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 In a previous post, we discussed what does a Zoo Conservation and Research program, like what we are privileged to have at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo do. And what does a program like this do beyond in situ conservation that I’ve blogged about before. Much of the other work done in these programs focuses on research to improve animal care. No matter where … Continue reading Mapping animal exhibits using OpenDroneMap: Part II
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.
Much like the early days of GPS/GNSS, the longer we have drones in the air, the more capacity we build and layer upon previous work. To that end, a colleague of mine has a request to gather video and stills over an area slated for possible installation of a zip line. The request includes flying the path of future zipline. I had concerns whether we … Continue reading Old flight meet new flight: Using digital surface models for safer drone flights
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)
OpenDroneMap has just made a big leap forward in functionality. It produces truly spectacular results now: Continue reading OpenDroneMap 2.1.0
As part of our mission to bring awesome drone software, we focus intensively on sustainability (a.k.a. how to pay for development, bug fixes, new features, hosting, etc. for the benefit of all). Open-source is a tricky type of software to fund. I will not cover the details, as other people have already done a great… A new era of open source funding? How we raised $5,099 … Continue reading A new era of open source funding? How we raised $5,099 for core work. — OpenDroneMap
In a previous post, we did a bit of a proof of concept in using OpenDroneMap for scanning a skull. It was the second skull I had scanned with OpenDroneMap. The first was a mountain gorilla skull from the Virungas from the 1920s that I then printed in 3D and brought home with me to Rwanda on a recent trip. These previous scans though were … Continue reading Scanning the samples with OpenDroneMap — part II
I think of data from photogrammetry as a pipeline problem in which we have just begun to address the beginning of the pipeline. Historically, photogrammetry was the purview of a few (and depending on where you are in the world, laws may make it still so), dependent upon expensive software, even more expensive hardware (think: calibrated camera >$400k, cesna ~$130k, IMU ~$25k, plus fuel etc. … Continue reading Beyond Data
