HACKER Q&A
📣 gorgoiler

How do I make my own map?


My neighbours and I share a community park that needs surveying. I have been volunteered and am hoping it will be possible with a simple theodolite and free software. If you’ve done your own site survey from scratch, what tools, software and HOWTOs helped you the most?


  👤 arthur2e5 Accepted Answer ✓
The more amateur world I am familiar with (OSM et al) does not go for a theodolite at all. The general approach is to satellite-trace the place out and use GPS tracks for what it can’t cover.[1] For more detailed shapes or up-to-date imagery, OpenDroneMap might be used to assemble own drone imagery.

  [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mapping_techniques
The rendering part is usually done by leaflet on the web. GIS software should allow importing from OSM too.

👤 bigiain
Using inexpensive drones and photogrammetry to stitch lots of photos together is fairly straightforward these days:

https://www.mobiddiction.com.au/drone-mapping-in-4-steps/

Depends a lot on what you mean by "site survey" though.

The photogrammetry used there also created a depth map from the stereography where images overlap:

https://www.mobiddiction.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/T...

You can see in the bottom right corner of that the elevation changes for the roundabout and the ~120mm high curbs at the edges of the roads - and the gradual slope of the whole site towards the top right corner. (There's a lot more detail and calibration data than that image shows in the full data set there.)


👤 slater