USV invested in Dronebase earlier this year but I had not used the service personally so I decided to change that this past week.
The Gotham Gal and I are working on a real estate development project in Brooklyn and we need to make some decisions in partnership with our architects. An aerial view of the property would help us make our decisions.
So on Saturday afternoon, we went to Dronebase.com, clicked the big blue “get started” button, and found ourselves staring at a map. I typed in the address of the property and was shown a satellite map of it.
We then used the mapping tool to highlight the fly zone in blue. We then placed the camera icon over the specific points of interest we wanted to get close up views of.
Then we used the mapping tool to cover the neighboring buildings in a red “no fly zone.”
That produced this map of the mission we wanted:
Then we hit the green continue button, completed a few fields of information, chose which of the “images and video” or “maps and surveys” packages we wanted. We chose the $399 “basic” images and video package. Then we entered our credit card, verified that we owned the property or had permission from the owner to fly over it, and we were done.
A few minutes later we received an email stating that a drone pilot had been engaged and would be flying the job the next day (sunday).
On monday, we got a dropbox folder full of video and images including this edited summary video of the job:
We then shared that dropbox folder with our architects and a few days later we had a decision that we are all happy with.
I know I am biased by our investment in and ownership interest in Dronebase, but this experience was kind of magical. For $399 and a few minutes of work on the computer we got exactly the views we wanted to see. All of our questions and concerns were answered with the footage we purchased.
I can see how drone based services are going to change a lot of things. Hiring a drone pilot is simple, easy, fast, and not particularly expensive. If you have a job you want done on your property or the property of someone you know who will authorize it, go to Dronebase and check it out. It’s a super cool and useful service.
