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 > Michal Rus June 20, 2016 at 8:42pm

      Hi Michael, uSense is working hard on calibration since our experience is deep in spectroscopy.  The goal is to have a real calibrated NDVI value, to achieve that we have developed a calibration algorithm that it is in test stage. 

      I think Mapir did a really good job and it is a great product for that value. 

      Our goal for the near future is working in an open source version to keep spreading the use of multispectral imaging around the world.

    • Michal Rus > Jose Barreiros June 21, 2016 at 1:16am

      OK let's say that beyond crop health status with NDVI, I am interested in spectral bands and vegetation indexes that could show water and nitrogen content in the crops. Do you have any idea which bands and indexes could match ?

      For the nitrogen GDVI - Green Difference Vegetation Index could match where GDVI=NIR-GREEN.

      For water however I'm afraid you need higher spectral bands than NIR.

  • Luc Maximilien June 19, 2016 at 7:58pm

    During the last 7 years I had several customers that use drones for NDVI images .

    Their path is to learn to use the drone first, so they  mount a cheap modified camera , then,  when, and if,  they have success in this first part , they buy a high end multispectral camera .

    If the new Parrot Sequoia will maintain promises , that will be the reference product for NDVI images and of course 3000 USD, that seems a lot of money, but usually customers learn quite fast that also the time to get valuable results with NDVI images has a cost.

    Do you have a working prototype ?

    If not Kickstarter will not let you start a campaign .

    So why don't you show us some NDVI pictures of your prototype ?

    At a first glance your product appears to me a little bit tricky concerning cameras triggering and sync.

    • Jose Barreiros > Luc Maximilien June 19, 2016 at 8:56pm

      Hi Luc, 

      Glad to meet a colleague with that so much experience in industry.  If you're interested I would like to share some thoughts since my experience comes from research in plants spectroscopy and hardware design. 

      We already have a working prototype so in the next week I will post some images.  At the moment we're focus in getting the first reaction from the drone community. 

      If Kickstarter does not approve our campaign we will go through Indiegogo because we need pre-sales to start production.  

      Could you tell me, which features of Sequoia are the most important to you and your clients?.  

    • Luc Maximilien > Jose Barreiros June 20, 2016 at 1:53am

      Up to 1 FPS
      RGB Camera 16 Mpx
       IMU + Magnetometer
      Configuration over Wi-Fi
      100 grams

      Sunshine sensor

    • Jose Barreiros > Luc Maximilien June 20, 2016 at 9:12am

      thanks for the feedback. We will try to include that features in our camera.  I think 16MP will be included in uSense.  Is sunshine sensor used to auto calibrate white balance?.

    • Luc Maximilien > Jose Barreiros June 20, 2016 at 9:52am

      A fully-integrated sunshine sensor captures
      and logs the current lighting conditions and
      automatically calibrates outputs of the camera
      so measurements are absolute.

      I forgot to mention that the Sequoia has also a GPS built in the sunshine sensor.

    • Pravin Prajapati > Luc Maximilien June 20, 2016 at 11:09am

      Sequoia is probably the most ideal sensor that has been built just for the application. But definitely costs quite a lot. We just ordered few sequoia for an upcoming project. We would be interested if the cost with similar features could be reduced. 

      -Pravin

    • Jose Barreiros > Pravin Prajapati June 20, 2016 at 1:50pm

      Hi Pravin, we're working in some kind of automatic calibration with a light sensor for version 2.  Thanks for the feedback. 

  • Ralph Eichenberger June 19, 2016 at 5:02pm

    This seems to me very interesting, especially for countries in the Third World.
    but I think it is difficult to handle accommodate multiple cameras (4x55g) in a drone.

    Some data would be important to now:

    Reload Time of Camera. Focal length. FOV, Wavelength diagrams of the bands.

    It would be nice to integrate a RedEdge. What software is usable for post-processing?

    We are interested in the project and we would like tu help to move forward.

    We fly missions in Mexico in the field of environmental protection and agriculture, often under very difficult conditions (but also very real for southern countries).

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