ydqa ep 18

John dickow: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Your Drone Questions Answered. I'm John Dicko here to find the answers to your drone questions.

And in this episode, we are answering the question, what is the best mapping software to use for drones? I have with me today, Michael Lilly. He is a chief pilot and bottle washer. Michael, thank you for joining me today.

Michael Lilley: No worries. yeah, the bottle washer thing, that just means that I do everything here.

Wet dog drones from the flying to the processing to the drying the dog off after she finds the, the wet spot on the job site. So that's where we came up with the name.

John dickow: Oh, great. That's perfect. Well, thank you again for joining me today. I want you to just introduce yourself a little bit.

You kind of started going into it already a little bit about what you do with drones. Can you just talk a little bit about what you do for a living and how you're using drones?

Michael Lilley: So I currently work for a very large construction, uh, a medium-sized construction company, but I've also got a side gig that Construction company that I work for hires me occasionally because they don't have a drone program yet.

I've been trying for three years to get them [00:01:00] kicking and screaming and it's starting to take traction, so they hire me. They pay me, which is nice cause everybody likes to get paid. Uh, but the main thing that I do with them is fly maps. I mean, fly construction sites, do pro progressive reports.

and it's what I do on the side also is just fly construction sites for smaller companies. Uh, I fly for private individuals. They wanna see what's going on on in the land. Cause I live out on East Co plain. Everybody's got a lot of land. When I say a lot of land, we're talking sections at a time, which is a mile by a mile.

And I've got one customer that has buffalo, so he likes to get those counted every once in a while. and that all involves mapping, Okay, well

John dickow: let's get into that a little bit and, and this kind of what drone mapping is used for, Can you explain a little bit more about what drone mapping's for, and specifically how you use drone mapping?

I know you've already kind of gotten into it a little bit already.

Michael Lilley: So drone mappings used for a lot of things. if I was on the coast, I'd be doing coastal surveys, for erosion, to see changes over time because we're gonna fly an area, we're gonna collect the [00:02:00] data through aerial images, stitch it all together, and then we've got a, a permanent record of what it looked like on this date and this time, and then we can go back and compare that to previous.

To what we have now, to what we had last time and going forward. So we, we established a permanent record so that we can see what's changing on a site, whether it be coastal, whether it be a job site, whether it be erosion on a farmer's land land out here in Colorado. You can see all that with maps over time, or can't really call them a map.

We're gonna call him, uh, ortho photo. it keeps us on the legal side of things because I'm not a surveyor, but we can make ortho rectified photos,

John dickow: Well, excellent.

So Michael, obviously there's different use cases for different softwares and so people, not all kind of drone softwares that might not be a match for everybody, but in your case, drone softwares that you use, what are your recommendations and why when it comes to obviously the features,

Michael Lilley: So as a single operator, flying as often as I do, I get away with just using, a desktop based of software called DroneDeploy.[00:03:00]

It allows me to run my own maps, keep control of my data. It never leaves my laptop or my desktop. I'm actually running a map right now that I threw today on the desktop, on my laptop. And the reason I use Pix four D is because the granularity allows me to do get from my maps. I mean, when I'm marking my gcps, one of the things I like to do is get down to pixel level so I can find the center of my point that I shot with my gps, and it allows me to be very accurate with it.

I've tried that with others and you can, but it's more of a convoluted process. I know that on the lower levels of the drone deploy subscription, I have to pay for every map that I want gcps added onto. I know at the enterprise level and the higher tiers that's included with it. But as an independent operator, the solution that Pix four D gave me It's a better, for better fit for me because it's a one and done.

I mean, I paid for the, the, the petrol license that I have that until I stop using it, I guess is is the best way to put that. It, it just works for me. You can [00:04:00] have different softwares, asoft, Agisoft DroneDeploy Esri Drone to map

John dickow: were these fairly simple softwares to get started with? I mean, especially when it comes to DroneDeploy. How long did it take you to kind of get familiar with the software and, and feel like you could start using it?

Or was it pretty simple?

Michael Lilley: Drone deploy for me is the simplest solution because it doesn't require anything on my end other than uploading the photos to it.

John dickow: know this is veering off track a little bit, but you kind of had a funny story. I know you had, you have some affiliation with the Drone Launch Academy already, and you had met our founder, David Young, and it's kind of a funny story of how you guys kind of met or first met.

So, do you mind kind of sharing that one? I, I thought that was really funny when you told me.

Michael Lilley: So David had sent out an email, about this conference that he was attending in Denver and he wanted to have dinner with people and he booked some place, it was downtown Denver He sent out this email and said, Hey, if you want to come, there's only gonna be eight of us. I got a food and drink minimum day. make me a video and tell me why you should be here. And I, I sat down in the front seat of my wife's car cause I was outside and I [00:05:00] grabbed my phone, I picked up, I said, who wouldn't wanna be seen with this beard?

So there's your reason right there. And it was just, I just kinda riffed off at that. And the last thing I said, just remember the beard. Well, it was May 3rd, and I knew it was May 3rd because I was driving off to Kansas. I get this email from David and I'm driving. I said, Hey, told my wife here, read this.

And she said, looks like you're going to dinner. It's like, sweet. I'm going dinner. So I got restaurant and I kinda walk up and David's standing there and Dusty standing there. I just kinda stepped in between the two of 'em sort. I said, I'm here. And he looked, look on their face. Priceless. But that's how I met David Young. I mean, he was, it was all about the beard.

You just gotta play to your strength. Right. Wow.

John dickow: well, I mean that, yeah, you got to meet David and you got dinner and drinks all because you

Michael Lilley: had beer. Yeah. Dinner. That's pretty cool. Dinner. Very nice dinner. And in fact, one of the guys that I met there, um, we'll just call him Spanky because that's what he likes to be called.

Uh, we went out, I took him on a job with me on Saturday cuz he wants to break into the construction side. So I took him out [00:06:00] and we flew a job up in Service Colorado, which is like two hours from where I'm sitting right now, and took him up there, let him fly the drone. He loved the drone. He said, I need to get one of these.

I said, yeah, it's, it's a mapping beast. at the price point, I don't see why you would want to. I mean, the Maverick M three E is just, it's a mapping beast, and it does that really, really well. 0.07 seconds on that shutter. I mean, it's just, it's just amazing when you look at the, fan of Ford Pro, that's every two seconds.

I did a job, like I said earlier, I was doing a job at Rocky Ford today, and it was 42 acres and I was done in about 15 minutes, one battery done.

John dickow: Very, very cool. Um, I know we're running out of time, but I always like to ask our guests this question. Kind of as we wrap up was, and you've got an interesting story too, cuz you've started a lot of this yourself and you've, you've been able to kind of figure out this drone mapping software and something that works for you.

What's your advice to, other drone pilots out there who are looking to do this kind of work? maybe not necessarily in construction or the kind of work that you do, but wanna get to know a [00:07:00] software, but might feel intimidated about it?

Michael Lilley: read lots and lots. go down the rabbit. Every rabbit hole you come across, just keep going down until you find the bottom.

I am a huge fan of the stoics and one of the things that I stoicism is, one of the things that I've picked up is that the obstacle is the way you just gotta keep grinding, keep moving forward. Eventually you'll get there and, you know, it's, it's like me and the day job and the side job.

You know, one came out of the other, And now they both kind of mesh together you know, I got a sweet gig that I'm making money on the side with that I'm turning into its own business. if you, if you wanna get into this side of it, I think your best bet is don't do what I did.

Don't take it, loan outta your savings. Uh, because I told the guy, you guys can either buy the drone or I'm gonna go buy it myself. Well, I bought my own drone. I bought everything else. we're pretty much paid off at this point. So that's all worked out. Get in with somebody that's already doing it, you know, that's the best way to do it.

And it's with anything. YouTube is a great resource for all the different softwares out there. David's got a mapping program with, DLA that [00:08:00] I haven't taken, but I haven't had the need. I figured it out on my own and I'm pretty comfortable where I'm at and it's getting the bills paid and yeah.

so there we are. That's

John dickow: awesome. That's a sweet place to be, especially when you can do it with a drone. and I like asking that question cuz a lot of our viewers, a lot of our listeners, They wanna do that kind of thing themselves, and that's why they're associated with the dla.

Michael Lilley: Don't be afraid to talk to people. Networking is huge. Networking is huge. And you gotta keep going for every, yes. There's at least 10 nos that precede that. You've just gotta keep. Keep grinding. Like I said, the obstacle is the way and the obstacle is the no.

You gotta get through the no to get to the Yes. It's, it's pretty simple. You just gotta keep grinding. I told Spanky that on Saturday. Just I said, just keep grinding, dude. Just keep grinding. Cause that's what she gotta do.

John dickow: that's good to hear. That's good to hear. And that's valuable to our listeners.

and our viewers. sorry to our, uh, listeners only listening off of audio that you can't necessarily see Michael's beard, but look him up. Michael Lilly, thank you so much for joining me today and answering this question, one of the best [00:09:00] mapping softwares to use for drones.

Um, every use case is different, but it was really great hearing about your use case. So let's keep going with what you're doing and, uh, the more you discover, let's get you back on the program and, uh, we'll talk more about it. you can submit your own drone questions. we'll find the answer to them. You go ahead and submit those questions@ydqa.io.

We'll find the person who can answer them. In the meantime, we'll see in the sky.