The SIFT patent has almost expired

April 4th, 2019

Correction from 10/9/2019: I thought the patent had expired this year, due to the confusion on the Priority Date vs. Filing Date. The patent is still in effect, and is set to expire March of 2020. As of March 7th of next year, the SIFT patent will expire in the U.S. U.S. patents are valid for 20 years from the earliest filing date, but can be extended to 21 years if a Priority Date is used, and SIFT (US6711293B1) was […]

What’s new in WebODM 0.8.2

March 20th, 2019

Today I merged WebODM version 0.8.2 into master. It includes a long needed feature to make plugin management easier. No more command line, no restart needed. Simply log-in into the Administration panel and toggle the plugins you need. It also features some bug fixes and minor improvements. Guess what we are going to do next.

OpenDroneMap Article in Italian

March 2nd, 2019

Great article about ODM. We REALLY need to start translating / localizing the software in other languages.

Got it! New domain piero.dev.

March 1st, 2019

When I first started this blog I wanted to name it piero.com, but that of course was already taken. I didn’t like other TLDs. I like .dev and today Google announced the availability of these domains to the general public, so I snatched it.

OpenDroneMap Book Announced

February 28th, 2019

OpenDroneMap’s documentation is a bit… missing. Not because the information is not available. Between the various documentation pages, the community forum and the source code (yes that’s a form of documentation) it’s quite possible to learn the ins and outs of the project. But nobody has had the time or willingness to write a more cohesive and central source of information. I have no hope that some contributor will come along anytime soon to fill this need. So today I’m […]

WebODM 0.8.1 is out! Improvements and Task Imports.

February 21st, 2019

Today we’ve released version 0.8.1 of WebODM. It features several improvements including: Ability to import tasks that have been processed on another WebODM instance (or via webodm.net or NodeODM). Custom TMS/XYZ basemaps and no basemap toggle. Review step prior to processing a dataset, which should reduce mistakes when creating a new task and selecting the wrong node or options. New UI colors. Simplified process for starting a development environment (deprecated the devenv.sh script in favor of a –dev flag to […]

On Running OpenDroneMap Natively on Windows

February 12th, 2019

OpenDroneMap has been quickly gaining a lot of interest. Since we’ve managed to put a UI (WebODM) and ported it (via docker) on all major platforms, it’s usage has increased hundred folds. The problem still remains that even with installers that help “hide” the complexities of docker, Windows setups in particular tend to be sub-optimal due to the VM overhead of MobyLinux and the various, frequent hiccups that docker has on Windows (including totally losing a container’s network for just […]

Quitting Social Media

February 11th, 2019

As of today, I’m joining the crowd of people quitting social media. I joined Facebook in 2007 and haven’t used it much for the past 3 years. I used to like its ability to keep me in touch with friends from oversea, but for a while the platform has just become a brain-dead tool for stealing people’s time via gambling tactics and mind exploitation. None of the people I care about show up in my feeds, and it doesn’t matter […]

The Free Rider Problem

November 30th, 2018

The Free Rider Problem applies to free and open source software really well. If you’re a maintainer, read it up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-rider_problem

Move Docker To Another Location on Linux

October 17th, 2018

Docker can take a toll on your disk space. Fortunately you don’t have to keep the files in /var/lib/docker and on certain cloud providers like Digital Ocean it’s cheaper to attach a new block volume than to upgrade a droplet to get more disk space. After you’ve decided on a location, simply do: ChangeĀ /lib/systemd/system/docker.service: Then: When you’ve verified things are working, remove the old docker directory.