Our story begins at DroneDeploy headquarters — another rad technology company in San Francisco.

By some random and wonderful luck (a recurring theme in my life that I’ve had to remind myself not to rely on), I recently was introduced to the team of drone cloud control masterminds at DroneDeploy. The technology this team has been cooking up is nothing short of jaw-dropping in both its present capabilities and its future potential.

In short, they have removed many of the barriers to entry for not only being able to competently pilot a drone, but to make use of it for data collection in real-time.

Today, this means commercial farmers can meticulously monitor crop health, mining companies can conduct high accuracy volumetric analysis, and commercial real estate development firms can almost instantly render 3d models and maps of build sites, just as easily as they can post a picture to Facebook and at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods. Tomorrow, what else?

For me, the interest is all about taking flight and getting a whole new perspective on the world around us.

After taking a tour of their SF office in SoMa, Mike Winn (CEO and Co-Founder at DroneDeploy) ended the tour by walking me through how a drone noob like myself could easily take a consumer grade drone to the skies and generate incredible data in a matter of minutes.

It all starts with an app.

We launched a Phantom 2 Vision+ from the roof, and I watched as it gracefully motored its way on a path that was automatically created on the DroneDeploy mobile app (the conduit which makes all of this possible).

In four minutes time, the Phantom had worked its way over an area several acres in size and had returned to base, all at the push of a single button. What’s more, it had mapped the whole area in stunning accuracy and detail in real-time.

I’ve been fooled before, and so I knew that somehow, under the hood, Mike had applied some additional sleight of hand with his vast drone expertise that made the whole thing come off so seamlessly.

After pressing him on the matter, he suggested I take a Phantom 2 Vision+ with me and set me loose to discover my first solo mission.

Choosing my drone adventure

Even just the presence of the quadcopter in the backseat of my car as I left the office made my heart race a bit and my mind began to wander as I considered where I would set out to go solo for the first time.

A quick aside of some relevant personal notes:

1) I am an avid hobbyist golfer — not good by any means, but I do try to play as much as possible.

2) I watch lots of golf on television.

3) I have a wonderfully patient wife who puts up with both 1 and 2.

I had been watching the recent coverage of the 2015 U.S. Open, which was hosted in Washington State at a beautiful course called Chambers Bay. During the coverage I realized that at multiple points they were using drones to capture beautiful sweeping video shots of the action and the course itself.

In a rare moment of cerebral clarity, it occurred to me that I had a drone in my possession and an incredible golf course just a 10 minute drive from my house.

Having also been made aware of the capabilities of the DroneDeploy platform’s arsenal of mapping outputs (orthomosaic, topographical, 3d rendering) I realized that while getting some awesome drone video footage would be very cool, that it might even be more fun to try to map a hole for my first solo flight.

I headed to the TPC Harding Park Golf Course, located just off the shores of Lake Merced.

Flight Time

Having done a small amount of due diligence on where I could fly, and making certain to have completed my short pre-flight checklist of making sure the Phantom 2, controller, mobile device with cellular service, and wi-fi range extender were all fully charged and prepped, I took to the empty lot from which I planned to launch.

I turned on the controller, range extender, and drone and started up the DroneDeploy app on the mobile device I had mounted to the controller.

At this point my palms started to sweat

I was getting a bit nervous — hard to pinpoint exactly why, but the whole adventure was becoming very exhilarating the closer I got to “go time.”

The DroneDeploy app quickly connected to the Phantom after I logged in, and pulled up a satellite image of my location — just off from my target flight area, the beautiful Par 3, 17th hole at Harding Park.

I used my fingers to drag the points of flight for the drone until I had a perimeter around the entirety of the hole, from tee to green.

It was finally time.

Having everything ready to go, I pressed the green launch button on the app and watched the screen as it immediately ran a series of checks (just as I had witnessed back at the office with Mike).

Confirming battery, GPS, and an array of other items, the app rattled off on a list of green check marks until the last one came up with a red “X.”

My heart sunk.

At this point, I realized my error — I missed making sure that the Phantom’s camera had a memory card in it.

The bad news, I had to postpone briefly while I ran to Radio Shack. The good news, the app caught it before I wasted battery on a fruitless flight. One micro sd card purchase later and I was right back in business, queued up to fly again.

On the second pass, I watched as this time all items on the checklist came up green, and the drone’s props began whirring.

Over the next 3 minutes I watched as the Phantom soared up into the sky and began to fly the pattern I had laid out on the mobile device.

I was waiting for something bad to happen and for the drone to fall from the sky, and was already imagining how I was going to explain to Mike and the team how I had killed their drone. It never happened — the flight executed just as I had mapped it out and the drone returned to the exact takeoff spot, landing effortlessly from where it had launched just a few minutes prior. I waited for another minute as the images captured by the drone were being passed to the phone and then in turn to the DroneDeploy cloud for processing.

Just minutes after that, I received an email confirming my completed mission which linked to my completed selection of map types of the 17th hole.

Take a look at a few map types automatically generated by DroneDeploy.

Orthomosaic Map:

Digital Surface Model:

And the real kicker, the interactive 3D Model — click around below to change the view (with a bit more preparation on my part, this could have been even cooler):

Overall, I was blown away.

Very proud of myself indeed, but also keenly aware that all I did was push a few buttons while some magical software and awesome hardware did the rest.

The output of my short flight, however launched some immediate other thoughts.

The Future With Drones (for good)

Most golf course websites have pretty shabby course maps and I realized that this could easily be a cost effective replacement that delivers superior content.

Secondly, (and probably more importantly) with the massive California droughts, the need for water use reduction is more imperative than ever. It occurred to me that in much the same way as the commercial farm industry is able to take advantage of drone technologies, so too could it be possible for the vast world of golf course maintenance.

Faced with the challenge to reduce water usage while maintaining great playability requires knowing where to use water and when. Perhaps drones can play a huge assist in this aim — or perhaps not, but I suppose time will tell. From my vantage point, it was enough to make me realize that we are just barely scratching the surface of the potential ways we can leverage this emerging technology to some really amazing ends.

In my case, as a first-time amateur pilot, I realized that you don’t need to be an expert to do it.