Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone tried using DigitalGlobe (the service that's used in the OP) for on-demand photography? Their landing page [1] provides several call-to-actions: download Silverlight to see an interactive demo, set up a live demo, or regular Contact Us form. They apparently have a partnership with CartoDB [2], which states that day-of photos can be requested (at $30/km2) and is integrated to their API -- but then states it's for Enterprise clients only (though later in the page, says "Anyone can access this data").

I guess there's probably not a service that just lets you fill out an online form and pay by credit card to get an image on demand, but would like something a little more frictionless than having to meet with a salesperson when I already know exactly what I want to try out.

[1] https://www.digitalglobe.com/products/spatial-on-demand#feat...

[2] https://cartodb.com/cartodb-for/satellite-aerial-image/

We looked into DigitalGlobe a while back. They are the best provider of satellite imagery we could find, but there are a lot of limitations. First, you really cannot get on demand imagery. If you wanted the same picture take every day for months or years. They couldn't do it. Second, the costs were too high. Even looking at their startup package it felt like we were a small town band talking to a major record label.

My expectation is that drones will be a much better technology. Unless what you are interested in is imagery of North Korea, Russia, or some remote area in Africa in which case pay up and these guys/gals can do it.

So, in the end how much does it really cost, and how hard is it to acquire the service?

One alternative, which I haven't tried either is Planet Labs [1]. They use dozens of tiny satellites instead of a few big ones, and their quality is not yet up to DigitalGlobe, but they are a startup and hopefully are much more open to different use cases.

[1] https://www.planet.com/

Thanks for the link, unfortunately all I see is a contact sales button.

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