MapPilot is supposed to" Automatically upload the collected imagery to Maps Made Easy" ??

Thanks for the quick reply Zane!  

I agree that the SD card should be the basic storage point and that pictures should be backed up, but on the other services that support automatic upload, the files are never removed from the SD in the process. Isnt it the responsability of the user to ensure there is enough room on their device ? Worst case they can go back to the SD card and re-process using the standard workflow. 

I feel you are likely to lose business (you are at least losing mine for the time being). Mapping isnt a tool just for companies who market this service to others. Its also a tool that can be integrated into one's workload and that it can be beneficial to streamline the workflow. Heres is my case study : I'm a forester with my hands full of stuff to do. One of the usages of drone mapping is to fly parcels of land for future analysis. Since I travel in remote areas and often access these places I need to fly only once a year, I need to integrated this into my travelling around. Somethimes I will be capturing several missions before I have time to process. When I get back, I don't want to have to sort through my SD cards, search through thousands of photos to separate them into different missions, etc. I need this to be handled by a service I would be paying for. Fly a mission, keep the drone on while transfering to device while driving, and uploading when I get back into wifi. When I get back into the office, I'd have all my projects already sorted. already processed. This is really easy with Pix4D capture and DroneDeploy but I felt MapPilot was superior and your pricing was more adapted to my case. 

Thanks for hearing me out 

Hi Felix,

I just had to toss in my .02

I understand that you believe that having the app move the files to your smart device and then upload them to MME servers, all automated, would make your life easier.  IF it were to work every time without issue, then maybe it would. 

However, you would be adding in at least 2, maybe 3 critical failure points into the process by doing that.

I have not used Pix4D capture.  But DD has lots of problems uploading imagery directly through the app in the field.  In fact, they are beginning to move away from that because of problems.

What ever system you use, get yourself a good set of sd cards.  Label them and use them in order. Change out the card after every flight.  When you are working at your laptop, dump the cards into Dropbox, Drive, or your server of choice in folders for the project and date. You can then upload your files to be processed from the cloud service without risk of interruption.

You can do it!

I for one don't want the flight app to have any concern about transferring files.  I want every line of code to be devoted to providing the most rock solid flight performance I can get.  Anything else is an unnecessary failure point, in my opinion. 

Best of luck with your mapping.

Thanks for your 2 cents ! An interesting discussion that I hope will help others in the future. 

I did have some problems with the DroneDeploy app as it is too clucky to work properly all the time, so your point is valid. Pix4D capture is way simpler but handles this feature pretty well so far. I will continue testing it and I might take your suggestion if it doesnt prove reliable enough. 

In the meantime I would add a suggedtion to the MME team : if its possible with the DJI SDK, it would help managing pictures if at the least, the app would create a subfolder on the SD card with the project name and would save all the pictures there. 

Your suggestion for a folder creation is a good one if the SDK supports it. I know that on some DJI devices, DJI's app creates a distinct folder for media captured by different modes, e.g. "timelapse" gets it's own folder. So the ability is there. Is it exposed in the SDK is the question.

There is no mechanism in the DJI SDK to tell the camera where to put the images. We would love it if there was. They just recently added the capability to set custom data in one element of the tags to set unique mission IDs but that is it. 

The Timelapse mode is a mode of the sensor controller chip itself which is in charge of what goes where. It has that low level control. I know DJI gets this feedback all the time but it is really something that the sensor and control chip manufacturers have to add since it is their chips that are directly interfacing with the SD card. 

Makes sense. Thanks!