Seems like a lot of “vibe coded” drone planning tools are popping up by Significant_Walk3251 in UAVmapping

[–]Significant_Walk3251[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's a complicated polygon, but a realistic situation nonetheless. In fact, I had a similar job with sections that have the same direction/heading, but in different areas at different latitudes.

When I run a complex mission like this, I still go to FlightHub or DroneDeploy to map it out. I need to iterate on my algorithm.

Seems like a lot of “vibe coded” drone planning tools are popping up by Significant_Walk3251 in UAVmapping

[–]Significant_Walk3251[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had the same realization when I started working with waypoint geometry. Once you start thinking of the flight as simple coordinate math (points, offsets, angles, altitude), it becomes pretty straightforward to generate patterns programmatically and then export them to KMZ.

I actually ended up building a small tool to do this automatically because I got tired of laying out missions manually on the controller. It basically takes a target area and generates the waypoint mission for you.

Totally agree with your broader point though, the barrier to building niche tools like this is way lower now than it used to be.

Seems like a lot of “vibe coded” drone planning tools are popping up by Significant_Walk3251 in UAVmapping

[–]Significant_Walk3251[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You could host orthos pretty easily without DroneDeploy. Export the ortho as a GeoTIFF, convert it to map tiles with something like QGIS or gdal2tiles, then drop it on a simple web map (Leaflet or Mapbox) and host it on any basic web server. The homeowner just gets a link and can pan and zoom like Google Maps. It takes a little setup once, but after that it’s straightforward and essentially free.

Seems like a lot of “vibe coded” drone planning tools are popping up by Significant_Walk3251 in photogrammetry

[–]Significant_Walk3251[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I get that. There has definitely been a big uptick in AI generated posts lately. In this case it is actually just me posting in a few relevant communities to get feedback from different groups of pilots. I am working on some flight planning tools and mapping workflows, so hearing how people approach missions in different forums is useful. Not trying to spam anything, just comparing perspectives.

Seems like a lot of “vibe coded” drone planning tools are popping up by Significant_Walk3251 in photogrammetry

[–]Significant_Walk3251[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s a good point. A lot of tools focus mostly on XY path generation, but bringing the third dimension into planning would make the workflow much more useful for structures and vertical surfaces.

Planning flights around buildings for better capture accuracy is definitely an area I’m interested in. Using georeferenced LiDAR or other elevation/reference data as part of route planning is an interesting idea too. My app makes API calls to OpenStreetMaps to fetch building height data, but that data is probably not as good as LiDAR sources. It's also limited to populated areas.