absolute noob, please some pointers

[BertKraan]

I am an absolute beginner in imagery and remote sensing and need some guidance.

I just had my first drone flight (dji mini 2, nothing fancy) and made some 30 pictures straight down. How can I piece them together in a map other than georeferencing them one-by-one? Is there a tutorial or a blog that walks me through the basic steps? I'm using a standard license and do not have sitescan or drone2map.

Thanks for your time reading.

Bert 

[JoeBorgione]

Get your checkbook out...  https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-drone2map/overview

[BertKraan]

When my funding would be limitless I would already have had an advanced license, drone2map, site scan and a Mavic 2 Enterprise dual ...

Alas, no business case at the moment.I'm afraid I'll have to do with whatever is possible using standard license, no further extensions. It would be nice to be able to demonstrate some great stuff to management in an attempt to convince them to invest may be 🙂

[beel · Accepted solution]

 Bert,

That is a small enough project that you should be able to mosaic it (put all the .jpg images together and create a seamless GeoTif file) using a free log-in at DroneDeploy (Drone Mapping Software | Drone Mapping App | UAV Mapping | Surveying Software | DroneDeploy). Another excellent alternative (the one I use) is Pix4Dreact (Download Pix4Dreact | Pix4D). The former is cloud-based; you can download a free trial copy of the latter and run it locally. Both work pretty well, and are quite easy to use, in my experience, although I give the ease-of-use edge to Pix4Dreact, which also handles larger projects quite well.

Kindest regards,

William E. VanSickle, M.Sc, Remote Pilot

GIS Analyst III, Office of Information Technology

St. Johns River Water Management District
P.O. Box 1429 ● Palatka, FL 32178-1429

Office: (386) 329-4580

Cell: 386-530-9889
Email: bvansickle@sjrwmd.com

Website: www.sjrwmd.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamevansickle/

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[CodyBenkelman]

Bert - presuming you want a) an automated method and b) accurate results, your simplest options within ArcGIS will be either to purchase Drone2Map (by far the lowest cost option) https://doc.arcgis.com/en/imagery/workflows/resources/creating-drone-imagery-products-drone2map.htm or to upgrade to an Advanced license on Pro to use the built-in Ortho Mapping workflow https://doc.arcgis.com/en/imagery/workflows/resources/creating-drone-imagery-products-with-ortho-map... .  As I think you know, Site Scan is another option, providing SaaS to do all your processing in the cloud, whereas Drone2Map and Ortho Mapping run on your desktop.

All of these apps will apply photogrammetry to generate accurate products in a mostly automated fashion. 

Lacking those tools, with Pro Standard license you can use the georeferencing tools, and there is some automation possible if you properly orient each image on the map before attempting the auto georeferencing process.   For a small number of higher altitude images, with oblique angle up to ~15-20 degrees off nadir, you can get some nice looking visualizations, but your results won't have any quantifiable accuracy.  If you're serious about generating map products, you'll need one of the photogrammetric tools and most likely need to upgrade to a drone with a better camera.

[BertKraan1]

Thanks Cody,

Your answer is clear about what costs and capabilities are possible, thanks!

[JohannesBierer]

There exists some open source software, OpenDroneMap, to process drone data:

https://github.com/OpenDroneMap/ODM

Don't know this software, but perhaps it's worth testing?