Live in production
Turn one drone flight into a site record you can inspect, measure, share, and keep.
Upload the photographs. Everything after that happens on our machines, and the files come back to you. Built and run by Eyona Software Development in Cape Town.
Above: a Gaussian splat Helios built from one real flight. It is the same town you follow through the pipeline further down this page.
The folder of overlapping photographs from one flight, dragged straight off the drone into your browser. JPEG or TIFF. Nothing to install, no GPU of your own, no desktop licence.
The site rebuilt as a 3D scene you open in a browser, plus the eight files behind it: point cloud, mesh, orthomosaic, surface model, camera poses, splat, run log and a report. They are yours to keep.
One flight becomes a dated record of the site. Take distances, areas and elevations off it, send a link to a client with no login, and fly it again next month to see what changed.
02 The transformation
You hand over a folder from one flight. Everything below happens on our machines. Scroll to watch one real site move through the steps.
Step 01
Hundreds of frames from one flight, each one overlapping the next. On their own they are just pictures of a place. These seven are real frames from a 100 photograph flight over a town, the same flight the next three steps were built from.
Step 02
The pipeline works out where every camera stood and where it was pointing, from the pictures alone, and places a thin layer of points wherever the views agree. On this flight all 100 photographs were solved.
Step 03
Matching the same detail across many frames turns into millions of 3D points. Look closely and the trees and roofs are still grains rather than surfaces. This is the first output in the run you can measure on.
Step 04
The points become a continuous surface with the photographs wrapped onto it. Roofs and walls read as solid surfaces instead of grains. This is what goes into CAD, a viewer or a game engine.
Steps 02 to 04 are real captures from the Helios viewer of that same flight, steps 03 and 04 from one fixed camera position so they line up. Nothing there is one picture with a filter over it. The Gaussian splat runs as its own lane on the same upload and lands in the same results, listed in the outputs below.
03 What comes out
One flight produces one job, and one job produces every file below. Work in the browser viewers and download nothing, or take the lot. They open in the tools you already run, and nothing is locked inside a viewer you pay for 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. | ✓ |
| Textured mesh | OBJ / GLB / PLY | A continuous surface with the photographs on it, for measurement, CAD and viewers. | ✓ |
| Orthomosaic | GeoTIFF | The whole site flattened into one straight down image, ready to drop into a GIS. | ✓ |
| Digital surface model | GeoTIFF | Height at every pixel. Contours, slopes, cut and fill. | ✓ |
| 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.
04 How it works
No desktop software, no queue you cannot see. Every screen below is the running product, captured from the live platform.
The dashboard is the whole organisation on one screen: what is running right now, how many results have been delivered, and the median turnaround measured across those runs rather than estimated. Every figure on it is read from our own flights.
Live status, measured numbersA site is a place you fly. Every inspection you run there stays filed against it, so a year of flights sits in one list with its state, its outputs and the day it last moved.
Sites, inspections, resultsDrag the folder straight off the drone into the browser. The server checks each file rather than guessing in the page, and DJI payload pairs, the _T and _W frames, are matched automatically. Nothing processes until you hand the upload off.
JPEG or TIFF, resumable
Photoreal or measurable. What you pick decides what the pipeline builds and what lands in your results. Nothing is queued until you decide.
Photoreal / MeasurableThe quote is fixed and it appears before a single photograph is processed. Accept it and the run starts. Ignore it and nothing happens, and nothing is charged.
Nothing processes until you acceptExample: 300 photographs, measurable
R350
Standard detail, 500 computeEvery stage reports live while the pipeline works, with its own timing and its own result. Median turnaround measured at about 2.6 hours across our runs. Bigger flights take longer, and they say so: the run below spent 252 minutes in photogrammetry alone, and the screen never leaves you guessing.
Live stage progress
The finished scene opens in the same browser, in the viewers below. The files are yours to download and keep, and a share link puts them in front of your client without an account.
See the viewers below05 In your browser
One 3D viewer for the mesh, the point cloud and the splat, and a map view for the orthomosaic and the surface model. Measurement lives inside the viewers.
Open an output, then take distances, areas and elevations on it and save them with the job. Every row on the right is the platform's own record of a file it produced and checked: the type, the size it measured, and a checksum it computed itself.
Results screen
The orthomosaic and the surface model sit at the site's own coordinates on a satellite basemap, so a person who was never on site can find the job before they open it.
Map view
A share link opens the outputs, the numbers and the accuracy statement in any browser. No login, no account to create, and you choose how long it lives.
Expires after 7, 30 or 90 days06 Measured, not promised
We have no logo wall to show you, so here is a measurement instead. Thirty two camera views were held out of training, the finished model was asked to render those exact viewpoints, and each render was compared to the photograph it had never seen.
From our own run of the town flight on this page, separately: 100 of 100 camera positions solved, 6,178,028 points in the dense cloud and 4,295,215 gaussians in the finished splat.
Scene: Truck, from the public Tanks and Temples benchmark, run through our production splat pipeline at 30,000 iterations. Reference: Kerbl et al. 2023, same scene.
What this number is notPSNR is image fidelity, how close a render sits to the photograph. It is not a survey accuracy, and nothing on a splat is measurable. Measurements are taken on the mesh or on the point cloud.
What the scene is notTruck is a ground level public benchmark scene, not one of our aerial jobs. It shows our pipeline is sound against a published reference on identical input. It does not predict what any one site will score.
07 A finished scene
The splat at the top of this page is a small town, built from one flight of 100 photographs. Below are three pictures Helios rendered from that same splat: the whole scene, then straight down, then in close on one roof. One flight, three camera positions.
You turn, zoom and pan this yourself in the browser, and a share link puts the same scene in front of a client with no login. A splat is a picture of the site, so nothing on it is measurable: distances, areas and volumes come off the mesh or the point cloud from the same job.
08 What it costs
R140 a run plus 70c a photo (200 compute plus 1 a photo). 300 photos is R350.
That buys the measurable 3D model, the map and the measurements: point cloud, textured mesh, orthomosaic and surface model, online to view, share and download. You pay only when the files are delivered. A failed run is free.
Plus a free 3D fly-through on smaller flights, up to about 650 MB of photos, roughly 100 from a 20 megapixel drone.
| Photos in the flight | Price |
|---|---|
| 20 | R154220 compute |
| 100 | R210300 compute |
| 300 | R350500 compute |
| 1,000 | R8401,200 compute |
| 3,000 | R2,2403,200 compute |
| More than 3,000 | We quote it |
The app counts credit in compute: 1 compute = R0.70, so 300 photos is 500 compute.
Every flight gets the same measurable model, map and measurements. Above 3,000 photos we price the job by hand before anything runs.
Type the number of photos in your flight.
Detailed is 2 and Full size 3 compute a photo (R1.40 and R2.10), on the same 200 compute a run. Your quote in the app uses the same prices.
Field is R1,500 a month for R1,800 of credit (2,571 compute), about 5 runs of 300 photos. Pro is R4,500 a month for R7,000 of credit (10,000 compute), about 20 runs of 300 photos. More runs for the money. Optional, and nothing renews by itself.
On smaller flights, yes: up to about 650 MB of photos, roughly 100 from a 20 megapixel drone, the Gaussian splat comes free with the run. Bigger flights get the full measurable set without it for now.
Yes. Rush adds 50 percent for a dedicated processing lane and the fastest turnaround. It is optional and shown on the quote before you accept.
Yes, from R149 on the same smaller flights. It is a picture of the site with no measurements, so nothing on it can be measured.
Each run includes its first month online. After that every account keeps 10 GB free (Field 100 GB, Pro 500 GB), and more space comes in packs from R149 a month for 50 GB up to R1,699 for 1 TB.
Viewing through share links and downloads are included within fair use. If your files outgrow your space nothing is deleted; new uploads wait until you pick a bigger pack or delete files.
Yes. You top up credit by card through PayFast, which charges in rand, and your bank converts it.
Create an account and price your own flight. The quote is on screen before anything runs, and nothing is charged until the files are delivered.
09 Who it is for
Stockpile volumes and month on month change, taken from a flight instead of a walk over the pile. Stockpile volume measurement.
Progress records, as built geometry and handover evidence, dated and kept. Construction progress monitoring.
A condition record of a roof or a facade without sending anyone up there. Roof inspection.
Point cloud, digital surface model and orthomosaic, handed straight off into CAD. Drone site survey and photogrammetry services.
Panel level inspection across a plant, from the same flight.
Coming later, not shipped yet10 The honest part
If a job needs proven accuracy, say so before you fly. We will tell you what that takes, or we will tell you we are not the right fit for it.
11 Questions
Helios is a drone photogrammetry service by Eyona Software Development (Pty) Ltd of Cape Town, South Africa. You fly your own site with your own drone, upload the overlapping photographs in a web browser, and Helios rebuilds the site in 3D on our machines and returns the files: a dense point cloud, a textured mesh, an orthomosaic, a digital surface model and more, in standard formats that are yours to keep.
The dense point cloud, the textured mesh, the orthomosaic, the digital surface model, the camera poses, the run log and a PDF report, plus the Gaussian splat on smaller flights. They are yours to download and keep.
Median turnaround measured at about 2.6 hours across our runs, and you watch every stage report live while it works. A large flight can run considerably longer, and the progress screen names the stage it is on and how long that stage has taken.
A measurable run is R140 plus 70c a photograph at Standard detail (200 compute plus 1 a photograph), so 300 photographs cost R350 (500 compute) and 1,000 cost R840 (1,200 compute). Detailed and Full size cost more per photograph and rush adds 50 percent, all shown on the quote. The quote is fixed before anything runs, you are charged on delivery only and a failed run costs nothing. Above 3,000 photographs we prepare a custom quote.
Only if you keep more online than your account includes. Every delivered run is a live site you can view, share and download, and its first month online is included in the run price. After that, every account includes 10 GB (Field 100 GB, Pro 500 GB), and more space comes in storage packs from R149 a month for 50 GB up to R1,699 for 1 TB. Field at R1,500 a month and Pro at R4,500 a month are optional plans that give you more credit than you pay for. Nothing renews by itself.
Create an account, which is free and needs no card, then top up credit in the app by card through PayFast. All prices are in South African rand, and cards from outside South Africa pay in rand too.
Yes, inside the viewers: distance, area and elevation on the orthomosaic and the surface model, point to point on the mesh, and measurements can be saved with the job. Never on the splat, which is a picture and not a surface.
No. A share link opens the outputs, the numbers and the accuracy statement in any browser, with no login. You choose whether the link lives for 7, 30 or 90 days.
JPEG or TIFF from a single flight, uploaded in the browser and resumable if the connection drops. DJI payload pairs, the _T and _W frames, are matched automatically. The app prices flights of up to 3,000 photographs on screen and we quote bigger ones by hand; the free fly-through fits up to about 650 MB of photos.
No. There is no AI enhancement anywhere in the pipeline. Every pixel in every output is reconstructed from the photographs you uploaded, and nothing is imagined by a model.
12 Next
Create an account, upload the photographs and the fixed quote is on screen before anything runs. An account is free and needs no card.
Helios is live in production and running real flights today, at portal.helios3d.co.za. The pipeline, the viewers, the map and the billing run are all in service.
Solar panel inspection is a later module and has not shipped yet. Flights above 3,000 photographs are quoted by us before anything runs.
Helios runs at portal.helios3d.co.za