Desktop Flight Planning

Below are the instructions for planning a project on DroneDeploy.com on your desktop computer before the flight. Before you leave home to map, see the Initial Setup for Flying and the Making Successful Maps guides!

Project Overview

A Project is a location-based organization that centralizes your relevant drone data into one place, making tracking change over time easy and time-efficient.

There are four tabs within a project: 

1. Fly: The 'Fly' tab contains reusable flight 'templates. You can fly a template as often as possible without copying it, which helps to eliminate variability when you're making changes over time.
2. Upload: The 'Upload' tab is ready to accept images for flights we've detected as flown and can also receive any uploads that fit our processing requirements.
3. Explore: The maps in the Explore tab are distinct entities within the project. They are automatically aligned to each other, so overlays and annotations will only need to be made on one map to see the change over time. Deleting a completed map will delete that single map, not the entire project.
4. Report: The 'Report' tab currently hosts the Annotation Report and the Progress Report, with more to come.

Creating a Flight Plan

Once you have created a new project, select the 'Fly'' tab in the upper left-hand corner of the screen.

In the 'Fly'' tab, you can select the flight type you want to capture. There are several flight template options: 

• Manual - Allows you to fly and capture data without a specific flight plan manually
• Agriculture
  • Stand Count - Generates a stand count report 
• Maps & Models
  • Standard - Creates a map and model 
  • Facade - Creates a vertical model 
  • Corridor - Creates a long-distance map 
• Media
  • Panorama - Generates a spherical photo
  • Video - Captures a high-quality video 
  • Photo Report - Captures high-quality photo

You can just select the flight template you want to create. A standard view of that template will then appear.

Start Point

When creating a flight plan, the start point will be generated closest to your geolocation. The start point represents the first location the drone will head to after take-off, as well as where it begins taking images. 

IMPORTANT! We will reference a standard flight template for the remainder of this article. However, the flight planning process is the same for all flight templates.

You will be able to edit the map template by dragging the white outline markers of the map to create your desired template. You can also add points to your template by selecting the "+" to add markers surrounding the map template.

Seeing Overlays on the Flight Planning Page

You can use one of your overlays as a guide for flight planning. To do this, head to the "Explore tab" at the top of your project. Select the overlays tab, then the overlay of choice. From here, you can toggle on the option to see this on the "Fly" Page: 

Head back to the Fly tab to see your overlay.

Adding Additional Flight Templates

It is expected to utilize more than one flight template in one project. You may want one standard map plan, one panorama template, and one video template for a single location.

To create additional flight templates, click on the template selector at the top left of your screen, indicating using a blue "+" symbol.

Flight Settings

Below the template selector, you can set the custom parameters for your flight.

• When you aren't connected to a drone, the time, area, image count, and battery count, the estimator calculates conservative estimates based on a Mavic 3 Enterprise by default. You can change the drone by which the forecast is based in advanced settings. Likewise, calculations for your specific drone on the mobile app will update once you connect your drone.
  
  

• Overlap 

• Flight altitude sets the distance above the takeoff point that the drone captures photos. Flying higher makes the images easier to stitch at some expense of resolution. If you are a complex subject, such as vegetation, a desert, or water, flying high increases the chance of a successful map. If you have to fly lower, raise your overlap to make the photos easier to stitch.

A few other notable settings include: 

• Enhanced 3D captures additional angled shots from the perimeter of your mission plan, facing towards the center of your subject for higher quality 3D models, and combines this with crosshatch photo capture. Enhanced 3D mode maps are best kept under 1000 images. Enhanced 3D mode does have device requirements.

• Live Map is a real-time mapping product for DroDroneDeploy's mobile iOS app. With Live Map, you can produce a low-resolution 2D map on your iOS device as the drone is flying—even without a cellular or data connection. Live Map also has device requirements.

• Obstacle Avoidance is enabled by default to use the built-in obstacle avoidance sensors that your drone may have to help avoid a collision. Sometimes, a low, bright sun can cause the drone to stop mid-flight because it's detected as a nearby object. Turn off Obstacle Avoidance if you think this may be the case and you're confident the drone will not encounter any natural obstacles along its flight path.

After you have the Initial Setup for Flying Guide, head out to the field, check your drone in DJI Go and quit, navigate to your template in the DroneDeploy mobile app, and connect to fly!

Access: All levels of the organization, including pilots, analysts, and admins, can create a project and flight plan on the dashboard desktop. 

More Guides on Planning your Flight: 

Mobile App Flight Planning
Planning a Video Flight 
Planning a Panorama Flight
Planning a Progress Report Flight