Meet uSense, an affordable multispectral camera for drones

Posted by Jose Barreiros on June 19, 2016 at 10:08am

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As you, we are passionate about drones and agricultural applications. At the moment, we have developed a low-cost camera that would let you know about health of plants and crops through NDVI multispectral analysis.  The good news is that we will launch it by a crowdfunding project in Kickstarter. Here there are the main features of uSense camera.

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To drive our product to the right market we would like to know your comments and thoughts regarding the next questions:

 

 1. Type of uses that you will do it with a camera like that.

 2. What are the features that you will love add it?

 3. How much you will be willing to pay?

 

Thank you for your comments, we appreciate the time and any link that you think could help us as well.

 

If you want to know more, don't hesitate to contact us!

 

Cheers,

 

USense Team

usense@southmade.org

 

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Replies

    • Jose Barreiros > Ralph Eichenberger June 19, 2016 at 5:42pm

      I forget about the specs:

      Reload time of camera: <2s.

      Lens: f/2.8 Aperture, 82° HFOV, 23mm, Non-fish eye for low distortion.

      We are also testing other lens configuration, what do you think about this lens set?

      PD. I will post the spectral response asap.

    • Jose Barreiros > Ralph Eichenberger June 19, 2016 at 5:36pm

      Hi Ralph, 

      Actually, the first purpose of our project is to serve emerging economies and enthusiast worldwide that could not afford a expensive multispectral camera. It will allow the use and application of precision farming and citizen science. 

      Regarding the camera array, we have accommodated 4 camera in a 3DR X8+, total weigh is around 235g that easily could be handed by that drone.   

      Currently we are using Pix4D to post-processing but also we're exploring more options. 

      Finally, I want to say thanks for your interest and hopefully we can work together in camera testing. 

  • ActionDrone June 19, 2016 at 1:34pm

    Hi,

    If you need some collaboration Please let me know. Our terrain in Italy has many differences within the same areas and multispectral cameras could be a great help. We are going to focus on PF, so just send a message if you are open to collaborations.

    The market here is huge.

    • Jose Barreiros > ActionDrone June 19, 2016 at 5:24pm

      Hello,

      Thanks for your offering. I will definitely contact you. 

  • Juan Perez June 19, 2016 at 10:47am

    It is somewhat complicated to have to sync 4 cameras and then postprocess to get a single image. It seems that there is not one camera with NIR+green+blue or NIR+green+red which is what you get with modified consumer cameras and is generally very usefull.  It does not specify what exactly is meant by NIR. It would be important to know how curved the lens is, what distortions there are at the edges and how much of each picture is really useable.

    good luck

    • Jose Barreiros > Juan Perez June 19, 2016 at 5:22pm

      Hi Juan, 

      Thanks for the feedback.  Indeed, it is complicated to sync 4 cameras but it's possible with external trigger.  Pictures from the cameras could have a small delay (10-50ms) between them but It stills generate a good enough photos for post processing.

      At the moment we don't have a NIR+Green+Red single camera but we can make one. Could you let me known which applications need NIR+G+R bands?. 

      In the next post I will upload the spectral curve.   

      Thanks again.

    • George Osawaye > Jose Barreiros December 23, 2020 at 1:41pm

      Hello Jose, I just joined the DIYDrones forum - did you ever complete this NDVI camera project?

This reply was deleted.