DroneTZ — FOSS4G and HOT Summit in Tanzania

I am just returning from a couple weeks in Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar in Tanzania. It was a really busy and inspiring sequence of workshops, meetings, and the annual Free and Open Source for Geospatial (FOSS4G) conference. I have a stack of info and experiences to process, but let me just drop a little of that out here for all of you. The trip … Continue reading DroneTZ — FOSS4G and HOT Summit in Tanzania

Upcoming improvements to OpenDroneMap — Better everything.

Problem Overview: One of the greatest challenges with OpenDroneMap (ODM) is getting great results out of sparse data. I used to describe this as getting good data out of mediocre inputs, but this isn’t a fair descriptor, and here I’ll make a public apology: just because I have the time to fly with lots of overlap most of the time doesn’t mean it should be … Continue reading Upcoming improvements to OpenDroneMap — Better everything.

View of the sunrise from Dar es Salaam

Come to Tanzania: FOSS4G 2018 Dar

It’s 3 days until proposals are due for FOSS4G Dar, the first FOSS4G on the continent since Capetown in 2008. Submit! This is one you don’t want to miss. The hospitality of East Africa is outstanding; Tanzania is a beautiful country; and there’s lots of great and interesting work to be learned about and collaborated on in Dar and Zanzibar. This is a huge opportunity … Continue reading Come to Tanzania: FOSS4G 2018 Dar

Dar visit, drone fun

While I was in East Africa, I made a quick side trip to Dar to visit with some compatriots also interested in drones for good — specifically Frederick Mbuya of UhuruNet, UhuruFly, UhuruLabs, and World Bank Tanzania (etc.) , as well as Ivan Gayton, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team Tanzania, Missing Maps, formerly MSF UK (etc).   We chatted about tech, development, drones for good, and played … Continue reading Dar visit, drone fun

OpenDroneMap and Uhuru Labs in Kerala, India

The State of Kerala, India has the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) an autonomous institution “mandated with the objectives of co-ordinating FOSS initiatives within Kerala, as well as linking up with FOSS initiatives in other parts of the world in order to push the agenda of promoting democratic access to information and knowledge through equitable models of production and distribution of … Continue reading OpenDroneMap and Uhuru Labs in Kerala, India

Orthophotos from orthophotos?

An increasing desired use case for OpenDroneMap is to use it for non-drone maps. For example: I have a bucket of scanned images from the 1950’s. I want to make them into a mosaic. I have the geographic center for each image. Can I process these in OpenDroneMap? I have a bucket of individually orthorectified images from a sensor like from the Wildfire Airborne Sensor Program … Continue reading Orthophotos from orthophotos?

ZMI — Zanzibar Mapping Initiative Level 1

The Zanzibar Mapping Initiative is the largest civilian drone mapping project in the world — an ambitious project to map the Zanzibar Archipelago using a whole host of eBee drones. The project is nearing completion of mapping Unguja, the larger of the two main islands. Because of the large area to be covered, ZMI required an approach to partition the data into manageable flight areas. … Continue reading ZMI — Zanzibar Mapping Initiative Level 1