FINALLY DJI Mini 4 Pro, Mavic 3, and Air 3 Automated 3D Drone Mapping and Photogrammetry

We can finally do automated mapping on DJI drones like the DJI Mini 4 pro, DJI Air 3, and DJI Mavic 3 / 3 pro / classic. Today I show you a free tool to do automated mission planning for free on drones that do not have any sdk support. At last we can finally do automated missions on the newest dji drones. DJI mini 4 pro mapping, DJI mini 4 pro mission planning, and dji mini 4 photogrammetry. DJI Air 3 mapping, DJI Air 3 mission planning, and DJI air 3 photogrammetry. DJI mavic 3 pro mapping, DJI mavic 3 pro mission planning, and DJI mavic 3 pro photogrammetry.
This video will use a tool I made called www.waypointmap.com . Its a free online tool that lets you generate automated mapping waypoint missions without SDK support. Allowing users to fly waypoint missions to collect data on the newest drones with the waypoint feature. Everything shown in this video on Waypointmap will be free to use forever. I may add additional premium features but these features will be free to use for everyone. Waypointmap.com is a great tool to use.
I am not affiliated or endorsed by DJI.
0:00 - Intro and Setup
2:42 - RC-N1/N2 w/ Apple Device Setup
3:45 - RC 2 or RC-N1/N2 w/ Android Device Setup
4:32 - DJI RC Setup
5:32 - Usage instructions and final setup

[@JaysTechVault]

Make free 3d models at aerialmodel.com and automate your flights with waypointmap.com Join our Discord for info about our universal drone RTK module or to make suggestions about WaypointMap: discord.gg/EP4zcP24ky

[@Supriyadi-tq2yt]

could you share the new Discord link ?

[@scottkarlins]

What will be the cost for the RTK module? Do you have a weight on it? Thanks!

[@miguelj.cardenas4841]

Could I pay for one month only? because I don't use too much this option

[@GabeChapman]

I truly want to thank you for developing this solution for many of us that are bummed about the current lack of SDK support on the Air 3. I really appreciate all the work you’ve put into this. Thank you so much.

[@markrob3]

Me too! Amazing stuff. Well done.

[@pixelsimage]

Well well, you have created what others have tried to do for quite a while and it's really a simple solution. Love it. Would love to see you expand on this so we can also create missions generated with custom paths, altitudes, viewing angles, and POI. Thanks for the contribution.

[@ChoProductions]

Two things I would love to see. First I am in the states. So I can do the math but an option for the imperial system would be nice. Second, little different than your original plan. But I know a lot of us would like to play waypoints from our computers and phones. Would be awesome if you gave us the option to make our own missions and save them. I know for me it would be super helpful and save me a lot of time. It would be so much easier to do at my desk than on the controller. But anyways thank you so much for this! I can't wait to try it!

[@skf957]

+1 on the play waypoints from the computer rather than the controller.

[@markkempton4579]

That was my first reaction - I'm not quite ready to learn mapping yet, but I would actually use waypoints if I could set them ahead of time on a large monitor.

[@ChoProductions]

I mean it seems like he is right there. It would make so many people happy! @@skf957

[@TriangleNCHomes]

This is incredible, great work! I will be using this for an upcoming project. (I have flown the same park before, too!)

[@markogluhak7893]

Suggestions: 1. Possibility to rotate rectangle 2. Custom shapes. For start with straight lines and then maybe letter include circles, elipses, ..

[@JaysTechVault]

Working on that now actually

[@IXTJ]

Yay, Polygons!@@JaysTechVault

[@geo30197]

This is a game changer...I am sure about that

[@manwell72]

Is it possible to add a shape file as a kmz? Otherwise though this looks great

[@IXTJ]

If you're using ArcMap, Layer to KML under Conversion Tools@@manwell72

[@Ad_Alta]

What a fantastic solution, and such a lot of work - very much appreciated!

[@jasonfay2250]

This is really sweet. Thanks for creating it! Two suggestions: 1. allow for grid coverage 2. Instead of distance between paths, how about coverage overlap (usually seems like the map generators like 70-75% overlap). Are you using webodm or similar to render the map?

[@GabeChapman]

Thanks so much for all this work you're doing! Keep up the good work!

[@velociraptor5962]

Wow. Amazing. Thank you so much! I started doing something like this a while ago and got distracted. Amazing to see what you've done. Well done!

[@openmind06]

Really apreciate this! Can't wait to try it out!

[@jackmacdonald8499]

That's fantastic. Just received an email from Amazon that my M4P will be delivered on Thurs. Can't wait to try your software. Thanks for developing it.

[@retieffrobert]

You can do 2 second pictures too you just need to change it to the 12 mp option. I've used this many times now I love how easy it is to do it, only thing I find a little wonky sometimes is using the circle map option. There a lot of trial and error when using the circle option. I find making the circle bigger then the object helps if not sometimes you end up with just 6 waypoints right in the middle of the object instead of around it. Anyway besides that this is an amazing tool to have and for free I have to thank you for doing that, I do plan on purchasing when I get Paid, I don't make alot of money so having this as a free option is just wonderful and I thank you for that. But I do plan to purchase to support the cause and the hard work you put into making this. I hope with lots of people funding you Eventually you will probably tie it right into a mapping software so you can make your 3d maps or survey maps. I hope to see that someday you really are showing dji how easy it is just to include mapping into the app itself, anyway again I thank you for your hard work and your great Contribution to us drone Enthusias this is great cheers

[@richards2072]

Fantastic tool and video! Thanks very much.

[@maxemmer]

This is awesome! Can’t wait to try out.

[@skyphotoTV]

You are the man! Congrat. Nice work

[@kevinkasp]

Very nice. I appreciate you and this. 2024 is the year I begin using drones and the reason is specifically for mapping.

[@AerialWaviator]

Very fascinating and useful. After a quick look at the mapping feature, I'd suggest an option to rotate the rectangle area, a number of degrees (even if just an option for 30º, or 45º) so don't have to highlight/map an overly large area. Overall a very simple and effective option that will be useful for many.

[@ver2Go]

Well done on updating your apps so quickly. Great new features. It was only 2 weeks ago I was hoping for rotate the rectangle, now we have Polygon. Thank you

[@JaysTechVault]

There’s a lot more than just a polygon, editing each point, circle (poi) and actions

[@electricallyreborn-yq1us]

This is awesome thanks for your contribution, I will be giving this a try and updating soon

[@BunglowBill]

Bro you're the GOAT! I'm starting a drone company so I can make money while still being a stay at home dad. This tool should help immensely and keep me from having to buy an enterprise mapping drone. Thank you bro.

[@jankorenberg9773]

Thanks! This helps alot👍🇳🇱

[@ElevatedVehicles]

This is what I've been waiting on. I'll sell my air 2s now for an air3 since the air 2s allowed me to do custom way points on my computer

[@SomewhereDoingSomething]

This is actually sick as hell

[@adamalex7402]

Honestly you’re a saviour. Was extremely frustrated with having paid more for the DJI RC and it not being able to run any 3rd party apps while the RC-N1 allows you to. Paid more to get less!

[@w.e.s.]

It's called a hdmi cable plugged into your cellphone or laptop...

[@Joe-wk9ow]

This sounds amazing. I'm thinking of getting the Mavic 3 pro.

[@langdalepass]

Thank you👍

[@Beyondtheveil21]

Jay, thanks again man a you’re a life saver dude. I finally got to sell my mavic 2 and keep my 3 standard edition. Much better drone.

[@d3strac00l]

Thanks, my dji air 3 is useful right now.

[@SouthlandFlyer]

Ive been considering buying a mavic 3 Pro, which currently doesnt have SDK support. This pretty neat thank you

[@Itsrichardash]

Oh cool, I fly in that park often!

[@allx6611]

Good work.👍 As easy to use, as it should be.

[@Generouslife153]

You are a angel thank you

[@ChrizLizt]

Dude! Thank you and thank you for thinking of us el cheapo photogrammetry artists ;)😅

[@markfry5867]

You can create straight lines by placing 2 points per corner ......*...* instead of ...*..This was already dicussed by a spanish forum

[@SovaKlr]

TY sir... you are the man

[@herbf2700]

I'm going to have to try this sometime. I do lots of photogrammetry.

[@mingscustoms]

Amazing software creation

[@pilotgundul]

Thanks man... I think this is brilliant.. because i am the one who think that it is wasting of drone battery flying to a certain point by the drone itself and not able to import paths we already made in our computer. I love the way litchi made its users happy when planning a mission only from browser

[@riotftw]

grat man, thanks a lot!

[@fpvkevlar8101]

Great information bro.

[@geo30197]

I am a big fan thx

[@willywf98]

This is great stuff, I hope you keep it up. I'd be interested in what else you come up with.

[@danielsnyder3563]

Very Clever and Creative. Amazing solution! You could also generate the KMZ file from one of the mapping programs (Like Pix4d or Drone Deploy, or Dronelink) and upload that to the RC controller. Have your tied that approach? Well Done!

[@antecedentesTM]

Hello, have you managed to enter a .kmz route? I have tried it with the 3D kmz route that Litchi generates but when I return to the RC2 controller, it does not appear, Can you help me? Thank you so much

[@Dronexvisuals]

I never comment, but this is truly very cool. I think this will be really succesful.

[@papijmrdrone3165]

❤awesome

[@geo30197]

Unbelievable...thank you! I have a mavic 3 ..the first edition..with optical zoom...i hope it wil work on this one also...is it possible to do a double grid? And are you planning to optimize it so it is possible to choose front/side overlap?

[@AlexanderWhitePhotography]

Love it, great idea and as others have said, such a beautifully simple way to solve it Vs the complexity of seeing the points manually in flight with the drone. Couple of points, when creating a waypoint map it seems to significantly reduce the size of the area covered. For example I drew a box over a local park giving a bit of extra edge cover (20m or so either side) and the edge waypoints were placed well inside the park about 50m inside my initial box... Is that expected?

[@NobodyRides]

I almost sold my Air3. Thank you for saving me.

[@momonunu]

would be great to have an option to add more waypoints to get straight lines instead of curved

[@AlexanderWhitePhotography]

Oh and yes please to polygon path creation and allowing individual points to be easily adjusted (height in particular) 😊 The rest can easily be done in the app before flight! 👍🏻

[@JaysTechVault]

Already well into that. It’s maybe about a week or two weeks out but I have about 20-30 some new features to help with that.

[@AlexanderWhitePhotography]

Perfect! Excited to test out v 2.0! 🙂@@JaysTechVault

[@Pilot__dji]

Thanks alot! Great job. Can you somehow do this for DJI mini 3 pro

[@geraldinegawith]

thank you for your informnative video. Does the waypoint chosen in flight show latitude and longitude? thank you

[@andreabozzi6197]

Hey man thx for that! Is there an option ln to create just an image stitched up together of the area? I don’t need the 3d model thx

[@HammerheadH]

It would be great if you could rotate the mapping area to any angle instead of being parallel to north. To map my property fully, I would have to partially fly over my neighbours.

[@EricGrumling]

Thanks for doing this. I'm hesitant to buy a Mavic 3E considering the politics, and Skydio's solution isn't all that great either. Nice that I can use my Mavic 3 Cine for simple mapping and models. And I'll pile on for polygons, but it's easy enough to create several missions to get better coverage of odd shaped lots.

[@BlairAir]

I assume I can work out the same process on my RC Pro (RM510) as well? I use it currently only with Mavic 3 Pro as the O4 based RC-2 is only compatible with my M4P and Air 3, and will likely not be kludged to pair with O3/O3+ aircraft - at least not by DJI, though it may be possible, similar to how they got the Smart Controller (RM500) to work -poorly, with Air 2S at one point. This is slick work you've done with the .kmz files. It's nice to have a process, vs. manually moving & overwriting fles.

[@JaysTechVault]

I don’t have an RC pro to test with so I don’t know. I’ll have to get some revenue of some kind to buy stuff for testing, hire help, because the amount of work on this is daunting.

[@shb7772000if]

Good job. I was thinking of trying to write my own waypoint editor because I wasn't happy with DJI's. So I'm a little familiar with their file format. Unfortunately, I lost my mavic 3 pro a couple of weeks ago so I can't try your program.

[@vas.milivoj]

would you rather have mini 4pro or air 2s for the jobs like building and terain surveys?

[@IxToxicity]

Great video and great job on the software. I will be trying it out soon. What program did you use to generate the map after? I have seen a few out there but this didnt look familiar

[@JaysTechVault]

Its cause its from scratch lots of work

[@IxToxicity]

@@JaysTechVault That's awesome! Keep it up.

[@ChrisRichardsonwtfgamer]

Is it available? What do we do with the data once captured currently?

[@craigburnett8723]

That software looks great…. If you ever make it public let us know ;)

[@user-mo6wz7ne2y]

Would you happen to have the steps to program the DJI RC Pro Model RM510. Flying the Mavic Pro 3. Thanks!

[@DifferentPerspectivePhoto]

Have you been able to add the ability to rotate the rectangle yet?

[@adamalex7402]

Very cool, does this support terrain follow ?

[@JaysTechVault]

Yes

[@SiamakSadati]

thank you for this creative solution , I have some question about mission , can we use 48mp photo in this fly path? or it just use 12mp default?

[@TalonNismo]

Super computer thinking machine.

[@nps-ddpsavinglives]

So does this automatically calculate the overlap based on altitude and the type of camera are you using on the drone? I know that the overlaps really important looks like a great program...

[@FlorBaez]

if you want straight lines just add 2 points before coming back and you can adjust it as "spline"

[@IAKhan-km4ph]

Is this for dji mini 3 too?

[@langdalepass]

Hi Great video thanks. How do you get the final 3D picture please. Is there a programme for that

[@AetherScout]

Meshroom

[@tmo7984]

Awesome video!!! Do you have a tutorial on uploading the photos and creating that 3D model???

[@JaysTechVault]

www.aerialmodel.com

[@olofjohansson8808]

A great feature to add would be settings for picture overlapping. Is that even possible?

[@felixsiaw147]

Hi @JaysTechVault this is a very useful tools . Can this support air 2s and mini 3 ? I prefer this over the paid autopilot apps.

[@christiano4471]

What would you recommend for a tablet or smart book or smartphone to run this software? Just curious to see if all these bugs and glitches would be avoided with a bigger unit.

[@XdekHckr]

9:55 I'm not specialist so might you tell me why SDK support is needed for mapping operations and what does SDK actually do for mapping?

[@aphaileeja]

Please develop a drone show app, or please recommend one if you know, thanks!

[@TechnicalLee]

What happens if you lose RC connection during the waypoint mission? Will it finish or does it immediately stop and RTH?

[@hellopsp180]

does this work with the Mini 3 pro ??

[@cagmuer]

What photogrammetry app are you using? It looks like ReCAP.

[@mendercnr38]

Thanks for this great job but is it possible to have straight lines? It's important for accuracy and we dont wanna random holes between the lines

[@JaysTechVault]

That’s a premium feature. I have to pay the bills to run it somehow.

[@joeamericauavfordav1096]

Have you created anything similar to this that would work on the Air 2S with the Smart Controller?

[@victorflorest]

Same question

[@IAKhan-km4ph]

Will it work for dji mini3 and mini3 pro

[@adamalex7402]

Would this support dji mini 3 pro ?

[@AbelBrata]

Can I use it with DJI Mini 3 Pro?

[@mhobbies3800]

Does it goes back if the area needs two or more battery?

[@chriscoetzee8309]

Great video and thanks for the information! Will this automated mapping also work on the DJI Mini 3 Pro? I see there is no SDK support on the mini 3 Pro or any other 3rd party app where you can generate an automated map.

[@JaysTechVault]

No waypoint feature = no support sadly ;(

[@keganstubbs9970]

@@JaysTechVault you can create and store waypoints under the "hyperlapse" function - and then fly existing waypoints through hyperlapse>waypoints>existing waypoints. However when importing a mission waypoint file from your mission planner, when copying it across from a sd card into the RC 1 internal storage, i am able to navigate to waypoints folder as per your video. When i click on the waypoints folder, none of the dummy flight waypoint files are showing up - it is just empty. so i cannot copy file names and replace. Any ideas on where i can find these files? or is this not possible with the RC 1 and mini 3 pro? Thanks so much

[@vatoalex83]

does mini3 pro have waypoints yet? or still only waypoints with hyper lap?

[@kevinwhyte1024]

Are you working on anything similar for the Potensic Atom? Would love to use it for 3d mapping.

[@JaysTechVault]

I fought them tooth and nail to enable this for their drone and they refused.

[@samsonabed1]

Why does it seem like I’m the only one who doesn’t have the “waylines_missions” folder on iPad or android

[@user-gr4dm2iv4y]

witch software do you use to create you 3d image? im new to this

[@DroneBeerDelivery]

What processing software is this? Will these files import to DJI Terra?

[@anthonyiacullo1535]

When I go to copy over the KMZ file from SD card on the RC2 controller I hit move and then when I go to look for the location to move it to the only option I am showing is "downloads" and the android card? can you please point me in the right direction for file path. Thanks !!

[@theomartin3145]

When you're in the File menu where your kmz is, you need to click the three dots on the top right corner of your screen, and then click "Display internal storage" or something like that (i have my controller in french so i don't really know how it translates in english. It is the option right under "Select all". Then, the internal storage of the RC will show up when you open the file navigator on the left just like in the video. Hope that helped !

[@keganstubbs9970]

@@theomartin3145 i have made a dummy waypoint map by flying the drone in hyperlapse waypoint mode. when i move the mission waypoint files, i can navigate to the internal waypoint folder but cannot see any existing waypoint files in that folder, so cannot replace them. Any ideas on where these waypoint files may be saved?

[@theomartin3145]

@@keganstubbs9970 you might be in the wrong folder that's the only explanation i can see... have you ranked the files by date of creation ?

[@Bdzynes]

Thanks for sharing . Unfortunate I got tired of waiting for mapping by DJI as well as tracking capabilities. Sad that most don't look beyond the box as Litchi as well as Maven lite offer the same features the more expensive drones offer. Both compatible on the Mini 2. Sad as DJI acts like this is new tech. Litchi even offers pc mapping. No more mapping a location on a small screen. I do mine at home before even going to the site.

[@thekeytothegate]

Why are the path lines bezier curved as opposed to a lawnmower path?

[@robertsteiner9596]

Could it be that DJI RC2 cannot connect to a Mac because its an Android device? I have read this info on a forum, it would make sense. I tried again today to connect my RC 2 via usbc cable to my Mac, no device recognized. A pity, unfortunately I dont use a PC.

[@clearairflying]

This is very interesting indeed. I've essentially only kept my Mini 2 for mapping. Something else I wondered... Creating missions for regular waypoints is only available within the app. I would love to be able to create online on a computer... Any chance of being able to create a free-form mission and then downloading that? 😊

[@JaysTechVault]

You already can do that in this current version ;). There should be a marker tool, create points and click on them to edit.

[@clearairflying]

@@JaysTechVault you are the man! I shall have a look in a minute. Great job.

[@benjaminbogran2586]

What mapping software are you using?

[@wessellagerweij4309]

Do u need the DJI controller for this? Or is this also possible on the phone controller?

[@Doctor9Raccoon]

what to do with that 3d model ?

[@abrahamwong1916]

what software are you using at the end of the video?

[@mypeeps1965]

I have a DJI mavic 2 zoom, will it work? and thank you!

[@ibrewbeer]

Fixed...@@mypeeps1965