Tower or Mission Planner for 2D Mapping

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I've never used Tower or Mission planner for actual flights but a situation has come up where I'd like to get a 2D map of an area that's approximately 77 acres, 1300 ft x 2600 ft. I don't need geo-tagging, just a relatively high resolution photo of the entire area. I have a Solo with the mRo m8n GPS upgrade, a stock Gopro Hero 4 Black but stock antenna's and wifi.

So, questions are:

-Will the stock GP4B work for the photos?
-Could an area this size be done on one battery, depending on settings? I did do a 360 pano of the area from 295 ft with the default photo settings (12mp, wide) and the resolution was good enough for my purposes. If I have to change batteries, do the current versions of Tower and/or Mission Planner allow for this?
-I'm almost guaranteed to lose connection to the controller during some parts of the mission, can either Mission Planner and/or Tower compensate for this?

I've been reading up on Tower and Mission Planner but I'm finding conflicting information. I have to drive some distance to get to this location and it's pretty much going to be a one off mission (maybe more depending how this turns out) and there aren't any areas close by that size that I could practice this in. There are smaller areas close by that I can do test missions but it's the controller signal loss and battery changing that I'm mainly wondering about. Mission Planner seems to be the more robust of the two but seems to have a steeper learning curve.

Any recommendations, help, tips, info greatly appreciated!
 
I use MP for survey missions. I prefer it over Tower, but admittedly I'm way more experienced with MP.
I'd recommend you run several practice missions, even if it is different location than where you need to survey. Will give you a good feeling of how the software works, and how your altitude and overlap settings affect the final product.


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There are tons of youtube videos and posts on this. If you use mission planner you can pause a mission to change batteries. Mission planner will also tell you how long the flight will be, how many pictures you'll take, etc. Watch the youtube videos.

I don't have much experience with large surveys, but this is what I've read:

GoPro will work. You have to determine what ground sample distance you want. This will determine your altitude which in turn will determine how many pictures you have to take (you also have to account for overlap).

I've read that at 80% sidelap you'll get about 30 acres per flight at 350 feet, which is about 5.5 centimeters per pixel. This is flying at an efficient speed of 15 mph.

If you want 1.6 cm per pixel resolution, you'll have to fly at about 100 feet. Mission planner will tell you how long this flight time will be.

There are parameters you can tweak to have the survey continue if you lose controller signal, but given how new you are to this, it probably would be ill advised.

I am getting the impression that Tower isn't that well suited for survey missions and Mission Planner would be better.

Thanks!
 
I use MP for survey missions. I prefer it over Tower, but admittedly I'm way more experienced with MP.
I'd recommend you run several practice missions, even if it is different location than where you need to survey. Will give you a good feeling of how the software works, and how your altitude and overlap settings affect the final product.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

It is looking like Mission Planner is the way to go for this. Have some studying to do!

Thanks!
 
Mission Planner can do more. But for simplistic purposes, Tower does job very well and quite easily. I've used it numerous times to make survey grids while traveling. It is very easy, Draw your grid, adjust the angle and altitude, set the camera model and overlaps, and you're done. These is absolutely nothing that you need to do which Tower can't do for you in this case.

With the GoPro, I suggest overlap and sidelap of 70% in the camera settings of the survey grid. You should also put a 10-12mph set speed command before the survey grid. Always put an RTH command as the final waypoint in the mission.
 
Mission Planner can do more. But for simplistic purposes, Tower does job very well and quite easily. I've used it numerous times to make survey grids while traveling. It is very easy, Draw your grid, adjust the angle and altitude, set the camera model and overlaps, and you're done. These is absolutely nothing that you need to do which Tower can't do for you in this case.

With the GoPro, I suggest overlap and sidelap of 70% in the camera settings of the survey grid. You should also put a 10-12mph set speed command before the survey grid. Always put an RTH command as the final waypoint in the mission.

So it will seamlessly do multi-battery missions? This is where I'm seeing conflicting information.
 
I believe Mission Planner does have that ability. I've never had to use it so I can't speak to it. Tower does not.
 
I believe Mission Planner does have that ability. I've never had to use it so I can't speak to it. Tower does not.
There is a parameter called MISSION RESTART or some thing very close that determines if you stop an AUTO Mission the aircraft will either start over again or continue were you left off when put back into AUTO. I've used it with Arducopter 3.2.1, 3.3.3 and Rover 3.0 and it works well. I assume it would work with solo but have not tried it.
 
I use MP for survey missions. I prefer it over Tower, but admittedly I'm way more experienced with MP.
I'd recommend you run several practice missions, even if it is different location than where you need to survey. Will give you a good feeling of how the software works, and how your altitude and overlap settings affect the final product.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Is there a way to complete an entire survey mission even if you lose connection between solo and the controller? If so, how do you set that up?
 
MIS_RESTART is not the parameter you change. It's FS_THR_ENABLE. You set it for , which is Enabled Continue with Mission in Auto Mode
 
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