DronePan for Solo First Field Test

J R · Mar 13, 2016

Well finally got around to doing a few tests with DronePan. Understandably, the app is a bit basic and doesn't provide much data. Makes it a bit unnerving to put the bird in the air without the Solo app open. It only had % of battery, elevation and sat count in the app. The sat count just showed a " - " so I couldn't see how many sats I had.

I closed the DronePan app, opened the Solo app, made sure my sat count and HDOP were good, closed the Solo app and opened the DronePan app. I put the bird in the air and hit the start button and watched it like a hawk. Off she went and did her thing.

Took the photos into the house and downloaded to the computer. Started a multi-row panorama project in Panorama Studio. Imported 18 of the 19(?) photos and started trying to assemble. Had to do some manipulations because I used the Peau 4.35mm lens. After about 10-15 minutes I had a decent panorama that I was able to use to produce a good interactive HTML panorama and a packaged EXE.

All in all, it did a decent job. I'll have to do further testing but was quite pleased with the result. I have a screen record of the flight if anyone wants to see it, let me know and I'll post it here.

Also, does anyone know of a place that hosts these things? I couldn't seem to find anyplace decent. I'd love to show it to you guys but they're quite large. Even just the jpg picture after production was about 70MB's.

Jerry

pyrate · Mar 13, 2016

good to know
wondered how it worked with aftermarket lenses, but I think Frank is flying a Chinese version of the 3.97

So question, I assume we set to 12mp wide with a flat lens?

franknitty69 · Mar 13, 2016

J R said:
...
Also, does anyone know of a place that hosts these things? I couldn't seem to find anyplace decent. I'd love to show it to you guys but they're quite large. Even just the jpg picture after production was about 70MB's.

Jerry

i uploaded a pano to this site and was able to embed it in a post. an alternative is dermandar. it lets you upload panos up to 8191px height or width. from there you can share on instagram, facebook, etc.

Panoramic Social Network - Create and Share 360 Panoramas - Embed Interactive Pictures - Make Easy and Free Virtual Tours.

cynfab · Mar 13, 2016

DronePan just takes the pictures, it's up to you to combine them into a panorama with your favourite software package. I was disappointed at first at the results, but then realized that DronePan didn't quite make the 60degree yaws that it should have. (don't know quite why this was) I probably could have done an acceptable job of taking those pix myself (manually), but DronePan did it all without anything more then a button press. Definitely a work in progress, but IMHO a great start to what will become a very useful app.

Pedals2Paddles · Mar 14, 2016

This is great! Do you guys have recommended software the task of stitching images together? Web based or PC based software?

J R · Mar 14, 2016

pyrate said:
good to know
wondered how it worked with aftermarket lenses, but I think Frank is flying a Chinese version of the 3.97

So question, I assume we set to 12mp wide with a flat lens?

Pyrate,

That's what I did. I inspected my pano a bit further and there are a few minor flaws. I think I'll be able to tweak things a bit further in the software.

Jerry

J R · Mar 14, 2016

Pedals2Paddles said:
This is great! Do you guys have recommended software the task of stitching images together? Web based or PC based software?

Pedal,

I'm using Panoramo Studio, a search finds many different app available but I've had very good luck with this program using my "white" guy.

Jerry

J R · Mar 14, 2016

franknitty69 said:
i uploaded a pano to this site and was able to embed it in a post.

Thanks, Frank! I'll take a look.

Jerry

J R · Mar 14, 2016

franknitty69 said:
i uploaded a pano to this site and was able to embed it in a post. an alternative is dermandar. it lets you upload panos up to 8191px height or width. from there you can share on instagram, facebook, etc.

Frank,

"i uploaded a pano to this site and was able to embed it in a post."

How did you do this? I cant figure it out for the life of me.

Jerry

franknitty69 · Mar 14, 2016

J R said:
Frank,

"i uploaded a pano to this site and was able to embed it in a post."

How did you do this? I cant figure it out for the life of me.

Jerry

i went to media>add media and uploaded the pano to a new album. then in my post i am able to add media from 'my media' by clicking on the media gallery embed button (camera) and then pick the pano.

J R · Mar 14, 2016

franknitty69 said:
i went to media>add media and uploaded the pano to a new album.

Frank,

Did you just upload a single pano file (a JPEG) or did you upload all of the individual files that make up the pano?

Thanks,

Jerry

franknitty69 · Mar 14, 2016

J R said:
Frank,

Did you just upload a single pano file (a JPEG) or did you upload all of the individual files that make up the pano?

Thanks,

Jerry

it has to be the stitched image (jpg, png).

bheiland · Mar 14, 2016

Have been starting to do some mods to DronePan Solo. I have experimented with a change that takes a picture every 30 degrees rather than every 60 and instead of pitching the gimbal at 0,-30,-60,and -90, I added a -15. I have the standard lens on a go pro hero 4 black, but having options to adjust the number of stops and pitch angles would be good for those with non-standard lens on the camera. I wanted more stops to help eliminate the occasional prop that gets in the view, and have more overlap on the images. I need to add functionality to the interface, as I am hard coding the changes for each test at this point.

I have created a panorama from 61 images in one test.