Geolocating drone imaging from drone deploy?

[JonKoch]

Hello! 

 

We recently got an Emlid Reach RS3 Survey setup and have been using this in conjunction with geolocation in Vectorworks. It works really well! The only problem is the resolution on the satellite images in VWX are pretty bad in my area since we are relatively rural. I have messed around with exporting a GEOTIFF or other format from drone deploy with the same coordinate system as I am using in VWX but I just can't seem to get the right settings or something because it never ends up working out correctly. Our drone scans are much better quality and I'd love to use those if possible!

 

Has anyone had experience with this? I'm going to keep trying some options but just figured I'd ask.  Thanks!

[inilegnam]

I use Open Drone Map for my drone/RTK orthos so I don't know Drone Deploys workflow, but I would go through and double check your CRS at each step. For the best accuracy you want to shoot your GCP in the same CRS as Drone Deploy's native CRS. For example, my GCP are shot in CRS: 4326, Open Drone Map defaults to 4326 when inputting GCP coordinates and aligning all of the imagery.

 

Next, I always use QGIS to make sure the ortho is lining up correctly, and if necessary, I will transform it from 4326 to whatever CRS my DEM or other GIS data is set to--usually a regional CRS. Then export to Geotiff from QGIS. 

 

If I get any distortion I will reprocess the ortho using a CRS transform function within Open Drone Map to the regional CRS. Back into QGIS to double check, then into VW.

Lastly, when importing your ortho to VW, make sure you tell it to "Use the document's coordinate system".

 

CRS is very complicated, so I've learned to remove as little room for error as possible. QGIS is indispensable in my workflow as it is, but I don't do any RTK and/or drone work without it. Then I pass whatever relevant pieces to VW for the actual design.

 

Hope that helps!