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Table of Contents
I don't know what to call this thing but it might have a short life. Don't love SmartDrone RTK but I can't think of what else to call it
SmartDrone is an interim, limited application designed to quickly create a UAV GCP workflow using the SmartGrade app. I've been using SmartGrade to prep UAV sites for a year and only use a limited set of functionality to do so. Ideally in the long term we figure out how to role this into SmartDirt RTK but the interface challenges are different and Smartgrade has a decent, no compromise workflow now that works well for GCPs. Based on this I'll evolve the SmartDirt RTK interface in the future but this will likely give us a quick win.
Basics versus SmartGrade
SmartDrone strips a lot of modes (Stake, Progress Topo, measure/stockpile). This simplifies the dataflow. The path looks like this:
Start
- Start Program, login, get key (key to SmartDirt for now)
- On the file screen you can choose a file, go to Access for a file, or select New (removing measure option)
New
- Select New from File menu
- Create Benchmarks/GCPs for at least two points. LL is put on points. Move create benchmarks up in order to toolbar (over 3D) (First version is an arbitrary system for prototype. We really want this to transform to State Planes after the second benchmark is set.)
- Add a Set Elevation to the menu. Set Elevation will change all collected data in the file based on the offset calculated. This should use the Benchmark shot collection routine to give the best possible GPS elevation result
- The user can either use the Shoot button or streaming points button to collect other survey data when fixed (as in SmartGrade). For the shoot button point collection I'd like to actually use three point samples to calculate the point captured as I'm seeing enough variation in elevation for single shots compared to benchmarks to want a little more rigour in our point capture. With a shoot button shot I've likely bubbled up the rod and at 5-10hz taking a couple more points collected should not affect speed much if at all.
- Save on a new should use the lead text of “GCP”Dateunique number similar to what we do now using “Survey” but to distinguish the purpose of the data. It also uploads to Access. We do not need to include AGT in this situation because unless we extend the format multiple places we cannot capture the important values of lat-long which is one of the primary requirements.
Since we're getting rid of progress topo we're also removing the ability to save and close this file and then reopen it in a “New” state as we do in SmartGrade. This is ok for the use case here and if in this situation the user needs to select the saved file and go through the alignment process.
Selecting Existing File - Flow
- Select the ADF file through the file screen or choose from access
- Initialize the instrument and and go to the Shoot Benchmarks or Recover screen.
- Shoot benchmarks just like we do in SmartGrade and display the deviation. Allow them to reshoot as necessary, etc. identical to what we currently do in SmartGrade.
- There is only one mode for this (no stake) so get rid of the screen that asks which mode and just go to what acts like Grade mode for this program
- Create Benchmarks/GCPs for at least two points and as needed. LL is always put on Benchmarks/GCP points regardless of whether they already had values (this is different but critical). Move create benchmarks up in order to toolbar (over 3D)
- The user can either use the Shoot button or streaming points button to collect other survey data when fixed (as in SmartGrade). For the shoot button point collection I'd like to actually use three point samples to calculate the point captured as I'm seeing enough variation in elevation for single shots compared to benchmarks to want a little more rigour in our point capture. With a shoot button shot I've likely bubbled up the rod and at 5-10hz taking a couple more points collected should not affect speed much if at all.
- Save should save to the selected file but should also save a separate file using the lead text of “GCP”Dateunique number similar to what we do now using “Survey” but to distinguish the purpose of the data. Tis file contains just the added data, not the job data as part of the base ADF. It also uploads to Access. We do not need to include AGT in this situation because unless we extend the format multiple places we cannot capture the important values of lat-long which is one of the primary requirements.
Changes
- Space and make the Northing, Easting display at the top wider and use commas in the strings. We operate in State Planes a lot for this and that means big numbers.
- We don't have labeling other than Benchmarks and GCP creation and can't pick in this mode (should we?) so I think we can lose the line label for sure.
- We don't need to show the mode we're in since there's only grade so we can eliminate that text in the upper right.
