Questions, answered

A web app that turns the photos from a drone mapping flight into a sharp, georeferenced map of the field, an orthomosaic. On that map you draw the field boundary, obstacles and no-spray zones, and export the boundary for DJI Agras, EAVision or Ceres, or as a shapefile or KMZ for other software. It's made by Agri Flight Logs for spray-drone operators.

No. SwathMap runs in your web browser. Upload from the computer your SD card is plugged into, and open the finished map anywhere you can sign in.

SwathMap is tested on DJI's 20 MP mapping drones, like the Mavic 3 Enterprise and Matrice 4E, and on the Mavic 3M for multispectral. Photos from other drones should work too, as long as they're GPS-tagged JPEGs; tell us what you fly and we'll test it. If your photos carry RTK positions, SwathMap uses them.

• Point the camera straight down. Tilted frames are left out of the map.
• Fly a mapping mission with plenty of overlap, about 70 to 80 percent front and side.
• Fly a little past the field edge, so the boundary isn't on the soft outer rim of the map.
• Keep each map to 2,400 photos or fewer. Split a bigger block into two maps.

Businesses in the United States and in Canada outside Quebec.

Create an account, choose monthly or 12-month billing, then click New Map and drop in the photos from your flight. The map's card shows its progress, and the map opens in your browser when it's ready.

Typically 4.4 minutes of processing for every 100 photos, counted from the moment a server picks your map up; 8 in 10 maps start within 90 seconds of the upload finishing. A 500-photo flight typically takes about 22 minutes. Those are measured, not promised: there's no guaranteed turnaround, and on the heaviest days so far big maps took more than twice as long. The processing times page shows 73 real flights and has an estimator.

That depends on your internet. Photos average about 9.4 MB each, so a 500-photo flight is about 4.7 GB: roughly 14 minutes at 50 Mbps upload, or over an hour on a 10 Mbps rural line. The upload runs in the background while the SwathMap page stays open.

Up to 2,400. Depending on how high you fly, that's often 500 to 800 acres in one map. Split a bigger block into two maps.

Up to 0.8 in per pixel, set by how you fly. A map carries the detail of the photos it's made from, so flying lower gives a sharper map.

No. Maps, boundaries and obstacles are planning aids, not a survey or a legal property line. Verify obstacles before flying.

A faster map of just a strip along the field's edge, reaching 50, 100 or 200 ft either side of the boundary, for drawing or checking a boundary when you don't need the whole field. SwathMap picks the edge photos before uploading, so there's less to send and less to process. In our tests, a 65-acre field came back in 6 to 8 minutes. It costs the same as any map.

Yes, up to 50 fields queued at once. Your plan includes one priority processing lane: your first map goes ahead of every customer's extra maps, and more run at once when there's spare capacity. Crews that map all day can add lanes.

Yes, from the DJI Mavic 3M. You get NDVI, NDRE, GNDVI, LCI and green cover, plus a false-color overlay on the photo map, included in the plan. From an ordinary photo map you can also build VARI, GLI, ExG, TGI and green-cover layers.

Today: DJI Agras, as a boundary shapefile that loads and flies on a real Agras; EAVision, as a boundary KMZ imported through its portal; and Ceres, as a boundary KMZ imported at Applicator View, which sends it to the drone. For those two, keep one field per file, with no holes in the boundary. Shapefile and KMZ files cover any other software. XAG and Hylio are added one brand at a time, each after its file loads on a real controller. We don't guarantee a file will load on every controller or app version.

DJI Agras doesn't import no-spray areas, so the Agras file carries the boundary, and the no-spray zones and notes stay on the map in SwathMap. Brief the pilot from the map.

An obstacle is something the drone has to fly around: a tree, a pole, a building. A no-spray zone is ground the drone can fly over with the nozzles off: a creek buffer, a well, a neighbor's sensitive crop. Controllers treat the two differently, so SwathMap keeps them apart.

For an edges-only map, yes: upload a KML, KMZ, shapefile or GeoJSON boundary and SwathMap maps along it. Importing a boundary file into the drawing tools isn't built yet.

You can split a field into 2 to 7 zones from a vegetation layer, set a rate for each zone, and export the zones as a shapefile or KMZ. A prescription file written for DJI Agras isn't ready yet.

Not yet. A view-only share link for growers is planned. Until then, export the map as a GeoTIFF or the boundary as a KMZ and send that.

Only how you pay. Twelve months is $1,200.00 up front, which works out to $100.00 a month and saves $1,188.00 against paying monthly. Monthly is $199.00 a month and you can cancel anytime. The plan, the lane, the storage and the tools are the same.

There's no free trial of processing. A free account opens a sample map, with its multispectral and vegetation layers, so you can try the drawing tools before you subscribe. Monthly billing is the low-commitment way to run your own flights through it.

Fees aren't refunded or prorated, including when you cancel partway through a term, except in a few cases, such as if we stop offering the plan you paid for. A map that fails or doesn't meet your expectations isn't refunded on its own; you can upload the flight again within your plan.

Your access runs to the end of the term you've paid for. After that, your maps stay downloadable for 30 days, then they're deleted.

Your kept maps, plus the photos from recent flights until they're deleted 72 hours after processing. A typical field map averages just under 2 GB, so 1 TB holds about 500 field maps. If you fill your storage, nothing is deleted: new uploads can't start until you delete maps or add a pack.

Add an extra processing lane for $99.99 a month. Each lane lets one more of your maps process at the same time, up to 4 extra lanes per account. Without one, your extra maps wait for your lane, or run sooner when there's spare capacity.

You do. Download every map and boundary free, any time, while your account is open.

We keep one copy of your maps. Download anything you can't afford to lose.

They're kept while your map processes and deleted 72 hours after it's finished; after that they can't be downloaded. The finished map is what you keep, so keep your own copy of the SD card if you need the raw photos.

Your maps stay downloadable for 30 days after your paid term ends, then they're deleted.