XGRIDS Lixel L2 Pro Drone Mount Workflow

This article will walk through installing the XGRIDS Lixel L2 Drone Mount as well as the workflow for collecting and processing a point cloud from the L2 Pro used as a drone LiDAR payload. This drone mount kit is designed for the Matrice 300 and 350 RTK, this version will not work with a Matrice 400. 

Drone Mount Installation: In this article we will show you how to install the mount kit for using your XGRIDS Lixel L2 as a LiDAR payload for your drone. The drone mount consists of a skyport adapter for power and data transmission, a mount bracket that attaches to the drone, with a quick release mounting bracket that attaches to the L2, as well as the necessary screws, driver, and cables. Taking a quick look at our L2 Pro, we’re going to need to remove our RTK module attached by the four M2.5 X 5 screws, so that we have the proper clearance and can connect to and utilize our Matrice 350’s RTK. We’re also going to attach the L2 quick release mounting bracket using four M2.5 X 5 screws. Now let’s mount the bracket for the drone. First, I’ll remove the two aft screws from the gimbal and align the L2 mount on those holes with the arrow on the bracket pointing toward the gimbal. Using the provided M2.5 X 10 screws I will then screw the mount down to the body of the drone. When we’re ready to fly we will install the skyport adapter which will allow us to attach the USB-C cable for data transmission and the power adapter cable. We can also secure the USB cable on both ends using the provided M3 X 8 screws.  

Boot Up and Flight Prep: When we’re ready, we will power on our Matrice 350, after that we will power on the L2. Then we’ll open Lixel Go and configure the L2 as a drone payload. We will connect to it and go into the collection screen. Here we’ll change our Mount type to Drone and select DJI as our GNSS Mode. This will prompt a soft reboot of the L2 before we can apply the rest of the settings. Once the reboot finishes, we will confirm the Mount type and RTK type are set to Drone and select the appropriate ellipsoid before starting the scan initialization. Once initialization is complete, we can start our mapping mission. When the mapping mission is complete the simplest way to stop and save the LiDAR scan is to double tap the power button on the L2 and wait for the LED to go solid before we power everything off.  

Lixel Studio Processing: Now let’s process our scan through Lixel Studio. I’ll create my project folder like normal then select Project Processing. I’ll locate the project I downloaded from the L2, deselect GCP and check my RTK settings. Here we should see the flight trajectory, and we can confirm it will process the point cloud into our UTM zone. After that we will confirm that we are processing the point cloud in drone mode and we can start the processing. Once the scan is processed we can further clean it up in Lixel Studio until we’re satisfied. Then we can export our point cloud for further data extrapolation in Pix4Dsurvey, VirtualSurveyor, or whatever your preferred software may be.