Tower app. Input GPS coordinate.

[Jubalr]

Ok, if the pause button works in auto, that's definitely the way to go. Predetermined delays would be tough, if they're too long or too short, the discrepancy with the people on the ground would grow with each way point. But if you can just pause it, and then restart the mission, that seems like it'd be perfect.

I agree. I would put in maybe a 15s delay at that WP and hit Pause while it was hovering just to give you some margin for maintaining control.

 

[mecummings.cr]

You can enter specific coordinates into Mission Planner that the drone will fly to but it will only get as close as the GPS satellites allow based on Solo's non-commercial gps capability that doesn't use any correction based on actual known field survey benchmarks. If you need actual property corners set you will need a surveyor to mark the locations based on local benchmarks... your idea is great but Solo will only give you an approximate location (similar to what a gps app will give from a smartphone). If you need actual property bounds marked you will need to hire a surveyor that has the proper equipment to locate the actual property corners or find one in your group willing to donate some of their time.

 

[lawrence.jessejames]

Hey guys, quick question for doing surveys with Solo / Tower. I've been doing surveys with Tower for some time and it works great when the background map is current enough that I can get oriented correctly and draw my survey boundaries, however I've hit a snag if lets say I'm trying to map a new gravel stockpile and its impossible to tell where it is on google map. Would it be best to use mission planner in this instance?

 

[Jubalr]

Hey guys, quick question for doing surveys with Solo / Tower. I've been doing surveys with Tower for some time and it works great when the background map is current enough that I can get oriented correctly and draw my survey boundaries, however I've hit a snag if lets say I'm trying to map a new gravel stockpile and its impossible to tell where it is on google map. Would it be best to use mission planner in this instance?

I ran into this myself when I was asked to shoot a new Walmart. All the maps just showed an empty field. You can get pretty close by moving around the target are and zoom in on the map in Tower to your current position. Take note of any trees, bushes, landmarks of any kind that are on the map. For instance, the stock pile you referenced. You could stand at the base of it and zoom in on the map to get a good idea of where it is and create your survey from there. Let me know if you find a better way.

 

[RPM]

Mission Planner is the grand daddy. It has tons of features including an actual Survey mode. Tower is slowly implementing them, but unlikely to get all features (like survey). I'm not an MP expert, but it most likely will do everything you want it to. The tricky part would be the waiting until you get to the waypoint before manually triggering to go to the next, but It's probably possible. Or you might have to fake it with adding delays. It might also be possible to pause/resume a mission in progress. Again, I'm not an expert but MP is a very capable piece of software. None of the others come close.

However, Tower has Solo specific features and Mission Planner is general purpose. There are some things you wouldn't be able to do with the Solo that you could with another quad. For instance, there aren't any extra programmable buttons on the Controller that you could send to trigger some features of Mission Planner. There are some ways to hack that, but it involves modifying the Solos guts.

Just in case anyone is reading this at a later date like I am. Tower has had survey feature for years. It is the best (free) GCS app I have found for this task. Cheers!