FAQs: Drone Flying

FAQs: Drone Flying

Q. What drone settings should I apply?
Ans: To guarantee the consistency of drone survey, the below settings can be applied to get better image quality.

  1. Set focus mode to manual focus(MF), set the focus distance to infinity or furthest distance. 
  2. Set ISO to auto
  3. Set the shutter speed/exposure time to a faster speed to avoid motion blur. You may need to adjust it when viewing the camera footage. Try to set the shutter speed/exposure time as fast as possible while the camera footage has decent lightness(balanced brightness and darkness), and not being noisy. 
  4. Set the aperture accordingly to make sure the image looks sharp in different range. You may need to adjust it when viewing the camera footage. Recommend to set aperture between 5.6-11
  5. Disable any dewarping feature
Q. What height should I fly?
Ans: Usual recommended height is 75 ft to 100 ft measure from the top of the bench. The height can be varied depending on the details required in the project.

Q. How many images can I upload? How many images should my project have ?
Ans: There is no limit in the Strayos app to the number of images. Things to keep in mind while taking images, taking excessive images will only increase the processing time. User should train to take the right amount images with the required overlap of 70% - 80%.

Q. Is flying autopilot better?
Ans: Flying Auto-Pilot increases the consistency with which the images are taken, which in turn helps the stitching process. Saving auto-pilot flight patterns makes the process repeatable thus saving the flight planning time for every project after it's done for the first bench.  

Q. Which apps do I use for flying?
Ans: Depending on what app is supported by the drone model the user can use of the apps the user is comfortable with. Here are some of the apps Strayos has worked with before
Dronelink app:  https://www.dronelink.com/
DJI Go: https://www.dji.com/goapp

Litchi has been used by us for auto-pilot flight testing. We ave worked with DJI Go for manual flights. You can contact a Strayos representative using our chat or email to request for flying guidelines that might work best for you.

Q. Which drone do I use for flying?
Ans: Any drone that has a 4K resolution camera that gives out good picture quality will work with the Strayos app.

Q. How much area to cover while flying?
Ans: It is advised the users take photos 20 ft - 30 ft beyond the extent of the area they want to collect and analyze in the Strayos app. This takes care of any data stitching or overlap issues that might come up due to the drone flight.


    • Related Articles

    • Drone Bench Flight: Best Practices

      <br> Key Rules and Flight Prep Key Rules to keep in mind before flying a bench: At least two third of photos should be taken with the camera pointing straight down (nadir images). Take photos along passes with at ...

    • Boretrak workflow and FAQs

      1. Upload Boretrak File and Select Boretrak Type Strayos provides an option to upload the following types of Boretrak files: If you have files in CSV format, please contact Strayos support and we will convert your files to (.txt) After boretrak files ...

    • Best Practices: Flying a Muckpile for Fragmentation Analysis

      Post blast drone flight and data collection is relatively simple. You can get started almost immediately after the dust has cleared from the blast. We recommend using autonomous flight planning software for flight planning. There are many ...

    • FAQs: Ground Control Point Rectification

      Q. What coordinate system to use for collecting Ground Control Points (GCP)? Ans: It is best to use the respective UTM or Gloabl coordinates while collecting GCP points. Users can also use the respective State plane coordinate system as long as the ...

    • FAQs: Model Elevation and Boundaries

      Q. My Model elevations are off? Why is there a difference between model elevations in the app as compared to the ones measured on the field? The GPS on a standard drone off-the-shelf is pretty good in the Lat and Long dimensions but not great at ...