Drone deploy vs. Map made easy

Talon Six · Feb 22, 2016

I've used both MME and DD over the last few weeks. For background, I'm a grad student studying UAS applications and have been working with Agisoft Photoscan on a variety of projects. So my use of these apps is solely as a flight automator, not as a data processing service (I'm learning how to do all that myself).

Overall, I like DroneDeploy better for its cleaner UI.

That being said, I prefer MME for the flight planning. DD requires the aircraft to be powered on and connected whereas MME allows you to do all the flight planning without. This is handy for planning flight times, battery use, et cetera. With DD you can simulate, but for some reason it always starts in some park in San Francisco (I'm on the opposite coast) which makes it a pain in the butt to find your survey target location. I'd like to see a SEARCH: box added so you can just input your desired survey location.

I've had a couple of "where the hell is the drone flying to?" moments with MME that caused me to come out of F mode and back to manual control. In those instances I just reloaded the flight plan an continued on without incident. TIP: Always be prepared to take over aircraft control with the flight mode switch!

DD is clearly intended to be more fire-and-forget and seems to handle takeoff and landings better than MME, but that may have been due to any number of local conditions. MME provides much more telemetry information, whereas DD just provides enough to be able to monitor the aircraft. Again, the whole fire-and-forget thing.

Something that bugs me with both apps and I wish the developers would fix is this: these apps hijack your camera settings. If in addition to mapping you use your Inspire for routine aerial photography as I do, you have to go back through and reset all the camera settings to RAW, -3 / -1 / -1, et cetera. While I realize the developers of MME and DD are simply optimizing the camera for the application, I would rather see the apps take a "return it to how you found it" approach to camera settings.

This is all just my opinion and you may have a different requirements than I do, so take it as just one dude's thoughts.

- T6

jonomillin · Feb 24, 2016

Hi all,

I'm Jono - one of the founders of DroneDeploy. Long-time lurker at Inspire Pilots. Thanks for the feedback regarding the pricing - I'd love to understand a little more about what the problem is there. As far as I'm aware - we're the only company in the space to offer a completely free version of the App, and processing.
As 'Outta Control' previously mentioned, we do love to listen to our customers, so I'd like to take this opportunity to hear from you guys on this matter.

FYI, Talon Six, there's an option in the settings to 'Disable Auto Camera Settings'. Watch the app overview to see exactly where that lives (at 2min 8sec):

Best,
Jono

seanmclean · Feb 24, 2016

jonomillin said:
Hi all,

I'm Jono - one of the founders of DroneDeploy. Long-time lurker at Inspire Pilots. Thanks for the feedback regarding the pricing - I'd love to understand a little more about what the problem is there. As far as I'm aware - we're the only company in the space to offer a completely free version of the App, and processing.
As 'Outta Control' previously mentioned, we do love to listen to our customers, so I'd like to take this opportunity to hear from you guys on this matter.

FYI, Talon Six, there's an option in the settings to 'Disable Auto Camera Settings'. Watch the app overview to see exactly where that lives (at 2min 8sec):

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Best,
Jono

The 'free' version is fairly useless, other than to check and see if the software works. Resolution of 5"/pixel? Yikes. The next price jump is rather high.

Talon Six · Feb 24, 2016

jonomillin said:
Hi all,

I'm Jono - one of the founders of DroneDeploy. Long-time lurker at Inspire Pilots.

FYI, Talon Six, there's an option in the settings to 'Disable Auto Camera Settings'. Watch the app overview to see exactly where that lives (at 2min 8sec)

Best,
Jono

Jono,

Thanks for lurking! I don't mind the auto camera settings because I trust that your developers know the best camera settings. What I would like to see is the app automatically return the settings to how they were before the app took control.

I'm not a software dev, so I don't know if this is possible with the SDK.

T6

jonomillin · Feb 24, 2016

Great idea T6 - I'll put that forward to the dev team to see what they can do.

@seanmclean, what resolution do you feel is reasonable/useful for free?

Jeremy Kern · Feb 24, 2016

jonomillin said:
Great idea T6 - I'll put that forward to the dev team to see what they can do.

@seanmclean, what resolution do you feel is reasonable/useful for free?

To be honest for the 99 a month I can have extra battery and just fly the same job twice. Yes it's a pain but for your highest plan is outright insane. We have a company and have 6 drones. That's 6 hundred a month to use your stuff. You need to separate it from flying portion and stitching. I want to try it but I'm not paying that kind of money on a trial run.

Jeremy Kern · Feb 24, 2016

One of the biggest things that I like about MME is that you don't have to have everything turned on to set it up. I would really like to see that on Drone Deploy.

John Alan · Feb 24, 2016

@ Jono
I use under 1" per pixel or less resolution for NDVI surveys, 3D surveys, etc...
5" per pixel... oh please...

Suggest you all consider MME and others are about to price you guys out of the market...
Their 'per MB processed' pricing structure is more fair... in my humble opinion...
I can burn thru a ton of points with MME for you $99 month price point...
I'm still on my first $30 points buy with them... much as I have used them so far...

jonomillin · Jun 24, 2016

It's been some time, and we've made a ton of updates to the app taking a bunch of this feedback into account.

@Jeremy Kern - Planning without the drone connected is now pretty straightforward after completely revamping the UI.

@Talon Six - We now return all the camera settings back to where they were on Android (coming in the next few weeks to iOS).

@John Alan We're definitely built for commercial use where our users are making several maps a week. When users start processing at this scale it doesn't make sense to run locally or pay per MB, and the monthly pricing structure starts to make sense.

Would love to get feedback on the new UI on the app and any other issues you guys are facing. Good honest feedback is how we improve

J

Banbo · Oct 15, 2016

jonomillin said:
It's been some time, and we've made a ton of updates to the app taking a bunch of this feedback into account.

@Jeremy Kern - Planning without the drone connected is now pretty straightforward after completely revamping the UI.

@Talon Six - We now return all the camera settings back to where they were on Android (coming in the next few weeks to iOS).

@John Alan We're definitely built for commercial use where our users are making several maps a week. When users start processing at this scale it doesn't make sense to run locally or pay per MB, and the monthly pricing structure starts to make sense.

Would love to get feedback on the new UI on the app and any other issues you guys are facing. Good honest feedback is how we improve

J

HI,
my friend use test yours app, hi lives in hills, and after starting mission his Inspire hit in hill. Hi set altitude to 70m, but altitude difference cause hitting to hill with his aircraft. Of course, hi broke his Inspire. Yours app don't have Terrain Aware to stay a uniform altitude above the ground, this is the biggest flaw of your software, that cost my friend around 1000 EUR.

IrishSights · Oct 15, 2016

Banbo said:
HI,
my friend use test yours app, hi lives in hills, and after starting mission his Inspire hit in hill. Hi set altitude to 70m, but altitude difference cause hitting to hill with his aircraft. Of course, hi broke his Inspire. Yours app don't have Terrain Aware to stay a uniform altitude above the ground, this is the biggest flaw of your software, that cost my friend around 1000 EUR.

Purely flight planning error by your friend no way you can blame the app. It sounds like he was just inexperienced and did not do a full site survey.

PFAW Holder
BNUC-S Qualified

SuppaV · Oct 27, 2016

We are speaking to a client that does concrete leveling. Which app is more precise in it's contour elevations - - - and how precise is the biggest question.

Juggernaught · Oct 27, 2016

I am demoing Drone Deploy, but since I am an Android user I don't have the ability to use MME. I have found drone deploy fairly painless at this point. Did a 23 acre lot two days ago with 384 pictures. Processing was in the realm of 10 hours. Today after work I am going to fly 63 acres to show a client what the m100 can do. I am going to fly it twice, once at 250ft and then once at 150ft. Will be curious to see the difference in resolution.

Drone deploy so far offers quite a variety with what it can show you. The elevation seems quirky, but I need to do more research on it to determine its accuracy. The price is very expensive though so I think I will only be able to use it if I can keep volume throughout the year to cover its costs plus other overhead.

licensed pilot · Oct 27, 2016

Banbo said:
HI,
my friend use test yours app, hi lives in hills, and after starting mission his Inspire hit in hill. Hi set altitude to 70m, but altitude difference cause hitting to hill with his aircraft. Of course, hi broke his Inspire. Yours app don't have Terrain Aware to stay a uniform altitude above the ground, this is the biggest flaw of your software, that cost my friend around 1000 EUR.

Wow, talk about not having a clue how drones operate....