Drone mapping software has transformed the way that roof inspections are carried out. There’s no longer a need to put operatives in harm's way when a drone can be deployed to do the job remotely. But not everyone is a drone expert. If you’re looking to incorporate drones into your inspection routine but not sure where to start here are our top 5 resources to help you conduct faster, safer and better-quality roof inspections.
1. The Operational Challenges
This short guide gives an overview of the most common challenges people face when conducting drone roof inspections. Generally speaking, the main challenges in capturing a roof involving ensuring that you have the right overlap (ground offset plays an important role here!), planning the flight polygon correctly to give yourself a margin for error and finding the right tradeoff between GSD and data quality.
You can watch the video above or read more here:
2. Using Hammer Missions for Roof Inspections
Understanding roof inspections is one thing, but how do you use commercial off the shelf drones such as DJI and software platforms such as Hammer Missions to achieve an end-to-end high quality roof inspection?
In this full tutorial, we’ll walk you through the full process of doing a drone inspection using Hammer Missions: https://www.hammermissions.com/post/roof-inspections-hammer-missions
Again, if you'd rather watch than read, checkout our video below!
3. Thermal Roof Inspections using Drones
Once you have mastered the art of capturing visual data for roof inspections, you can enhance your drone deliverables by venturing into the world of thermal data. Thermal data capture for roofs can be useful in a variety of different ways - including but not limited to a) understanding the insulation of a property b) finding water ingress issues c) understanding the condition of electrical components on the roof such as solar panels, and more!
Curious how to undertake a visual + thermal roof survey? Here's a complete workflow. Alternatively, you can simply dive into the video below.
4. Creating 3D Models using Drones & Hammer Missions
Sometimes, it can be helpful to not just capture the roof but to capture the entire building and present that to the client or stakeholder. To do this, you'll have to create a 3D model of the building. Creating a high-quality 3D model of the building includes high-quality capture of the roof and the facade and this can be easily achieved by using a tool like Hammer Missions alongside DJI Mavic 2 Pro or DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise drone. To learn how to use this workflow, checkout our guide on this or watch the video below!
5. Full 3D Model Workflow: Roof & Facade Inspections
If you’ve got a little more experience with drone mapping software and are now ready to take on full building inspections with roof and facade, here's our recommended workflow for building inspections. This workflow allows you fine tune your data capture so that you are capturing both the roof and the facade for both 3D modelling and inspection, putting all the data together into a single project, and then analysing the building condition for defects - cracks, spalls, vegetation growth and more.
Take Hammer Missions for a Test Flight!
Drone mapping software has come a long way in recent years. The Hammer Missions app interface makes drone roof inspection projects easy even for the uninitiated. Our free trial allows you to test out the software, see example projects and get to grips with the data. Get started today!