Latest Contributions by DouglasRidenour

Patrick - The Drone2Map 1.1 update likely solves your elevation unit issue. Aaron is right on target that you need to use Ground Control Points if you want greater accuracy in the solution. However, the answer to your original question is that you can batch edit the exif metadata in your collected images using the freeware ExifTool by Phil Harvey. It is a command line tool but it can rapidly change the metadata values. As as always don't change your source data but work on a copy of it so you can easily revert. ... View more

I've had good results with the DJI Mavic Pro. Just need to remember to focus the camera at the elevation you are flying the imagery. There is one issue to be aware of in that the heights recorded in the image metadata are neither record ellipsoidal heights nor MSL altitude of the sensor. This appears to be across the entire DJI product line at the current firmware and not limited to just the Mavic Pro. Another issue is that the GPSAltitude tag in the image metadata if recorded as "below sea level"  or "above sea level" instead of with a sign. Drone2Map interprets both as above sea level.  GPSAltitude: 23 below sea level   -> 23 meters in Drone2Map    GPSAltitude: 23 above sea level  -> 23 meters in Drone2Map Unless you do a lot of work near MSL you may not ever have an issue with the sign but the incorrect data being recorded by the DJI drones can lead to issues. One work around is to use ground control points in Drone2Map which will pull the solution to the right elevation as long as it isn't so far out of bounds that solution fails. ... View more

Lee, I just came across your question, soory it has not been more timely. The short answer is that the only real must have for drone2map is a system that produces nadir or low oblique images (camera pointed down) and a way to record the 3D GPS coordinates of the location of the images.  Along these lines the 3DR Solo and Phantom 3 work well. Generally, the essential characteristics for best integration are: + Camera or Platform collection of the 3D GPS location of the images +The ability to record nadir or near nadir imagery   +A camera model supported in Drone2Map specifically or by default. +A passable quality sensor In addition, helpful characteristics are: + Efficient way to download the images + High image resolution + Auto triggered Sensor + The ability fly generated way points + A mission planning system to generate waypoints with proper overlap - Doug ... View more

I may be misunderstanding your idea but if you right click on the dataframe in layout view, select properties from the menu, and set a fixed extent on the data frame tab it locks the data extent of the dataframe, there is also the option to set the scale here. Unfortunately, it also locks it in the data view as well.   ... View more

Krotte,  you can visualize geometries across the 180 degree meridian in desktop if you use a custom projection on top of the WGS84 datum. We used this when doing buffers across the meridian in USFK. I liked to use the World Plate Carree projection because it looks nice on briefings and is pretty close to the WGS Geographics Default most use (although this works for other projections like web mercator as well). To do this put your data frame in a Projected Coordinate Systems > Plate Carree (World). Next modify the projection by changing the centeral meridian to 180 degrees. This will center your data frame on the Pacific. One thing to keep in mind is that if you use data layers in another projection they will have a line through them at the 180 degree longitude. To get around this do buffers and other created geometries in the modified projection directly and you'll get no line.    ... View more