I did a fun thing recently, taking the pile of data I have for my house, processed in OpenDroneMap, and used it to do solar potential mapping. It’s not strictly an approach I needed to use, but it was fun, and I wrote it up here: https://community.opendronemap.org/t/overkill-using-photogrammetry-for-solar-estimates/13145 TL;DR: first I used the 3D models to measure things that might be easier to measure with other … Continue reading EVs, Solar, OpenDroneMap, and moar EVs

I have had the pleasure the last couple days of meeting and collaborating with Professor Murat Maga’s lab at Seattle Children’s Hospital and University of Washington. In addition to his research in epigenetics and related morphological topics, Professor Maga has led the SlicerMorph project, an NSF funded project to extend 3D Slicer to better handle biological 3D specimen data. In other words: recognizing the need … Continue reading ODM–Special Halloween Addition

In my previous post, I mentioned I am now working at Oberlin College as a systems administrator. The position focuses on research support, but to do good research support, I have a fair amount of work that i need to do listening: listening to the needs of students and faculty, listening to the systems themselves and slowly and carefully navigating through upgrades and improvements. But … Continue reading Coastal features in photogrammetric DTM

Recently, I took on a role as Systems Administrator with focus on Research Support at Oberlin College and Conservatory. It is both a broader and deeper user base than in my days as a GIS manager, but also more focused on just the systems administration side of things. The kind of queries I used to get from IT people “but what does this system do?” … Continue reading The Systems Administrator’s Toolkit

Many who have spent time on YouTube have discovered a media/education phenomenon called Crash Course where a variety of complex topics are distilled down into 10-minute, quickly-narrated videos. My spouse, Dr. April Luginbuhl Mather and her colleague Dr. Zohra Calcuttawalla have been writing and content editing for the latest series, Crash Course Geography: It’s pretty cool, because it covers a lot of ground non-geographers don’t … Continue reading Crash Course Geography (and moar)

Conservation and Research A little while back, Charles Ritzler, a PhD student with Case Western Reserve University and employee of Cleveland Metroparks Zoo reached out to me. Charles works with Dr. Kristen Lukas, our Director of Conservation and Research, and as such, his work focuses on improving (quoting Dr. Lukas page) “scientific animal management” and “research on the behavior, health, and welfare” of vertebrate species … Continue reading Mapping animal exhibits using OpenDroneMap: orangutan space estimation for the win.

In the early days of OpenDroneMap, Dakota Benjamin and I discussed the possibility of integrating GRASS into OpenDroneMap to unlock more approaches for processing and post-processing data. We didn’t pull the trigger at that time, in part due to concerns about expanding the universe of dependencies, but later Piero Toffanin added GRASS to WebODM, and we haven’t looked back. Other libraries and tools at the … Continue reading 🌿GRASS is everything❤️‍🔥 (or using GRASS GIS to build elevation models in cities)