Below are the instructions for planning a flight using the DroneDeploy mobile app. Before leaving home to map, see the Initial Setup for Flying and the Making Successful Maps guides!
What is a Project?
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.
The four tabs of a Project
Reusable flight templates can be found on the 'Fly' tab. A flight template is similar to what used to be known as a flight plan. The difference is that you can fly a template as many times as you'd like without copying it. This helps to remove variability when you're tracking change over time.
The 'Upload' tab is ready to accept images for the flights we've detected as flown and can also receive any uploads that fit our processing requirements for our paid users.
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.
The 'Report' tab currently hosts all your reports on that project, including the Annotation and Progress reports.
Create a Project on Mobile
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You can just open the DroneDeploy app on your compatible mobile device. This will take you to your dashboard. From here, you can navigate to the 'New Project' button at the top of your dashboard. Your initial project location will be based on the given area of your device. If you would like to change the area, click inside the search bar to search for a location. You can also drag the target around the map. Use the blue + sign to create a new project. |
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The search bar at the top allows you to search by address, name, and zip code. When you find the area you want a map for, select 'Create project here' in the middle of your screen. Note: For the best experience, always choose a geolocation representing your planned flight or walk location. This cannot be changed after creation. |
| Choose your project name and click 'Continue'. |
Once you've created your project, you can choose the type of flight you want to take.
For standard ortho mosaics and 3D models, choose" "Standard."
Other options for our agriculture pilots include facade, corridor, panorama, video, photo flights, and stand count.
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Choose your flight type: |
The Standard map plan will look like this: |
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Use the white arrow to close the flight panel and edit the plan boundary. You can edit the boundary by tap-and-drag to move the white points. A single tap on the white dot will delete it. Use the grey dots indicating a + to add angles to your plan. You can stop editing your boundary anytime, and your flight template will automatically save. Select the white 'Undo' button to undo your last change. We always recommend 'overflying,' which means that any critical part of your subject you must capture should not be close to the selected boundary. |
Add Additional Flight Plans to Your Project
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DroneDeploy Projects allow you to create multiple flight plans within your project. These plans can combine standard map plans or other media, such as panoramic shots and videos. |
To do this choose the blue" "+" next to your plan name: |
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From you, please return to the flight plan list we saw earlier in this article. Choose any flight plan to add to your project. Once you select the flight type, see an editable view of that plan. In the same way, you can edit the boundary and location of that flight plan. You can quickly move between your plans in the project by using the drop-down. |
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Flight Settings
The instructions below are primarily for the" "Standard" Map Plan type.
Below the template selector, you can set the custom parameters for your flight.
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When you aren't connected to a drone, the time, area, image count, and battery count estimator calculates conservative estimates based on a Mavic 2 Pro. Estimations will recalculate for your drone type when connected to the app.
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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're mapping 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.
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Enhanced 3D Mode combines Perimeter 3D mode with Crosshatch mode to capture angled shots from the perimeter of your mission plan (Perimeter 3D) and oblique imagery above your subject in a crosshatch formation to create higher-quality 3D models. Enhanced 3D maps are best kept under 1000 images. Enhanced 3D Mode does have device requirements.
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Live Map is a real-time mapping product for DroneDeploy's mobile iOS app. With It, 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.
Advanced Flight Settings
You have a handful of important options to select in the Advanced Settings, which can be shown by selectin' 'Advanced':
- 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. You are confident the drone will not encounter any natural obstacles along its flight path.
- Make Available Offline allows you to save your template as one of 10 saved on your device for offline flying. Select the toggle to download the base map and wait for it to save 'Available Offline.' Select 'Make Available Offline' before deleting a template to ensure the offline map is deleted from your cached limit 10. When you're back online, please allow the device to sync to its servers for 10 minutes before you quit the app.
Turning off Automatic Settings reveals more in-depth options:
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Sidelap: the percentage of overlap between the sides of the images.
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Frontlap: the percentage of overlap between the top and bottom of your pictures.
Increasing overlap (side lap + front lap) generally makes stitching a more complex subject easier. More views are captured of each feature. The default 75/65 overlap setting will work for most maps, but if you are flying low or your subject is very homogenous (everything looks the same, like a field or a treeline), increase the overlap between 5%-15%. Increasing overlap has two main adverse effects. First, image count and time are increased. Second, if your subject has a lot of movement (people + cars), more movement will be captured, which can cause additional stitching issues.
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Flight Direction: This option rotates the orientation of the flight lines 360 degrees. It can also change the plan's starting waypoint.
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Capture Flight Speed: This setting changes the maximum allowed flight speed at which the drone can map. The drone will not necessarily reach this speed because a lower speed may be required for sharp image capture, considering your hardware and the altitude and overlap settings.
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It was starting Waypoint: The first waypoint that will be flown on your mission. This skips all previous waypoints.
- Gimbal Angle: This controls the camera's angle as it flies the plane. At 90°, your camera will point straight down.
- Crosshatch mode allows you to take oblique imagery directly above your subject with a 65° angle. Instead of a single pass, the Mode doubles your plan lines and flies the drone in both directions for more image density and coverage.
- Perimeter 3D mode will add a flight path on the boundary of your flight template using oblique imagery (65° angle) facing toward the inside of your subject.
Dashboard Navigation
When viewing a project, click the home button at the top left of your screen to view all of your projects and folders in a list.
By clicking on the 3-dotted drop-down menu to the right of the project name, you can view the map's flight page, move it to a folder, share it, or upload captured images to process into a map. Processing images is a feature reserved for our paid users.
Click the location icon in the top right to see your projects in map view:
After you've read 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!