Originally Posted by
dgaddis
I'm FAR FROM an expert on drones, so, talk all of this with a grain of salt.
I believe there are some drones that can create a 3D model of an area that you can drop into a CAD software package, I don't know how dimensionally accurate these are. These drones are much more expensive than the one we have, which really just a flying camera. What we're doing is much less sophisticated, but very effective for what we're doing. We'll take the images and drop them into CAD, scale them as required (we have PDF's of the original drawings for the building from the mid 70's, so we know how big the building is), and sketch over top of it, then eventually delete the image out. For locating existing rooftop HVAC units and gas piping this is a very quick fast way to do so, and reduces the time spent measuring everything on the rooftop - some of that is still required, but you don't have to measure EVERYTHING manually. We don't need super tight accuracy, especially when it comes to existing equipment. We do this now with Google Earth images, but they're not nearly as clear as a photo taken from 300ft, so sometimes you can't tell what you're looking at.
On our drone the phone is basically just a viewfinder, the controller is what actually controls the drone and sends the signal to/from the drone. So if the phone dies, or the app crashes, you can still fly it back just looking at it, or using the 'return to home' button where it flies itself back to where it took off from. You can also have the controller charge the phone while you're using it to make sure it doesn't die, and I think this is actually required for android devices. I don't use that feature on the iphone tho because it's just additional heat being added to the phone, and the current app has issues making the phone get hot in some cases and the app freezes/lags. But as long as you show up with a fully charged phone you'll run out of drone batteries before you run out of phone battery.