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Four Square mile mapping

RBP

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I have a question about my Inspire 2. I have a 2560 acre mapping job, flight time estimated at 12 hours.
My question is how many hours can I safely fly the inspire at one time? I have twelve pairs of batteries available but have never used all twelve on one mission.
What I'm concerned about his building excessive heat with prolonged flights.
 
I have a question about my Inspire 2. I have a 2560 acre mapping job, flight time estimated at 12 hours.
My question is how many hours can I safely fly the inspire at one time? I have twelve pairs of batteries available but have never used all twelve on one mission.
What I'm concerned about his building excessive heat with prolonged flights.
Interesting concern. With all my experience with DJI products, "overheating" has never been an issue. I don't own an Inspire 2, but I can say with confidence that the Inspire 1 will fly a 12-hour day all day back-to-back flights without a problem (film industry jobs). There are lots of things to consider and manage for a job that big. But, unless the I2 has some kind of strange thermal issue that I don't know about, thermal management isn't one of them.

I will say that the I2 is an interesting choice for mapping - especially a job that big. I think you would find the P4P more suited for a job that big. Plus, god forbid anything should go wrong, you're down 1500 bucks instead of 10,000.

Good luck!

D
 
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I have a question about my Inspire 2. I have a 2560 acre mapping job, flight time estimated at 12 hours.
My question is how many hours can I safely fly the inspire at one time? I have twelve pairs of batteries available but have never used all twelve on one mission.
What I'm concerned about his building excessive heat with prolonged flights.
If there’s an issue it will give you a warning but unless you are in phenomenally excessive heat I don’t think you’ll have an issue. You have to bring it in every 15-20 minutes or so to change batteries anyway so it’s not like it’s flying for 12 hours straight.
 
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Thanks for the responses. I just finished setting up the flights in Drone Deploy. Broke the flights down to 400 acre parcels. The temp in our area is projected to be in the mid 70s so I agree there should be no thermal issues.
I'm hopping to get 600 acres a day and that will use all twelve pair of batteries, plus both controllers.
 
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Thanks for the responses. I just finished setting up the flights in Drone Deploy. Broke the flights down to 400 acre parcels. The temp in our area is projected to be in the mid 70s so I agree there should be no thermal issues.
I'm hopping to get 600 acres a day and that will use all twelve pair of batteries, plus both controllers.
Are you using Ground Control Points? If not, then I assume these "maps" are not being used for construction or architecture, yes?

D
 
No not using GCPs, this is a almond farm and doing plant health reports.
 
No not using GCPs, this is a almond farm and doing plant health reports.
So it's not a "map." Calling it a "map" invokes all kinds of surveying protocol and implies a level of accuracy that is obviously not part of what you're doing. You look like you're familiar with the FAA. Apply all their same protocols, rules and regulations to the mapping/survey industry. You wouldn't call a helicopter a "fixed wing." It's the same thing.

D
 
So it's not a "map." Calling it a "map" invokes all kinds of surveying protocol and implies a level of accuracy that is obviously not part of what you're doing. You look like you're familiar with the FAA. Apply all their same protocols, rules and regulations to the mapping/survey industry. You wouldn't call a helicopter a "fixed wing." It's the same thing.

D
Well I mean it is still a map. It’s just a different kind of map, used for a different purpose than what you usually do. The process is exactly the same.
 
Well I mean it is still a map. It’s just a different kind of map, used for a different purpose than what you usually do. The process is exactly the same.
Well...I don't have a dog in this fight but the mapping process requires survey-grade ground control points. While using the term "map" in a drone forum or with your chums carries no legal implication, when an architectural firm or construction company asks for a "map," they mean in the literal, legal sense. They most certainly do NOT mean "take some aerial photos and stitch them together in Pix4D." I'm just saying...

In the case of the OP, I would use the term "mosaic" or "orthophoto." This orthophoto is not intended to be used as a survey or map. There is no engineered or architectural scale and it is intended to serve as photography documentation only. The implication of a "map" implies accuracy of both location and scale. An orthophoto is just taking a bunch of photos and stitch them together in Pix4D using consumer grade GPS and/or GLONASS metadata embedded in the photos (which you will find is quite inaccurate).

Years ago, when I told my survey engineer buddy that a firm had hired my drone company to make a "map," and I replied that I COULD, he stopped me dead in my tracks, educated me, and at worst, saved me a long legal battle. At best, saved me from having egg on my face after busting my hump taking photos for days and stitching them together just to find out that my "mosaic" was a joke that NO entity would pay actual money for.

I'm just paying that information forward.

D
 
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Well...I don't have a dog in this fight but the mapping process requires survey-grade ground control points. While using the term "map" in a drone forum or with your chums carries no legal implication, when an architectural firm or construction company asks for a "map," they mean in the literal, legal sense. They most certainly do NOT mean "take some aerial photos and stitch them together in Pix4D." I'm just saying...

In the case of the OP, I would use the term "mosaic" or "orthophoto." This orthophoto is not intended to be used as a survey or map. There is no engineered or architectural scale and it is intended to serve as photography documentation only. The implication of a "map" implies accuracy of both location and scale. An orthophoto is just taking a bunch of photos and stitch them together in Pix4D using consumer grade GPS and/or GLONASS metadata embedded in the photos (which you will find is quite inaccurate).

Years ago, when I told my survey engineer buddy that a firm had hired my drone company to make a "map," and I replied that I COULD, he stopped me dead in my tracks, educated me, and at worst, saved me a long legal battle. At best, saved me from having egg on my face after busting my hump taking photos for days and stitching them together just to find out that my "mosaic" was a joke that NO entity would pay actual money for.

I'm just paying that information forward.

D
You know how much I respect your point of view and we are more often than not on the same page on things so please don’t misinterpret my tone as anything other than scholarly debate so with that out of the way, in my opinion the term “survey” is more what you are saying. “Implies some level of accuracy.”

I’m not a surveyor side of things but in my day job I am a client of surveyors as I work in commercial real estate and development. When we say “we need a survey done” that implies we need a professional to go out and do the work. If we don’t need a precision survey done for say construction but we just want the lay of land to get an idea of what we’re dealing with I might go out with a drone and get a “map” of the area.

Also, it’s my understanding that the ground control points don’t actually change the rendering of the drone map. They are just a tool to 1: used as a reference point to position the map correctly in the absolute world and 2: they are used to determine the accuracy of the map. Without GPCs there’s no way to actually determine how accurate it is but it again doesn’t affect the maps rendering and stitching.
 
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So it's not a "map." Calling it a "map" invokes all kinds of surveying protocol and implies a level of accuracy that is obviously not part of what you're doing. You look like you're familiar with the FAA. Apply all their same protocols, rules and regulations to the mapping/survey industry. You wouldn't call a helicopter a "fixed wing." It's the same thing.

D
I call it mapping, not a survey. There has never been an issue with referring to DD mappings as maps.
 
When I was working the UC Merced project I mapped the 160 acre site weekly, I used the surveyors GCPs to make my maps as accurate as possible and I always referred to them as maps with the superintendent, surveyors, and the civil engineers. Not once was I corrected by any of them about using the word map.

Donnie, don't get your feathers ruffled but I will continue to use the word mapping for because that is what I'm doing. Not once have ever implied that it meets survey standards. I have done numerous construction sites and dealt with plenty of civil engineers and they all refer to my maps as maps.

Drone Deploy refers to them as maps. If I draw someone a basic map on how to get somewhere they aren't going to call it a "ortho" they will refer to it as a map.
 
Years ago, when I told my survey engineer buddy that a firm had hired my drone company to make a "map," and I replied that I COULD, he stopped me dead in my tracks, educated me, and at worst, saved me a long legal battle. At best, saved me from having egg on my face after busting my hump taking photos for days and stitching them together just to find out that my "mosaic" was a joke that NO entity would pay actual money for.

I'm just paying that information forward.

D
Should have told you buddy to get a life. A map does not need to have survey grade accuracy no matter who is using it. Not only that many surveyors see drones as a threat, especially the RTK drones.
 
You know how much I respect your point of view and we are more often than not on the same page on things so please don’t misinterpret my tone as anything other than scholarly debate so with that out of the way, in my opinion the term “survey” is more what you are saying. “Implies some level of accuracy.”

I’m not a surveyor side of things but in my day job I am a client of surveyors as I work in commercial real estate and development. When we say “we need a survey done” that implies we need a professional to go out and do the work. If we don’t need a precision survey done for say construction but we just want the lay of land to get an idea of what we’re dealing with I might go out with a drone and get a “map” of the area.

Also, it’s my understanding that the ground control points don’t actually change the rendering of the drone map. They are just a tool to 1: used as a reference point to position the map correctly in the absolute world and 2: they are used to determine the accuracy of the map. Without GPCs there’s no way to actually determine how accurate it is but it again doesn’t affect the maps rendering and stitching.

Ground control points measured with a RTK rover highly alter the accuracy of a photogrammetry survey as the software uses these as fixed know points the same as benchmarks in the real world.
The software will then alter its understanding (ie XYZ location) of the pixels in overlapping images based on the information we give it for GCPs this can bring a photogrammetry survey accuracy down from 1.5m in the vertical to under 0.15m or less depending on survey equipment although adding in more than 5 control points generally has diminishing returns. Then again if you use onboard RTK with Network correction on you're platform GCP's may not be required but would use only 1 or 2 GCP as a personal sanity check.
 
Finished the mapping and all went well. Actually took 10 hours to complete. Client loved the MAP.
 

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