DroneYard - OpenDroneMap Serverless Automation

DroneYard makes running OpenDroneMap automatically as simple as uploading your images and downloading the results. DroneYard is a set of automated tooling built on top of AWS Batch that monitors an S3 bucket for changes, and when it detects the presence of a trigger file, it will launch a batch job to process your images.

It is borrows inspiration and some code from https://github.com/hobuinc/codm, but makes different choices about dependencies. In particular, everything is handled by the CDK so it can be built and deployed with one single command.

The goal is to make setup and deployment as simple as possible, and rely only on AWS, Docker, and NPM.

Usage

Prerequisites

DroneYard depends on AWS, NPM, and Docker.

Configuration

Set your region in sst.json the default is us-west-2.

The stack can be configured in awsconfig.json, which is where you'll set instance types, whether to use a GPU, and the target memory/CPU requirements.

Deployment

npm install
npm run deploy -- --stage Prod

Everything is handled by the CDK. It will deploy an S3 bucket, a Lambda function, and an AWS Batch environment (using the default VPC.) SST/CDK will handle the entire deployment including building the docker container, uploading it to ECR, setting up all the permissions, and preparing all the services.

You can use any stage name (Prod is used by convention, but any is fine.)

Usage

After deploying, it will output a bucket name to the console, eg:

BucketName: dev-drone-yard-droneyard-dronephotosbucket1234567-1234567890

Create a folder in that bucket and upload all your photos into the bucket. s3 sync is useful for this, but any client will work.

Once all your images are uploaded, upload an empty file named dispatch to the folder.

This will start the workflow. When the image processing is complete, a folder called output will be alongside your photos.

Removal

npm run remove -- --stage Prod

Note, I don't believe this will remove your S3 bucket if you have uploaded files to it! To avoid charges for S3 you'll want to manually remove anything you uploaded.

Dev (Local Development)

Because DroneYard is built on SST, you can start a local development server using:

npm run start

This will deploy two stacks -- one stack to manage forwarding Lambda function invocations to your local workstation and one copy of the DroneYard stack. It will also launch a localhost URL that provides a simplified UI for S3, Lambda, etc.

Current Status

In active use to develop maps of forested land.

Coming Soon

DroneYard supports uploading a settings.yml file into your S3 bucket, but doesn't provide a default one, and doesn't provide any tools to manage it.

Adding support for notifications and canceling jobs is also an opportunity for future development.