm waypoint to waypoint? suggestion: Since for example this mission is very long, you will need more flight to complete it... so the drone may come back at any time non just from the end of a mission so looking for the return path to be clear is not very safe, I will suggest to your viewers to check the RTH altitude settings before starting the mission...
Thank you! I used a geometry library called turf.js to help me with intersect functions.
Yes you're right, Z-check sets 'photo_distinterval' to the same distance as a waypoint would have been. Waypoints are then generated by Z-check * frontlap distance and graphics are indicated. It's versatile for many considerations.
I agree about the battery swap RTH safety issue, I'll add something in the description.
It's excellent that you're developing an alternate solution to flying missions. I hope you can help many people!
Wow, that's an excellent tool you've made! Thank you so much! Really useful! I do have one minor critique regarding UI. In the left-side menu, where you have the colored bars - it's just white dots on mine. This makes it hard to see the white text as the white dots are "blocking" it. Besides that I really appreciate the effort that has gone into making this tool!
How would I go about making the drone stop for every photo, to avoid rolling shutter issues?
Thanks! Apologies for the UI issue, it definitely needs improvement especially for multiple browsers.
Have you tried a flight with Z-Check of 1? This means a waypoint is generated at every photo. I hope the movement at the waypoint is slow enough not to introduce rolling shutter, but others have suggested I include a 'Stay For:' feature.
If Z-Check of 1 isn't still enough for you, let me know, otherwise before importing to Litchi, you can open up the csv file.
- Look for the actiontype column with value of 1 and actionparam of 0. That's the photo command.
Shift those values over to the next two columns and replace the original values with action type of 0 and actionparam value of milliseconds. That means the drone will stay there until taking its photo.
If Z-Check is more than 1, intermediary photos are always taken on the move.
Let me know if that wasn't clear enough but I'm happy to implement the 'Stay For' slider and maybe generalise the UI
@@flopasen Oh okay cool! I haven't used Litchi that much yet, so I am not so familiar with the mission waypoint process. Haven't tried flying with your plan yet, but will definitely try with a Z-Check of 1. Do you know what the standard settings for waypoints are? Like wait time etc.? Considering I use Z = 1 of course.
How can i open the kmz boundry file on ancient land
Any plans on adding support for mini 3 Pro?
Hey James, awesome video. ive followed it but for some reason my missions arent capturing images automatically as it flies. ive been trying to work it out, im using it on a smart controller. do you know what could be the issue?
Hi, It`s possible to make cros missions? And, when the batteries? The program inform us the point to change batteries? Thanks in advance for your reply.
Is there a way to only have waypoints at the end of the rows? Litchi has the ability to take photos automatically based on distance, and you only need waypoints at the end of each row to do this. You could never finish a mission when you are stopping at each of these hundreds of waypoints. I fly at 22 MPH at 200 feet elevation, without stopping at all and it took an hour and 15 minutes (with battery changes) to finish a recent mission.
Is there plans or how to do Cross grid flight for 3D imaging
Hi James, awesome tool. I just gave it a whirl in the field and it flew well and hit the marks perfectly however it did not capture any photos at any waypoint.
When I load the file into Litchi Mission Hub, everything seems to be fine. In waypoint settings it says "Tilt Camera -90" then beneath it, "Take Photo". The only difference I see from your video is "Tilt Camera -90". Could that be stopping it from taking the photo or perhaps it's something else you've experienced. Thanks
Figured it out. in mission settings in Litchi mission planner. "Path mode" needs to be set to "Straight lines", not "Curved Turns". The camera action will not play otherwise
Its it possible to use this and import it into the new Litchi Pilot app to use on MIni 3's?
Amazing. One question, this mission es 50min of flight, what happened if you need more than one battery? Thank you
Am i seeing right...the mission is following the terrain? Where did it get the elevation data?
Please i just bought the DJI mini 2 SE and its not possible with Map pilot for flight automation.
Can i use this for mapping standards with the Mini 2 SE?
Hi James, thank you so much for creating this tool.
I ran a generated mission with DJI Mini 2 at 60 m altitude, 75/75 frontlap/sidelap, at 20 km/h speed, and the drone flew trough the mission just fine but it didn't take any photos at all.
So I modified the route, but this time I increased the Z-check value so that there are only waypoints at the edge of each line. I ran the mission and manually set Litchi to take photos at 2 seconds interval. This managed to get the photos I want.
Are there any Litchi settings that need to be enabled or something? Thanks in advance.
I found the solution. Litchi only execute actions on waypoints if we set the Path Mode to "Straight Lines". Tough if I do that, the drone would slow down and stop at every waypoint to execute the actions, which is not optimal for the flight time.
The compromise: 1) set the Z-check value to max to minimize the number of waypoints, 2) fly using "Curved Mode", 3) manually set the gimbal to -90, 4) automatically take a photo every 2 or 3 seconds with interval shot, and 5) use text editor to edit the .csv file and change the value of curve meter.
Fantastic tool! I'm excited to try this with a Phantom 3 Pro next week. What are your thoughts on adding a crosshatch function? or maybe allowing the user to upload a KML polygon instead of hand-drawing each polygon? Could be useful for Structure-for-motion photogrammetry.
Thanks. Having an easy cross-hatch function for SFM would be a good addition, I'll experiment with it and see if my geometry pipeline will cater to it.
As a workaround, users can simply export 1 file, then rotate the flight 90 degrees and export again, performing each mission separately. Concatenating the csv files together would make 1 large mission so you needn't fly two missions, but I understand that's more complex than what others are providing.
Lots of people have asked for external JSON/KML/Shapefile interpreting so I think that's definitely something that needs to be implemented.
Please try the P3 at 50% sidelap and frontlap and let me know if there's any issues with the camera specs used!
@@flopasen I just concatenated the csv files and it looks good! Thanks for the suggestion.
It looks as though the camera specs for the P3 and P3P are pretty similar with the eP3P having 0.4 more effective megapixels. I'll try it out and let you know what I find!
@@flopasen Howdy. So I tried many different configurations and ran into a substantial issue. I don''t know if it's just my Phantom 3 Pro, but the firmware build doesn't allow the drone to take photos at a set distance interval. It can hover in place and take a shot, it can take photos at a set time interval, but not at a set distance interval. So ultimately, the exported mission from here didn't work.
@@aharams811 Sorry to hear! I had no idea the P3 worked that way. I'll try work on having an option to switch between photos by distance and photos by time. In the mean time you can see what speed you've set and how much distance there is between each photo. If you want to fly that mission you could do a quick calculation of how many seconds it takes to travel (photo dist/metres per sec) that distance and batch adjust the CSV file. I think the column is time_interval (I'm not at my computer right now).
Hopeful to have it operating soon!
Is there any way to bring a KML for reference where to plan the mission?
How was the criss cross pattern made? Great video
I encountered the same issue. This seems (my guess) to occur if the map mission area is too small. Here's primarily how I solved it (after setting the target area).
Click on settings in the lower left corner.
Decrease GSD value (in my case to 0.3)
Increase Front overlap [Frontlap]
Increase Side overlap [Sidelap]
Hello, I imported the CSV file into Litchi, and can't export a KML 3D path as there is no elevation info. did I miss anything? or where can I get the elevation data? thanks
Then do what with the pics after the capture? I don't see why to do this.
WOW!!! This looks great. Are you still above ground (alive)? And, are you still developing this? If so, will you have a "drone selection" for the DJI Mini 3 PRO? Thanks, Chuck (North East Florida)
Hi James , is it possible to support Air3 please?
Cn I put lItchi on my tablet device and my desktop too?
Hi can you help please??
with mini 3 pro need to take 5 photos on a project from the same point every month very simple but no such an option
Thank you very much
Ronny
Can you save the layout in ancient land? Once you close it it’s gone?
Hi, what is the aspect ratio of the photo? there can be different aspect ratio depends on the setting, nevertheless, this is so awesome
How can set the height? First run - I was above flight limits
What coordinate system is in use
Very interesting video James...
I think I have followed everything you said but on a mountanious area the grid is flat and does not take the shape of the terrain, independently of the Z check, which in my case I did it with 1 and 3 too.... still flat'
Please, could you help?.... OOPS.... forget about it.... DID IT!
BUT...
I observe that if I import that kml file into litchi, it looks as if it does not take into account the Z variations....
So how can I fly the drone making that height aterations??
Having the same issue - flat flightplan and Litchi won't export 3d file. presumably coz it's flat? How did you get it to work?