QGIS 3.26 Buenos Aires was released last Friday, with an absolutely massive list of new features and enhancements, including:
A few of my favourites:
But there is so much more! If you’re interested in the latest features of QGIS, invest 14 minutes of your time and check out this YouTube video for the highlight reel:
See the full list here: https://www.qgis.org/en/site/forusers/visualchangelog326/
We’ve been running one day QGIS workshops over the last year, and we’ve been getting a lot of feedback saying that a day simply isn’t enough. We hear you! This time, we’re expanding the course to 2 days, so we can cover more ground, in more depth.
This hands-on workshop has been designed for new and experienced GIS users. We’ll cover topics including:
When: 7-8 July 2022
Where: State Library of WA, 25 Francis St, Perth WA
Register: https://ti.to/mammoth-geospatial
For more information, please contact John Bryant at john@mammothgeospatial.com.
Evren Pakyuz-Charrier from Oslandia recently shared that the OpenLog QGIS plugin recently achieved alpha 0.3.0 release, including symbolised strat logs. It seems to be coming along nicely!
As open source software, you can follow its progress directly on the GitLab page, and contributions from the community are invited.
Mergin Maps has introduced some seriously interesting new functionality in its QGIS plugin, allowing you to visualise changes between versions of your data. This could be helpful to field workers using Mergin to capture and sync data from field to office.
Part 1 – Introduction
I am using my small DJI Mini 2 for drone mapping and thought I should share some pearls of wisdom(?) from my experiences.
Firstly, get to know your drone and its capability, particularly the real battery life. My little drone does not like anything more than a light breeze and the wind really chews up your battery life.
In my case I use an Android Samsung smartphone to connect to the drone via the Litchi app. Make sure you go to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority web site and complete the short training course for drone operators.
I am using my drone to create orthophoto maps and digital terrain models for use in exploration and project construction to monitor environmental disturbance and for recording project progress.
I use QGIS to determine the area I want to fly then create a polygon and export the polygon as a kml file. This will be the boundary file we will import into, in my case, DJI Flight Planner (FP), to design the flight lines. FP needs to know your drone camera specs, which for most drones are in a drop-down menu, and the amount of overlap between the images. I use 70% overlap along line and across lines.
For my Mini 2, I use a flying height of 120 m, which gives me a ground resolution of 4 cm per pixel. I have a flying speed of 20 kph which means I need an image every 7 seconds to get 70% overlap. All my images are vertical. There are plenty of tutorials on YouTube to help you through this process.
The data from the FP is exported into a Litchi CSV file which is then imported into the Litchi Mission Hub web site. The Litchi app (US$37) runs on iOS and Android and is used to fly the drone. The Mission Hub (web site) is where you can import the flight lines from FP and create missions to upload to the phone. The missions you create are saved to the Litchi site and can be downloaded to your phone. Create a series of “missions” with flight duration restrained by your battery life.
For my Mini 2 I usually try to keep each mission (i.e., battery endurance) to about 15 min to give me a bit of breathing space in case the winds increase, and I need more power to get back home. Some missions will be four or five lines and will depend upon line length.
Another important thing to consider is what accuracy do you want? Are you getting a rough map, or do you want sub-metre accuracy? If you want good accuracy, you need to establish a set of ground control points (GCPs). I use at least 6 for an area, the more the better, but it takes time to input the data for the points.
I use WebODM for my processing and this program has a small utility program which assists in the creation of a ground control point file.
I recently completed a mapping project and returned sub-20 cm accuracy, although I did have the luxury of surveyed points. However, even with handheld GPS coordinates I was able to get image accuracy to about 1 – 2 m. If you just want a rough map then just go with the GPS tags on the images.
Remember any surveyed mark can be used as a GCP. If you have surveyed drill holes or tenement corners, these will also work as GCPs. GCPs are easy to set up. They can be painted crosses for temporary marks or tiles for more permanent points.
In part 2, I will describe the actual final mission planning and preparation for the job.
*** Recently updated! ***
You can download this free manual here. The SVG patterns appendix is available separately here.
Please let us know if you find any errors or suggestions for additions. Feel free to share!
QGIS is free software! Get it here.
Latest Release: 3.26
Long Term Release: 3.22
