Roof inspection without the ladder.
Fly the roof, hand over the photographs, and get the whole surface back as something you can zoom into, measure across and send to the owner. Nobody works at height for the survey, and the result is a dated record rather than a folder of phone pictures.
A condition record, not a photo dump.
The whole roof at once
A straight-down orthomosaic of the entire surface in one image, plus the textured mesh, so you inspect the roof as a whole instead of stitching an impression together from separate photographs.
Areas you can quote from
Distance, area and elevation come off the orthomosaic and the surface model, and point-to-point off the mesh. Area is the one most people want, for scoping a re-cover.
Something the owner will look at
The photoreal fly-through scene opens in any browser from a share link with no login. It is the output a non-technical owner or insurer actually engages with, and the measurements sit beside it.
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.
Fly the roof from more than one angle rather than straight down only. Vertical faces, parapets and the sides of plant housings need oblique frames to reconstruct, and a single nadir pass leaves them thin.
Eight files, in standard formats.
The same full set every Helios job produces. For a roof the orthomosaic and the mesh do most of the work, and the fly-through scene is what gets sent to the client.
| 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. | – |
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 find the defects for you. It rebuilds the roof as measurable geometry and imagery. It does not classify damage, flag cracked tiles or lifted sheets, or produce a defect list. A person still does the assessment, at a desk, on the whole roof at once. If you need automated defect detection, we do not have it and will say so.
- Thermal frames are carried, not interpreted. DJI payload pairs, the _T and _W frames, are matched automatically on upload. There is no thermal anomaly detection and no moisture-ingress classification anywhere in the pipeline.
- Panel-level solar inspection has not shipped. It is a later module. Any older description of Helios as a solar PV inspection product is out of date. What runs today is the reconstruction pipeline on this page.
Asked before you ask.
Why inspect a roof with a drone?
Because the alternative is a person on a roof. A flight photographs the whole surface from above and at angles, and the reconstruction lets you zoom into any part of it afterwards, measure across it, and keep the result. Nobody works at height for the survey itself, and you end up with a dated record rather than a handful of phone photographs and someone's recollection.
Does Helios automatically find the defects?
No, and this is the important one. Helios rebuilds the roof as geometry and imagery you can inspect, measure and share. It does not classify damage, does not flag cracked tiles or lifted sheets, and does not produce a defect list on its own. A person still does the assessment. What changes is that they do it at a desk, on the whole roof at once, on a record that keeps.
Can I measure on it?
Yes, on the outputs with geometry behind them: point-to-point on the mesh and the point cloud, and distance, area and elevation on the orthomosaic and the digital surface model. Area off the orthomosaic is the usual one, for quoting a re-cover. Scale is relative unless ground control is used, so treat unproven sizes as indicative rather than as a bill of quantities.
What about thermal imagery?
If your drone carries a thermal payload, DJI payload pairs are handled: the _T and _W frames are matched automatically on upload. What we do not do is interpret them. There is no thermal anomaly detection and no moisture-ingress classification in the pipeline, and we will not imply otherwise.
Can I show the result to the building owner or the insurer?
Yes. A share link opens the outputs, the numbers and the accuracy statement in any browser with no login and no account to create, and you choose whether it lives for 7, 30 or 90 days. The photoreal fly-through scene is usually the thing a non-technical owner actually looks at, and the measurements come off the mesh alongside it.
How long does it take?
Median turnaround measured at about 2.6 hours across our runs, with every stage reporting live. A single roof is a small job by the pipeline's standards. Capacity is about 1,200 photographs for the geometry lane and about 300 per fly-through scene, which is far more than one roof needs.
Does the solar module inspect panels on the roof?
Not yet. Panel-level solar inspection is a later module and has not shipped. If a page or an older description tells you Helios does solar PV fault detection today, that is out of date. What runs today is the reconstruction pipeline described on this page.
The same flight, other jobs.
The whole site rather than one building, from the same kind of flight.
ClusterPhotogrammetry servicesHow the photographs become geometry, and where that geometry stops.
ClusterConstruction progress monitoringHandover and envelope evidence across a whole build, month by month.
Send us a roof and we will send back a quote.
Tell us the building, 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