Add polygon as a reference onto background map

General Discussion
1

I would like to add a polygon of a study area that i need to fly to survey for eagle nests. is there a way to do this?
thanks

2

Create the polygon using Google Earth Pro. Save it as a KML file. Import that into Litchi’s Mission Hub. Create a waypoint mission.

1 Like
3

thanks. i’ve done this but it turns the kml polygon into waypoints. I just want the polygon to show up as a polygon to show me the study area where i need to fly and search. Any suggestions?

4

You have to draw a polygon in Google Earth Pro, NOT a path.

5

Any entity other than polygons (lines, paths, place marks) get turned into waypoints upon import. A polygon remains a polygon when imported.

6

Good to know about the polygon vs lines, etc. I was able to import a polygon kml and add a waypoint since all mission have to have at least one waypoint as i understand, but when i save it and try to reload it only the one waypoint shows up, the polygon disappears.

7

Yes. The polygon is not saved as a component in a mission. Once a polygon is imported in the Mission Hub, it remains there only as a guide. Even if you clear the mission, the polygon remains. Think of this feature as a temporary way to import a boundary, but that boundary is not saved with any mission and can only be cleared by closing and re-opening the Mission Hub.

8

Ok, thanks for the clarification. So it sounds like there is no way to get the polygon to show on my Litchi app basemap to show the study area polygon to help me when i’m doing surveys with the drone?

9

That is correct. You can keep the kml file to load into the Mission Hub any time you want. However, you cannot display it in the app.

10

That’s unfortuante. would be nice to have that as a feature.
Thanks so much for your help!

11

Visit https://ancient.land/ and it will do exactly what you want. You can create a survey area and define a bunch of different parameters and then it will create a CSV file. You can then import this CSV file into Litchi and it will generate the mission for you. Yeah, the web address seems weird, but I promise it is legitimate.

12

I am also working on a bunch of tools to fill in the gaps. I am much more versed in Excel and not so much making a web interface like this site, but so far, I’ve come up with tools to scan an object for 3d model reconstruction using a drone, and for inspecting a tower. Data is obtained from Google Earth Pro. It’s a work-in-progress, but it gets done what I need it to do.