Spent $800 on a drone for site surveys and it paid for itself in a week

We were mapping a dig site in Nevada and the old way of grid walking was taking forever. I bought a basic DJI Mini drone for about $800. In three days, we had a full photogrammetry model that showed features we'd completely missed from ground level. Has anyone else found a piece of tech that totally changed how you work a site?

3 comments

3 Comments

nathan_davis2mo ago

Totally get that. Laser scanners were our game changer.

evana712mo ago

Oh man, that's so true. Everyone talks about the speed and detail, but what really blew my mind was how it cut down on arguments with contractors. Suddenly you have this single, undeniable truth of the site condition, so there's no more "he said, she said" about what was actually built. It just takes all the guesswork and blame out of the equation. Honestly, that saved more headaches than the actual drafting time.

lee_barnes701mo ago

Walked onto a site last week with the scan data and realized I'd been "fixing" stuff that was actually built exactly right. Just stood there feeling stupid for ten minutes.