offline 2d mapping question

bow

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looking at all the on line, upload your images and they let you know when they are stitched, i ended up with an idea that i am trying to figure out how to do. In my area we are prone to brush fires in the pine barrens. just google Long Island wild fires '95. Recently we have also had a huge problem with a beetle infestation that the forestry service has been trying to stop by cutting trees and just leaving them where they fall. As a Fireman this is where we are going to run into problems. While our brush trucks are some serious pieces of machinery, the randomly fallen trees can cause issues navigating through the woods. I am planning on trying some of the more common mapping programs for flying a fairly large area quickly to get images of the area the trucks would be working in. i am looking for thoughts for a program that would stitch together a map file from a laptop. higher resolution would be great, but speed of stitching would be more important. Basically we would love to create an up to date google earth image that could be sent to the officers in the truck so they can more easily navigate to the head of the fire. it would be great if i could get it to show their position in real time, but we are working on how to best coordinate their paths with subsequent flights. Any thoughts or insights would be greatly appreciated.
 
looking at all the on line, upload your images and they let you know when they are stitched, i ended up with an idea that i am trying to figure out how to do. In my area we are prone to brush fires in the pine barrens. just google Long Island wild fires '95. Recently we have also had a huge problem with a beetle infestation that the forestry service has been trying to stop by cutting trees and just leaving them where they fall. As a Fireman this is where we are going to run into problems. While our brush trucks are some serious pieces of machinery, the randomly fallen trees can cause issues navigating through the woods. I am planning on trying some of the more common mapping programs for flying a fairly large area quickly to get images of the area the trucks would be working in. i am looking for thoughts for a program that would stitch together a map file from a laptop. higher resolution would be great, but speed of stitching would be more important.
There are a number of services that offer apps to automate image capture for mapping and also will process your map for you.
Or you can stitch yourself in Agisoft Photoscan.
Dronedeploy is one of the most commonly used applications and there are others as well.
Mapping requires big overlaps and stitching a lot of images from a P4pro takes time and computing power but can produce beautiful, detailed maps.
I described the process in another thread here: Panorama by shooting straight down and moving P4P?
Basically we would love to create an up to date google earth image that could be sent to the officers in the truck so they can more easily navigate to the head of the fire. it would be great if i could get it to show their position in real time, but we are working on how to best coordinate their paths with subsequent flights. Any thoughts or insights would be greatly appreciated.
What you are asking for can be done with moving map software like Oziexplorer.
I do a similar thing for fieldwork in remote locations. I've always just used Google Earth imagery but it would handle your custom made maps just as well.
Here's a screenshot from a 10 inch Android tablet running Oziexplorer using the GPS in the tablet to provide location info:
i-BwqZ2Kp-XL.png


Agisoft Photoscan also gives you the option of outputting your map as a .kmz file that you can import into Google Earth which could be useful for planning purposes.
Here's a tiny example:
i-xL4rrVb-XL.jpg

And the same image in Google Earth, zoomed in for detail:
i-7gJZR8F-XL.jpg
 
Thanks for the info. Looks like I've got some more learning to do.
 
Played with a bunch of the flight control apps. Noneof the stitching programs seem to like lots of woods. Guess I need to keep experimenting
 
Played with a bunch of the flight control apps. Noneof the stitching programs seem to like lots of woods. Guess I need to keep experimenting
The software needs to be able to find points that it can match and that can be tricky with a surface that's all fuzzy bushes or water.
 
Yeah unfortunately that's what I'm running into. Lots of the area looks like a bomb went off with dead trees laying all over. Will keep trying and playing with heights. lol also time to upgrade to new computer
 

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