Blew $800 on a drone for site surveys back in 2019

Bought a DJI Phantom 4 Pro thinking it'd speed up my roof inspections and save me ladder time. First week it got caught in wind and crashed into a half-built truss system, cost me another $300 in repairs. Has anyone else tried using cheaper mapping software that actually works for residential jobs?

3 comments

3 Comments

david_reed221d ago

A buddy of mine tried the same thing with an older Phantom model and had a similar nightmare. He figured he'd save time on flashing inspections, but the drone got confused by a metal roof and just drifted sideways into a tree. The repair bill was worse than yours and he swore off drones entirely for about a year. He ended up using Pix4Dcapture for mapping, but said it was a pain for small residential jobs because the processing took forever. Take this with a grain of salt, but he finally just went back to using a ladder for the tricky stuff and only breaks out the drone for big commercial flat roofs.

young.ryan1d ago

Damn, that roof literally drove his drone into a tree? @david_reed22

morgan.jason1d ago

Your buddy's experience with Pix4Dcapture lines up with what I've heard from a few other guys in the trades. Processing time on smaller residential jobs is a real bottleneck, right? I'm wondering if the software you're using now handles the overlap settings better for those tight roof lines with a lot of valleys and dormers. Did you try any free or cheap mapping apps before you gave up on the drone for houses? That's the part I keep going back and forth on - whether the upfront software cost is worth it for the occasional two-story colonial when a ladder is still faster.