Drone Software For Measuring Roofs

[Reney Shammo]

Watchour video below comparing RoofSnap and DroneDeploy, two powerful roof measuring applications that can utilize drone imagery for accurate measurements and data. We cover the key differences between the applications, the roof measuring tools available in each one, and what the process is like for creating a project and getting accurate measurements of your roof.

Getting detailed and accurate rooftop measurements is important for a variety of applications. Perhaps you work for a construction firm. You may need detailed diagrams of the roof with accurate measurements of the ridges, valleys, hips, eaves, and a clear visual understanding of where vent pipes and chimneys are located on the roof.

You could also be performing a rooftop inspection and need to properly assess a damaged area for an accurate estimate for repair. Or perhaps you need to calculate the area of your roof to estimate the cost of getting it re-shingled or get a quote for a solar panel installation.

Drones present a unique opportunity for getting a clear view of your rooftop and allowing you to get precise roof measurements. A variety of roof measuring applications and programs already take advantage of high-resolution drone imagery to get accurate roof measurements.

Two popular software applications capable of measuring rooftops are RoofSnap and DroneDeploy. These software tools provide advanced tools and features for accurate measurements and detailed information.

RoofSnap is a specialized roof measuring application. It allows users to calculate the length of flat surfaces, including eaves, ridges, and gutters, and even sloped roof elements such as hips, rakes, and valleys.

Users draw lines on their diagram and label the lines with the corresponding part of the roof. RoofSnap then generates the facets of the roof based on how the lines are connected. Users add pitch to each facet, allowing RoofSnap to calculate accurate measurements for sloped surfaces, including the hips, rakes, and valleys of the roof.

While you may expect DroneDeploy to only provide measurements for horizontal planes, the software application is able to use the flight data from the drone to understand the elevation of each surface. This allows you to get accurate measurements for sloped surfaces, including ridges, hips, valleys, rakes, and eaves.

Given the relatively expensive prices of RoofSnap and DroneDeploy, which both start at $99 per month, consumers may even consider using Google Earth to approximate the area of their rooftop. Google Earth allows users to measure the distance between two points for free. You can even switch the units between yards, feet, and inches for more precise measurements.

Unfortunately, Google Earth does not let users calculate area. Only distance. To estimate the area of your roof, you need to measure each side individually and then use your measurements to calculate the area yourself.

Google Earth will also not account for the pitch of the roof, so again it is best used as a free tool for approximating the dimensions of your roof. It can be helpful in a pinch for getting estimates for reshingling costs or solar panel installations.

Upload the images from your drone to your DroneDeploy project. DroneDeploy will begin processing the images, using data from the drone to properly align each image and identify the altitude and position it was taken at. Your map will take a few hours to process. When it is complete you will have an accurate, up-to-date, and extremely detailed orthomosaic map which you can use for measuring area, distance, and even volume.

DroneDeploy has two primary tools for collecting useful rooftop measurements; the area tool and the distance tool. The area tool provides you with horizontal area as well as surface area, allowing you to get measurements and data on the facets of your roof. The distance tool provides you with horizontal distance as well as surface length, allowing you to get measurements of ridges, hips, valleys, rakes, eaves, and more. Use the tools to get the roof measurements you need for your project.

Similar to RoofSnap, DroneDeploy lets you generate reports for your projects. You can choose between an annotation report, a progress report, a stockpile report, and an issue report. The annotation report is what contains your distance and area measurements. The report has the following sections:

Both RoofSnap and DroneDeploy offer ways of allowing users to order maps of roofs. Essentially you are paying to outsource the tedious process of getting each roof measurement Here are the options available from each platform:

Full Snaps are detailed diagrams with measurements of ridges, hips, valleys, rakes, and eaves. Pricing is broken up between residential properties and commercial properties. Residential properties start at $9.00 for roofs under 20 square feet and go up to $35 for roofs between 50 and 80 square feet. Commercial properties buildings over 80 square feet and are billed based on the number of facets they have. Buildings with 1-4 faces start at $9.00, and buildings with 81-120 facets go up to $70.

DroneDeploy does not offer any first party tools for ordering the measurements of a rooftop. However, a third party application called Roof Report allows users to outsource getting measurements of their roof.

Roof Report is an application available on the DroneDeploy app market, and it allows you to select your roof with an area measurement and then order a detailed report of the rooftop. Pricing ranges from $20 for a small residential building with a 2000 sq ft roof up to $95 for a large commercial building with over a 20,000 sq ft rooftop.

RoofSnap uses Nearmap for their imaging service. Nearmap flies planes at relatively low altitudes to capture images of the ground below and create detailed maps. However, because the plans are flying higher than drones, the map resolution is lower. Nearmap resolutions are typically 5.8cm/px to 7.5cm/px.

Nearmap also updates their imagery up to six times per year. This helps provide an accurate picture of your roof most of the time, however for some projects, such as recently completed construction projects, getting updated imagery taken from a drone is not only more detailed, but also significantly more accurate.

RoofSnap allows you to upload your own drone image for a more detailed map and more precise measurements. However, you need to know the length of an object in the image in order to properly set the scale. Setting the scale incorrectly will result in inaccurate measurements.

As touched on above, using a drone to capture imagery is not only more up-to-date, but it is also significantly higher resolution. DroneDeploy is able to create orthomosaic maps up to a 0.5in/px resolution. You can see blades of grass in your image!

To get the best drone imagery for detailed measurements, RoofSnap recommends you fly your drone as high as possible and center your image above the roof. Flying at a high altitude helps prevent distortion in your image caused by the wide angle camera of the drone. At a low altitude your image would be warped and less suitable for getting measurements.

Finally, you must make sure to include an object with a known distance in your shot. RoofSnap recommends spray painting a PVC pipe and laying it in a gutter, or taking the time to make an on-site measurement. You use this measurement to set the scale of your image in RoofSnap, which is necessary for getting accurate data.

If you or your business operates exclusively in the roofing industry, then RoofSnap is going to provide a better experience. You get specialized tools for creating and aligning your measurements, more detailed reports intended for the roofing industry, and RoofSnap can even function as a back-end project management tool to help you manage your various roofing projects. Using RoofSnap also requires you know the pitch of the facets for accurate measurements.

DroneDeploy, on the other hand, is better suited for construction firms. Its tools will not only allow you to get accurate measurements of roofs, but of other areas of your project as well. You can measure the volume stockpiles, determine how much material was moved in one day, and track the progress of your project with photo reports. Getting drone imagery is also essential for getting an updated view of your project.

As an inspection software solution, measuring is only part of what IMGING offers. It also provides an elegant workspace to inspect the digital twin, measure anything, annotate photos, build custom inspection reports, push into estimating platforms, and analyze for damage with AI.

Loveland Innovations is the maker of IMGING, the leading platform for property inspections and analytics. With IMGING, inspection professionals use smartphones and automated drones to digitize a property or structure, and analyze it with the help of deep learning and computer vision, giving them the clarity to act quickly and confidently.

For solar panel experts, measuring roofs and modeling photovoltaic power plants are daily tasks that can involve dangerous procedures. But with the help of drones and photogrammetry, the efficiency and safety of many methods can be improved. This article will reveal just how easy it is to measure roofs using consumer-grade drones and Pixpro software.

To enable measurements in a photogrammetry project, we need some kind of referencing. Luckily most quadcopter drones use GPS data for flight operations, like setting a home point and hovering in a single spot. GPS location data is embedded in the images taken with the UAV. This data allows us to have a scale in a photogrammetry project and therefore measure anything in the scene. Thus there are two main requirements for a drone for our use case:

Most DJI, Autel, Yuneec, and Skydio drones meet such criteria. Toy copter drones for children or FPV drones for racing will not meet the requirements, whereas large, fixed wing drones have an entirely different purpose.

We have covered the topic of taking images in quite a few of our previous articles:

Photogrammetry Fails and Issues Part 1

Photogrammetry Fails and Issues Part 2

Easy Roof Inspection with Pixpro

Flight Planner. Do I Need One?

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