Speed and altitude question to scan large area for land survey

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I am going to buy Phantom 3 for survey of semi-residential area but I have some questions:

My objective is aerial photography to capture very large area for showing as high resolution map image layer showing much more details than satellite image in mapping application.

I want to fly the drone as fast as possible but not too fast to degrade picture quality.
I want to fly it as high as possible but not too high to degrade picture quality. The reason for this is to avoid naughty people seeing the drone and shooting it down.

What is the best speed and altitude for above scenario?

Approximate how long it will take to photograph entire one square mile area?
 
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Try an app like DroneDeploy and it takes care of the planning for you.
It will set up a grid, height, speed and take the photos with suitable overlap.
 
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Maps made Easy is another similar app. One square mile is a lot of ground to cover with a Phantom and would require multiple batteries. If you fly the mission higher than 200' AGL resolution will start to suffer. Even at 400' AGL you are probably looking at a five to six battery mission. These types of missions are easier with fixed wing aircraft.
 
Maps made Easy is another similar app. One square mile is a lot of ground to cover with a Phantom and would require multiple batteries. If you fly the mission higher than 200' AGL resolution will start to suffer. Even at 400' AGL you are probably looking at a five to six battery mission. These types of missions are easier with fixed wing aircraft.

About what speed phantom will be flying at 200' AGL and how many battery missions? What would be the speed at 400' AGL?
 
Maps made Easy is another similar app. One square mile is a lot of ground to cover with a Phantom and would require multiple batteries. If you fly the mission higher than 200' AGL resolution will start to suffer. Even at 400' AGL you are probably looking at a five to six battery mission. These types of missions are easier with fixed wing aircraft.

Great point in your last sentence. I'm working with an Aero photog. organization to help them develop a fixed-wing offering. Having both multi-rotor and fixed-wing platforms gives them great advantage in commerce.
 
Whatever you do make sure you film at least 60fps
 
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Hi. I use a P3 for survey work in an open cut mine and use the Pix4D capture app to create flight plans. I fly on the fast speed mode, at 120m,and the app automatically works out photo intervals and overlap. The photos go into Pix4D Pro to generate 3d models and orthophotos, but Maps made easy will do a similar job. I can fly areas 1km x 700m on a single battery with ease. If using Pix4D, you need to use the rolling shutter correction to get an accurate photo though, otherwise the orthophoto looks bent and warped.
Hope that helps
 
I am going to buy Phantom 3 for survey of semi-residential area but I have some questions:

My objective is aerial photography to capture very large area for showing as high resolution map image layer showing much more details than satellite image in mapping application.

I want to fly the drone as fast as possible but not too fast to degrade picture quality.
I want to fly it as high as possible but not too high to degrade picture quality. The reason for this is to avoid naughty people seeing the drone and shooting it down.

What is the best speed and altitude for above scenario?

Approximate how long it will take to photograph entire one square mile area?

According to DroneDeploy at a 1.5in/pixel resolution it would take approximately 1.75 hours of flight time. It would be nearly 8000 photos. 1 square mile is 650 acres.
 
These types of missions are easier with fixed wing aircraft.

Depends actually. A square mile is probably on the outer limits of a phantoms ability without much problem. However you could theoretically do 3-4 square miles in a day at a 1.5 in/pixel resolution. It would be cheaper and actually faster. To put a fixed wing up in the air would be more costly especially for such a small area. It's won't be long until Google start crowd sourcing it's aerial photos. If you had 2 or 3 operators running a drone each on the same mission but at different points you could move much more efficiently.
 

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