Running the detector on your drone data

This walkthrough takes you from raw drone media to a find on a CalTopo map: run the detector, bookmark what it turns up, and export the bookmark in a format CalTopo can read.

📷 Screenshot neededrun-detector-demoSelecting a channel, running the detector, and the results appearing

1. Run the detector

Detection runs on the desktop app only (macOS, Windows, Linux) — it isn’t available in the browser. Import your media and select the channel you want to scan: an image set, a video, or a 360.

1. Press the Detect… button in the header.
2. Pick a Model. Mirada preselects a sensible default from the channel type — you can switch it:
   • V2.5.Photo.Fast — for image sets. Looks for colour anomalies.
   • V2.5.Video.Combined.Fast — for video. Looks for colour and motion.
3. Press Start.

The detector is anomaly-based: it flags spots that stand out — a patch whose colour is unusual against its surroundings, or (on video) something that moves between frames — rather than recognising named objects. A still photo has nothing to compare against for motion, so image sets use the colour-only model.

Running a 360 works the same way. Because the stitched sphere isn’t useful to scan directly, Mirada runs the detector on the 360’s source photos and projects the hits back onto the sphere for you — just select the 360 and press Start.

A run produces two things:

• Boxes drawn on the frames in the media viewer, one per detection.
• Patches — a cropped thumbnail of each detection — in the detection panel beside the viewer.

📷 Screenshot neededdetect-popoverThe Detect popover with the model selector and Start button

2. Bookmark a find

When a detection is worth keeping, save it as a bookmark. A bookmark records the frame, the box, and the location on the ground, with a name you give it.

The quickest way is straight from a detection: click the bookmark button on its patch in the detection panel. The bookmark box is pre-filled from the detection — just add a name and confirm.

To mark anything else:

1. Press B (or the bookmark button in the header) to enter bookmark mode.
2. Click the centre of what you want and drag outward to size the box.
3. Release, enter a name (required), and confirm.

Bookmarks show as markers in the viewer and on the map, so you can find them again.

📷 Screenshot neededbookmark-export-demoBookmarking a find, then exporting it for CalTopo

3. Export for CalTopo

Your bookmarks carry a GPS location, so you can hand them to CalTopo two ways.

Export a GPS-tagged image

Right-click a bookmark marker and choose Export Zoom Image (CalTopo / Email). This writes a single JPEG — a close-up, a mid-range, and the full frame with a header showing the location, bearing, and time — and embeds the GPS position in the image’s EXIF. Because the position is baked into the file, dropping that image onto a CalTopo map places it at the right spot automatically.

To hand off everything at once, use Export all bookmarks from the bookmark button’s dropdown. You get a ZIP of images, each with its GPS location in EXIF — no separate spreadsheet to reconcile.

Or push straight to a connected map

If you’re working a live search, you don’t need files at all: connect Mirada to a CalTopo map and your bookmarks appear there as markers automatically, for the whole team to see. See Connecting to CalTopo to set that up.