How to Geotag Images with the 3DRobotics Solo

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Found this a while ago.
There may be a better way to GeoTag your Photos, Since updates to Tower, MP, Solo & Controller?

How to Geotag Images with the 3DRobotics Solo | Stefan On Software

Stefan On Software

The new 3DR Solo drone, combined with a GoPro is an amazing platform for mapping applications once you figure out the process to properly geotag images. I’ve pulled together a workflow for you that is relatively straight forward. Note that this does not require the gimbal.

1. Configure your GoPro
Enable the WiFi on your GoPro and connect with the mobile device you’ll be using with Solo. In the settings you need to select the option to set the time on the GoPro, which will sync the GoPro clock to the device. While you are in here, go ahead and configure your capture settings too (I typically do timelapse, 12mp, 1 second interval). Once complete, disable WiFi on the GoPro.

2. Fly
I use the Tower application on Android to automatically generate my aerial surveys and control the Solo. Don’t forget to turn on your GoPro, with WiFi off, before your flight.

3. Pull your TLOG
After your flight, you can turn off the Solo, but leave the controller turned on so we can download the telemetry logs. We are going to transfer the logs using a protocol called SCP (secure copy) from the Solo controller to your computer. First, from your computer, connect to the Sololink Wifi.

If you are on a mac/linux machine, launch Terminal and use this command to copy all logs to your current directory (represented by the final “.”).

scp [email protected]:/log/* .

If you are on a Windows PC, use WinSCP to connect to 10.1.1.1 with username “root”, and copy the files from the /log directory.

The password for the root user is: TjSDBkAu

You’ll likely end up with several log files from recent flights.

4. Copy your GoPro images to your PC
Just put them wherever you’d like – But don’t alter them in any way yet.

5. Use Mission Planner to GeoTag
On a Windows Machine launch Mission Planner. You can use the telemetry logs tab to replay the logs to verify you have found the correct one. The one named solo.tlog is your last flight, while the numbered ones are previous flights. Change the extensions to .tlog to open in Mission planner.

Once you know which log matches the photos, press Control+F in Mission Planner to open the “secret” tools window. Select “Geo ref images” from the tools list.

Choose your TLOG file and images directory, and select “Time Offset”. If your camera time was set correctly then a “Seconds Offset” of 0 should be close enough.

Press “Pre-Process” and verify that most of your photos match the log times.

Press “GeoTag Images” to Geotag.

That is it! Enjoy!

Also....

Nice write up Stefan. I did not know that the GP would sync time on a WiFi connect and will try that this evening. Regarding retrieving logs, I stumbled on them last month on the android tablet used for Solo. It retains every log since day 1. The file is written when the tablet is powered off. So after a flight, just turn Solo and controller off then the tablet.

There is a directory called “com.o3dr.solo.android”. The full path on my Nexus 7 is: \Nexus 7\Internal storage\Android\data\org.droidplanner.services.android\files\tlogs\com.o3dr.solo.android
Open it up and there is every single log from Day 1 ! Nice to know where you can go to get these. And the extender does not need renamed either, so you can just double click on one to open MP.
 
Just to add up
Mission planner is not always accurate so using GeoSetter could be of help. This guy has great tutorial using both:
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I go Pix4D. There is not much out there in the cloud that can support the detail that I'm looking for. Or at least I haven't found it yet.. Processing on a local computer vs shared resources in the cloud just seems better, as long as you have the processing power and can afford it.
 
Geosetter worked for me last week, but now I'm getting an error saying the map can't be found :(. I've ruled out all the suggested issues. Even tried to run the program from two different sites as well as three different computers. Did something at friedmann-schmidt.com stop working - or is it just me??

geosetter-map-fail.JPG
 
Geosetter worked for me last week, but now I'm getting an error saying the map can't be found :(. I've ruled out all the suggested issues. Even tried to run the program from two different sites as well as three different computers. Did something at friedmann-schmidt.com stop working - or is it just me??

View attachment 3892
Same here. But if you go to the Help tab then 'Check For Update' click on the link for the Beta version. It is working fine.
 
Is it possible to geotag images from a log that is on the Solo?

It seems that if you lose the video signal the controller will not log the locations of the images. During one flight I lost my video feed, which seems to have messed up the .tlog leaving me with ≈50% of my images geotagged in the wrong location. They are all being tagged on to the nearest recorded location, so in some cases I have a dozen images tagged to the same GPS coordinate. It seems that if you lose the video signal the controller will not log the locations of the images. I've been messing around with the log files from the Solo, but I haven't found anything that works yet.

Thanks!
 

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