Trying to get emlid GPS data into tiffs from micasense

Reach Module / M+ / M2 RTK / PPK configuration
1

Hello ,

i have a micasense redegeP camera and an emlid m2 /R2 .

i want to pass the GPS data from the “emlid system” to the micasense images.

Micasense writes out as TIF and emlid studio only supports jpeg (why ???)

Am converting the tiffs into jpeg and passing all the exif data but after the processing i get

“Folder with photos
must contain 0 JPEG files”

What am i doing wrong ?

Thank you for your time,
Best!

2

I agree, TIFF support is highly needed for Emlid Studio image tagging. What camera system do you use for creating the TIFFs? What software do you use for further processing (something like Metashape or Pix4D?)?

We just had a similar problem working with our 10-band Micasense Rededge MX camera. There is a script on the Micasense page (https://support.micasense.com/hc/en-us/articles/360054297594-How-to-integrate-Emlid-Reach-RTK-with-MicaSense-Sensors) that’s meant to write out a text file combining the image names with the Emlid GPS positions from the .pos file. However, the script proved to be non-functional for us (no commenting in the script, and a number of errors in handling the .pos files) so we had to re-write it.
Please note that the script (like Emlid Studio) is ‘dumb’, i.e. it does not really know which image belongs to which position (through, for example, time stamps), but rather works in sequential order, so that the number of waypoints in the .pos file needs to correspond exactly to the number of images in your image folder. However, it is a bit smarter in that it does account for multi-band imagery for multi-camera systems like the RedEdge MX.

Converting the TIFFs to jpeg is generally a very bad idea, since you might lose header information as well as possibly reduce your bit-depth drastically (depending on your sensor’s bit-depth). Jpegs are 8-bit only and TIFFs often hold higher bit depths (i.e. gray values).

1 Like
3

Hello @JoBind ,

i use redeedgeP and a sony a6000 (havent set up the a6000 yet)

  1. i was displeased that emlid studio doesnt read tiffs as a matter of fact one of their updates wrote “now it will not take into account tiff files if in the folder”

  2. am writting a massive python script to keep correctly tags when converting tif to jpeg so everything works fine i could share my code with anyone .

  3. Micasence takes picture in UTC we have the time the picture was shot in the EXIF of the image emlid studio SHOULD be smart enough to check those time stamps and create what ever it needs

  4. My workflow with emlid makes my workflow very problematic, i need to convert tiffs to jpeg for emlid studio but i need tiffs to make ortomosaic ,
    -so i need to convert tiffs to jpeg ,
    -use emlid studio ,

  • then take GPS exif and inject back to tiff

all these steps are manual and i feel am wasting time and resources :frowning:

It must be a solutions for this , ? we just dont know ?
Best!

5

Hi guys,

Emlid Studio indeed doesn’t support TIFF at the moment. But we’re collecting such requests and will consider supporting this format in the future.

Regarding the error you’re receiving:

That means you have no images coordinates calculated from your logs. It’s not related to the format of the images. There could be several reasons for that starting from the connection between the camera and Reach. Can you share raw data logs from RS2 and M2?

1 Like
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Hello @svetlana.nikolenko ,

Thank you for your reply !

does not sound very reassuring :frowning: can you perhaps share the code ? (for others to develop)

I dont have a connection between camera and Reach .
Ive used the trigger cable from the flight controller of the drone to trigger.

The images have time stamps from the GPS of micasence camera which is in UTC.

All want is to update the GPS locations with the Emlid data .

How can we do this ?
Best!

7

Hi @firebblade,

Emlid Studio isn’t an open-source project. So, I can only note your feature request, and I’ve already passed it on to the team.

Then, you can’t process images’ coordinates in Emlid Studio. That’s how it usually works: Reach connects to a camera via a hot shoe and registers a time mark every time the camera takes a photo. Time marks are stored in the raw data log. Emlid Studio takes logs from the base and rover and calculates coordinates for your images using time marks from the rover’s log.

If there is no connection between the camera and Reach, it means there are no time marks. And Emlid Studio can’t calculate anything. Maybe some 3rd-party software can, but I can hardly advise on it.

1 Like
9

Hi @svetlana.nikolenko ,

Thank you so much for making this clear !

So i need to attach the hot shoe to each of 3 payloads that i have,

Then its M2 that does the triggering ? i would like to trigger from the drone is that possible ?

Thanks!

11

You mean 3 different cameras?

13

This is a great discussion which will hopefully have a happy ending. @firebblade are you simply trying to geo correct your multispectral images so that you can have a corrected multispectral map? It is this exact reason I came to the forum today to learn … how to achieve a geo corrected multispectral map. If I am taking this off topic with my post, don’t feel shy about saying so.

I agree with you that the third party options are at a price point that makes the purchase hard to swallow. The X4S is a great mapping camera for 90% of projects so it would be nice to find a way to keep using it. Is your comment about the hot shoes because you want to have more than one payload working at one time? For example corrections to the multispectral camera and the X4S or X7 at the same time? That is also a great question if that is what you were asking. I think that your discusson is also based on wanting to avoide GCP’s. Correct me if I am wrong.

So I am piping in here because I want to support @firebblade in his/her need for a solution.

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