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by abstract_put 1428 days ago
Without any idea how to do anything, I was able to use the cheapest DJI drone (Mini 2) and ODM to stitch together a giant orthophoto of my parent's maple sugar bush. It overlays extremely nicely over Google Maps without any ground control points. The resolution is such that one can pick out individual buckets on each tree.

This is _very_ cool software and I've started making maps of my own property every ~month or so just to see how things change. I started by manually flying missions and eyeballing where to take photos, and everything worked great. I see other mentions here that say the "capture" part can be done for free by PIX4D, I ended up paying for Dronelink to do the same thing.

It's much nicer to have a consistent mission so things always come out the same, and way more efficient to have the software handle where to take the photos. Having the overlap in both directions taken care of is very nice. Now I just sit back and make sure nothing crazy happens (e.g. strong winds) and swap the battery out when it dies before resuming the mission. SO neat!