Drone site survey, without the desktop software.
Fly the site once. Hand over the folder of photographs. What comes back is the site rebuilt in three dimensions: a point cloud and a mesh you can measure on, a straight-down orthomosaic, a surface model, and a scene you can fly through in a browser. No photogrammetry licence, no GPU of your own, no workstation tied up for a day.
A dated record of the site, not a folder of pictures.
You can measure it
Distances, areas, elevations and volumes come off the point cloud, the mesh and the surface model, in our viewers or in your own software. A photograph cannot answer how far, how big or how much. A reconstruction can.
You can send it
A share link opens the outputs, the numbers and the accuracy statement in any browser with no login and no account to create. You choose whether it lives for 7, 30 or 90 days.
You can repeat it
Fly the same site next month and you have two dated records of the same place. Change between them is the whole reason most sites get surveyed twice.
Five steps, and you only do the first two.
Fly the site and keep the overlap
You fly it, or your pilot does. The pipeline needs overlapping frames: each photograph has to share most of its view with the next one. JPEG or TIFF straight off the drone. DJI payload pairs, the _T and _W frames, are matched automatically.
Drag the folder into a browser
Nothing to install, no GPU of your own, no desktop licence. The upload is resumable, so a dropped connection does not cost you the flight. The server checks each file rather than guessing in the page.
Accept the fixed quote
The price appears before a single photograph is processed. Ignore it and nothing happens and nothing is charged.
The pipeline solves the cameras, then the geometry
It works out where every camera stood and where it was pointing, from the pictures alone, then matches detail across frames into millions of 3D points and finally a continuous textured surface. Every stage reports live with its own timing.
Open the results and take the files
The scene opens in the same browser. Measure in the viewer, or download all eight outputs and work in the tools you already run. A share link puts the job in front of a client with no login, for 7, 30 or 90 days.
Eight files, in standard formats.
One flight produces one job, and one job produces every file below. They open in the tools you already run, and nothing is locked inside a viewer you pay for again next year.
| Output | Format | What it is for | Measurable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dense point cloud | PLY / LAZ | Millions of 3D points. Distances, areas and volumes are taken on this. | yes |
| Textured mesh | OBJ / GLB / PLY | A continuous surface with the photographs on it, for measurement, CAD and viewers. | yes |
| Orthomosaic | GeoTIFF | The whole site flattened into one straight-down image, ready to drop into a GIS. | yes |
| Digital surface model | GeoTIFF | Height at every pixel. Contours, slopes, cut and fill. | yes |
| Gaussian splat | PLY / KSPLAT | The scene you fly through in a browser. Photoreal, and never measurable. | no |
| Camera poses | COLMAP | Where every photograph was taken from. Reprocess in your own tools whenever you want. | – |
| Run log | JSON | Every stage the pipeline ran, its timing and its settings. | – |
| Report | The run, the numbers and the accuracy statement in one document you can hand over. | – |
Measurable means you can take readings on that output, in our viewers or in your own software. Scale is relative unless ground control is used. Georeferenced outputs carry a real coordinate system, taken from the flight's own coordinates and written into the file.
One real flight, and what came out of it.
These are readings from a single flight run through the production pipeline, not a brochure illustration. The reconstruction imagery on the Helios home page is rendered from this same run.
On a separate aerial run the pipeline solved 1,657 of 1,657 camera positions. Scene imagery on this site is rendered from the “Wustrow bunker” UAV dataset by Schüßler et al. and from the Mill 19 “Rubble” photographs published by the Mega-NeRF project. The photographs are theirs, the reconstructions are ours.
You see the price before anything runs.
Four mechanics, and they do not change from job to job.
A fixed quote first
The quote appears before a single photograph is processed. You accept it or you do not. Nothing starts on its own.
Charged on delivery
The job is billed when the files are delivered and verified. Not on upload, not on start, not on the attempt.
A failed run costs nothing
If the pipeline does not deliver, there is nothing to pay. The risk of a bad run sits with us.
No subscription
No monthly plan, no seat licence, no lock-in. You pay per job, and only for jobs that deliver.
The public price list is still being finalised, so per-job pricing is quoted by email in the meantime. Tell us the site, the drone and roughly how many photographs, and a fixed quote comes back. We would rather say that plainly than publish a number we intend to change.
What this does not claim.
- Scale is relative unless ground control is used. Without control points on the ground the reconstruction is proportionally correct, but it is not tied to real-world units and the sizes are unproven. If you need a number you can defend to a third party, tell us before you fly and we will tell you what that takes.
- A Gaussian splat is a picture, not a surface. Nothing on a splat is measurable. It is there to fly through and to show people. Every measurement comes off the mesh, the point cloud or the surface model, the outputs with real geometry behind them.
- There is no AI enhancement anywhere in the pipeline. Ask which pixels the camera saw and which a model imagined, and the answer is none of them. Every output is reconstructed from your photographs and nothing else. Where there were no photographs, the reconstruction shows nothing rather than inventing something.
- Helios does not fly your site. We are the reconstruction and delivery half. You supply the flight from your own drone or your own contractor. If you need someone to fly it, we are not that supplier and will say so rather than take the job.
Asked before you ask.
What is a drone site survey?
A drone site survey is a flight that photographs a site with heavy overlap between frames, so the photographs can be rebuilt into three-dimensional geometry. The output is not a set of aerial pictures. It is a point cloud, a textured mesh, a straight-down orthomosaic and a digital surface model, on which you can take distances, areas, elevations and volumes. Helios does the reconstruction: you supply the flight, we return the files.
Do I need my own drone and pilot?
Yes. Helios is the processing and delivery half of the job, not a flight operator. You fly the site with your own drone and your own pilot, or with a contractor you already use, and hand us the folder of photographs. That is deliberate. It keeps you in control of airspace approvals and scheduling, and it means the reconstruction is not tied to one operator's calendar.
Do I need to install anything?
No. The photographs are dragged straight off the drone into a browser and everything after that happens on our machines. There is no desktop photogrammetry licence to buy, no GPU to own and no workstation to keep busy for a day. The results open in the same browser.
How long does a site survey take to process?
Median turnaround measured at about 2.6 hours across our runs, and every stage reports live while it works. Large flights take considerably longer and say so: one large run spent 252 minutes in the photogrammetry stage alone, and the progress screen names the stage it is on and how long that stage has taken rather than showing a spinner.
How many photographs can one survey have?
Current capacity is about 1,200 photographs for the camera-pose and geometry lane, and about 300 photographs per Gaussian splat. A flight larger than that is better split into more than one job. Tell us the frame count before you fly and we will say which way to split it.
Is the survey accurate enough to hand to a client?
That depends on ground control. Without control points the reconstruction is proportionally correct but not tied to real-world units, so the sizes are unproven and we will not present them as survey grade. With ground control the outputs carry a real coordinate system. If a job needs proven accuracy, say so before you fly and we will tell you what that takes, or tell you we are not the right fit.
What does a drone site survey cost in South Africa?
Helios issues a fixed quote before any processing starts, bills only on delivery of verified outputs, charges nothing for a failed run and has no subscription. The public price list is still being finalised, so per-job pricing is quoted by email: send the site, the drone and roughly how many photographs and a fixed quote comes back.
The same flight, other jobs.
The same flight, turned into cubic metres of material on the pile.
ClusterConstruction progress monitoringFly the same site each month and compare dated records of what actually got built.
ClusterPhotogrammetry servicesThe technique underneath all of it, and what it can and cannot produce.
Send us a flight and we will send back a quote.
Tell us the site, the drone and roughly how many photographs. A fixed quote comes back before anything runs.
Email usinfo@eyonasoftware.co.za · Eyona Software Development (Pty) Ltd, Cape Town · Helios runs at helios.eyonasoftware.co.za