Preparing Flight Plan for Drone Survey using MissionPlanner

 To conduct a 'Drone Survey' of a site/location, it is required that a proper flight plan should be prepared for the success of the survey mission. Some drones do come with their own software for making the flight plan, however there exist universal tools like the 'Mission Planner' that supports may types of camera on drones thanks to Michael Oborne of Ardupilot.

The 'Mission Planner' software is not only useful for drone surveying, it has many other uses including GNSS RTK (Real-Time Kinematic, Global Navigation Satellite System) processing among others.

Creating the Flight Plan

You will work under the 'PLAN' tab to prepare your 'Flight Plan' for drone surveying.

Switch to the "Plan" tab, then zoom to your study area and position the home point at a suitable location.

Right click and draw polygon over the study area. You may also use the polygon icon to the left for the drawing.

Next, right click and select 'Auto WP' and 'Survey (Grid)'. This will launch a new window where you can select various setting for the drone, camera, forward and side overlaps, images,  etc.

Check the 'Advanced Options' for more configuration settings. When you are satisfied with your settings, click on the 'Accept' button to apply the settings.

Based on the selected study area, type of camera, flying altitude of 120m, camera angle of 360° and flying speed of 20m/s the flight mission has the following statistics:-

Happy Flying!

Different ways for running python script in QGIS

QGIS was written in  C++, Python and Qt framework.

In this post, I will share with you the common places where you can use or run python script within QGIS. If you already know python and some basics of QGIS, then this will be great exposure to know how to automate different parts of the open source GIS software.

Python in QGIS can be used to interact and automate GIS data in:-

1) Python Console

Plugins >> Python Console (Ctrl+Alt+P)




2) Label Expression



3) Field Calculator



4) Processing Toolbox



5) Plugins



6) Stand alone QGIS Apps



7) Script Runner Plugin



8) Project Event - Open, Close and Save

Preparing a Flag map of Africa 24 Teams Set For AFCON 2025 In Morocco

 This task consist of two parts, the GIS and Graphic Design parts. To complete the task, I will use two software namely QGIS for the GIS part of the project and GIMP for the graphic design part of the project.

Data Sources:

• The Map is the world map from QGIS resource data
• The Flags were made by Hampus Nilsson

Procedures

Step 1: Using the QGIS software, query the world map for African countries and the 24 teams that qualified for the AFCON 2025 as seen below.

Now we know the countries to be designed with flags respectively.

Step 2: Lets make sure the flags we downloaded are available for the 24 countries. The flag source uses two alphabets to name the flags, this could be challenging but fortunately there is a JSON file in the directory the associalte the two two alphabet code with the full name of the countries.

'BW, 'EG', 'ZR', 'SD', 'ZM', 'NG', 'BJ', 'UG', 'TZ', 'GA', 'CI', 'DZ', 'SN', 'CM', 'GQ', 'BF', 'MZ', 'ZA', 'MA', 'TN', 'AO', 'KM', 'ML', 'ZW'

The 'WB_A2' attribute column matches the names of the flags, so that is what we will use the get the names of the country for each flag.

How to make country flag map in QGIS

Using graphics software like GIMP/Photoshop, Inkscape/Illustrator, we could fill polygons shapes with an image easily, now how do we do the same in QGIS?

Yes, QGIS is not a graphic software yet it has the capability to fill polygons shapes with an image. Let make use of a flag image to fill a country's polygon shape. I will use Nigerian flag and its boundary polygon shape for this demonstration however, you can prety much use any image with any polygon shape of your chosen.

In other words, all we are doing is to insert image in shape in QGIS. Lets see how we can achieve it.

First get the image flag and the vector polygon of Nigeria administrative boundaries.

Now, from the polygon's property window, open symbology tab and select 'Raster Image Fill' as seen below. You can now set path to the image, set the size of the image, set its opacity, etc as you require fit.

One important setting that determine if the image fills the entire polygon layer or each polygon shape in the layer is the "Coord mode" which can either be det to 'object' or 'viewport'.

With some tweaks and tricks, we can achieve what the graphics tool can do in QGIS. Though this kind of map designs are effectively done in the graphics software.

Happy mapping.

50 Globe Projections Types in QGIS

 A globe projection, also known as a map projection, is a method for representing the Earth's surface on a flat surface, such as a map or computer screen.

Lets see the following 50 map projections in QGIS software;-

(1) Natural Earth Projection - EPSG: 54077
(2) Sphere Aitoff Projection - EPSG: 53043
(3) World Azimuthal Equidistant Projection - EPSG: 54032
(4) Sphere Behrmann Projection - EPSG: 53017
(5) Sphere Bonne Projection - EPSG: 53024
(6) World Cassini Projection - EPSG: 54028
(7) Sphere Compact Miller Projection - EPSG: 53080
(8) Sphere Craster Parabolic Projection - EPSG: 53046
(9) Equal Area Cylindrical Projection - EPSG: 54034
(10) Eckert-1 Projection - EPSG: 53015
(11) Eckert-2 Projection - EPSG: 53014
(12) Eckert-3 Projection - EPSG: 53013
(13) Eckert-4 Projection - EPSG: 53012
(14) Eckert-5 Projection - EPSG: 53011
(15) Eckert-6 Projection - EPSG: 53010
(16) Sphere Equal Earth Americas Projection - EPSG: 53036
(17) Africa Equidistant Conic Projection - EPSG: 102023
(18) World Equidistant Cylindrical Projection - EPSG: 4088
(19) Sphere Flat Polar Quartic Projection - EPSG: 53045
(20) Gall Stereographic Projection - EPSG: 53016
(21) Gall and Peters Projection - EPSG: 100000
(22) Goode Homolosine Land Projection - EPSG: 54052
(23) Google Maps Global Mercator Projection Projection - EPSG: 900913
(24) MILLER GEOPORTAIL Projection - EPSG: MILLER
(25) North Pole LAEA Alaska Projection Projection - EPSG: 3572
(26) American Samoa Lambert Projection - EPSG: 2155
(27) South Pole Orthographic Projection - EPSG: 102037
(28) North Pole Orthographic Projection - EPSG: 102035
(29) NSIDC EASE-Grid Global Projection - EPSG: 3410
(30) Patterson Projection - EPSG: 53079
(31) Plate Caree Projection - EPSG: 32662
(32) Panama Polyconic Projection - EPSG: 5472
(33) Polyconic Projection - EPSG: 53021
(34) Quartic Authalic Projection - EPSG: 53022
(35) ICS Robinson Projection - EPSG: 102926
(36) Africa Sinusoidal Projection - EPSG: 102011
(37) JAXA Snow Depth Polar Stereographic North Projection - EPSG: 5890
(38) Times Projection - EPSG: 53048
(39) Vanua Levu 1915 Projection - EPSG: 4748
(40) Vertical Perspective Projection - EPSG: 53049
(41) Wagner IV Projection - EPSG: 53074
(42) Winkel I Projection - EPSG: 53018
(43) Winkel II Projection - EPSG: 53019
(44) Winkel Tripel NGS Projection - EPSG: 53042
(45) MAGNA Leticia Amazonas 1994 Projection - EPSG: 102767
(46) Mexico ITRF2008 Projection - EPSG: 6363
(47) Equal Earth Asia Pacific Projection - EPSG: 53037
(48) France Metropolitaine projection Geoportail Projection - EPSG: GEOPORTALFXX
(49) RRAF 1991 Projection - EPSG: 4640
(50) S-JTSK Krovak East North  Projection - EPSG: 102067