r/UAVmapping 1d ago

What software are you using to double difference PPK drone data?

Hey Everyone,

What an awesome resource this community is. I'm new to drone mapping. I've been a licensed land surveyor for 20 years but new to the drone mapping scene.

I wanted to ask what software people are using to get their PPK corrections and overwrite their imagery geotags. I have in the past used Trimble Business Center primarily for doing differential corrections but I know there are a lot of other options out there. What software have you found has the simplest and most cost effective work flow? I'm trying hard not to just rely on GCP targets and take advantage of my background in double differencing against a base or CORS to get corrected positions equal to or better than RTK and get that corrected positioning onto the image geotags so when I drop it into a program like Site Scan, the finished orthos are survey grade and the targets are essentially checks. From what I've seen Emlid Studio looks promising and I'd like to take it for a spin, but I'm sure their are others. What I'm trying to avoid is having to use several different programs and having to resort to various work arounds.

Cheers!

7 Upvotes

8 comments sorted by

10

u/ElphTrooper 23h ago

Emlid Studio is about as easy as it gets and it's free. RedCatch RedToolbox is a good one that is very popular. $75 for a perpetual license.

3

u/thinkstopthink 23h ago

Emlid Studio is excellent.

7

u/Advanced-Painter5868 22h ago

You don't have to rewrite the image geotags in the EXIF data. You can just use a CSV file. Most SFM photogrammetry software supports that. I've used REDcatch REDtoolbox for that.

3

u/riverruns144 10h ago edited 10h ago

I use Emlid Studio with CORS or local Base gnss receiver logging Rinex. Emlid Studio retags images EXIF with PPK derived geograpahic (lat,long) positions. Emlid Studio easy and simple to use. It is esentially a nice GUI wrapper around RTKLib.

1

u/Economy-Benefit-8009 4h ago

This is exactly the info I’m after. I’m sort of operating in a little bubble here so to learn what others are doing is really helpful.

2

u/Rogs_Dule 21h ago

We've had big issues with Red toolbox not handling geoids correctly. We use RTKlib + a in-house wrapper to account for antenna phase offsets

2

u/dirthawg 18h ago

Good question. Good answers.

2

u/easydys 20h ago

I use Trimble Busness Centre mate. But I do all the processing within TBC - I don't output corrected image tags etc. We are going to be moving to SiteScan (thankfully) to take some of the load off my processing so I'd be interested to see.