This thread continues to be one of the most useful, evergreen resources - even 5+ years later! Who would have thought? 

I was speaking to a colleague from another conservation ngo last week - and it came out that she was having to start from scratch developing some consistent internal guidance to support staff members using drones. I've poiinted her here and it's already been super useful, but I'm curious if anyone has newer guidance they've developed to support drone use their organisation that they'd be able to share? If you've updated your guidance, what have you changed or found to be most important? 

Reinvigorating this thread might turn out to be super useful for lots of folk and save a lot of time in developing supporting documentation - I appreciate anyone who is able to share! 

Thanks 

Steph 

Hi all,

I've been quickly developing in-house drone services in the UK for Providence Ecological and have found some useful information for building a workflow with Rich Charpentier's YouTube channel. There are loads of good resources on YouTube but Rich's channel seems to be more useful with regard to budget/free software etc. 

It has occurred to me that there may not be very good "Best Practice" guidance for drone pilots with regard to wildlife disturbance so when considering employing a drone pilot, please bear this in mind. It is useful to talk through their experience of avoiding/mitigating disturbance to wildlife during drone operations asnd provide guidance where you feel it is required. 

Hopefully this is helpful!

Hi Steph

My partner is a drone pilot (wildlife specialist) based in France and has confirmed that your quote is what you should be expecting to pay a qualified pilot including the use of their gear - this will vary according to experience and equipment. He does not think that the prices will vary much country to country as the cost of equipment and qualification (professional) are fairly similar worldwide. It is also still a fairly niche profession and although there are many drone pilots out there, a professional licence is a whole other ball game so it’s not competitive enough to drive labour prices down.

If you have your own drone then you will be looking at the lower end of the quote as you should be covering the insurance and wear and tear the equipment will be subjected to during its use. If you are asking your pilot to bring and use their own equipment then the price will naturally increase depending on what you require to be used.

As Frank rightly surmised, the cost will reflect a host of behind the scenes factors that are part and parcel of being a freelancer in a specialist profession.

Hope this helps

You might check out what's listed in the Directory - for example, DroneMapper, though this is paid (not sure if they'd give you any discount). The one I have heard most about is OpenDroneMap though. Or perhaps check out GeoNadir?  

Hi Lindy, ODM has a steep learning curve but is fantastic once you understand it. I have much better results than from commerical services, although we were just stitching fairly small (<10ha) areas.

Have a look at WebODM Lightning, this is a paid-for, but very cheap, processing service using ODM that is more similar to commercial services (upload your images, press go). You can upload using the web interface or a Windows app. 

Hi Lindy,

WebODM has now a native Windows installer version which costs around 147 $ once - https://opendronemap.org/webodm/download/.

Is has almost all the advantages of the high priced softwares and even presets for some use cases.

Best regards!

Steffen

I'd be happy to chat with you if you wanted! My expertise is within passive acoustic monitoring particularly. The Conservation Tech Directory might be useful for you in identifying relevant actors within the space.

Happy to contribute [email protected] 

My original background is in ecology and conservation, and am now in the elected leadership of the Gathering for Open Science Hardware which convenes researchers developing open source tech for science. I am not working on a specific piece of technology right now, but am happy to contribute some higher-level views for your interview if that helps.

Hey Sol, 

The only way for you to collect information from a GPS tag attached to a FAD is if that tag transmits that data to the drone. Unfortunately most receiver packages are a bit too large for hobbyist-style drones (from what I've seen). 

Depending on the range/distance from shore, you might be able to have a shore-based receiver system?