Drone Mapping

I am interested in getting a drone to fly over my land and take images, which will be added to a database and allow viewing of the images in a time lapsed mattern.
Anyone know of any open source projects?

Maybe check the NSA website?

Google, "Drone Photography". You can buy an electric drone with a camera for about $120. Then when you're done photographing your own land, you can check out the neighbors.


I believe the machine gun option is considerably more.

Can you fly a drone near government installations? There aren't any signs saying you can't.

In parts of the world that contain oil, the last thing you'd want to see in the sky is a drone.

Below are two videos on this topic.

Drone to me represent an opportunity to get advice, in a clear way.
For example, instead of buying plane tickets to have people come out to my land, I can just send them the 3d map files.
The drones that I am considering are all electrical and not gas powered.
Instead of wasting oil, and resource developing land, I can first try to adjust the 3d models to find the most results for the least amount of effort.

The really huge advantage is being able to provide high level detail examples of what permaculture can do for the landscape for time, which could help increase adoption rates.
Once the drone is up and working my homestead, it can easy do the same for other landholds, The new 3d models of other landholds could be modified with computer models and these "before photos" and "after photos" could be presented to the landholds and asked if they are interested in adopting, a picture is worth a thousand words. I only wonder what 10,000 pictures, post processed into 3d models are worth then.

I mean it so much easier for me to plant virtual tree into my 3d models to suggest optimized layouts.
This isn't to discount Local Support, Which I have reached out for and so far, it seems no one is around, However I am hoping that will chance once I have more time over there.

I am hoping that once I get rich multimedia of my landscape that I will be able to leverage the online preculture community and together we can all increase the abundance on the 7 acres I just purchased, which in turn should help my local community.

I see what you're saying about the efficiency and usefulness of drone mapping. I'd love a cheap time lapse photography project of my farm from the sky?

I am very wary of drones though. A private citizen in our town is advertising a reward for a lost surveillance drone. Also, a friend of mine who is a state representative allowed herself to be monitored by a drone to see what it was like. The video is up on YouTube if you want to see, search for Teresa Tanzi and drone. She knew the drone was videoing her and was looking for it and she still sometimes didn't know where it was. It's very small technology with the potential for terrible abuse.

And yet, it could even be a service that a landscape designer could offer with great potential...

Check Google Earth every couple weeks and capture the screen image.

Cops do this to catch people exercising their 'freedom'.

I do GIS for a living, and I would love to start my own drone mapping company. My favorite drone system is the Swinglet Cam. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5NeH8lEsQc

A flying wing made of 500 grams of rubberized foam, it takes a standard point-and-shoot camera on 30 minute flights. They even mapped the Matterhorn.



For only $10,000 it is hugely competitive against the established players in aerial photography. But the FAA has made it clear that they will not allow any competition against all the licensed pilots that they represent...

Anyways, as an alternative, I am looking into kite and balloon based systems. Skyfishing, with a fishing pole and some helium-filled balloons looks pretty easy.



But there are a number of more robust systems used by a professor at UC Berkeley. They include ways to stabilize the camera, as well as point it during flight. Kite Aerial Photography

So, there are a number of ways to get aerial photos. And at the scale that most permies need, kite or balloons would probably do the job.

Like Jeremy, I do GIS (among other things) for a living...just working on fitting out a UAV for mapping. First flight should be in a month or so....stay tuned!

The Swinglet / Ebee is pretty slick...but $10-25k, it better be. There's not much in there that isn't off the shelf these days...I think mine will run ~$1500 as a bare bones, with autopilot and nearIR cam (for NDVI / veg health mapping)

Also, folks should know that the FAA has a kibosh on "commercial use of UAVs" until they release guidance late this year or (more likely) next. Any "Drone Consultancy" needs to be way under the radar...

You are working on a UAV? Very cool! I am looking forward to hearing about your progress!

Yeah, need the airframe to be good to go, then the autopilot after. I'll chime in on progress