Starting from scratch, with the view of eventually flying multispec cameras over farms back home.

Posted by Dale Hutton on March 6, 2014 at 6:33pm

Hi all,

I have been silently watching this group for months now and reading as much as I can and I am finally at a point where I would like to ask for input.

I live in South Korea and at the moment UAVs are just a hobby, but like many of you I would like to be a part of this massive evolution in tech and its endless Agri applications. My dream would be to fly UAVs over farms in South Africa (my home) and collect crop/stock data confidently and possibly offer this skill set to the Environmental sector too, as this is where I have most of my training (EIA and ESIA studies)

I have just finished building a pretty solid flying wing and I have got the hang of flying it: 

My question is: What now?

Do I buy the APM autopilot system and learn how that works? Do I get setup for FPV? Cash in my life savings and buy a decent multispec cam? 

Any suggestions would be most welcome and additional tips and wisdom would be appreciated.

Thanks

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Tags: apm, environmental, fpv, uav, multispectral
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Replies

    • Dale Hutton > Keith Geary March 24, 2014 at 7:43pm

      Wow thanks for that feedback Keith I will definitely look into the Skywalker and your suggested camera setup. How did you get the Red channel on the canon camera and how did you go about the 720nm upgrade?

    • Keith Geary > Dale Hutton March 25, 2014 at 11:14am

      Hi Dale,

      Just a quick update, check out this forum topic NDVI filters on DIY Drones, it seems the Canon s100 is now the best pocket camera with its own GPS and well written CHDK script, you can get the NDVI filters from the link above and make life easy for yourself.

    • Dale Hutton > Keith Geary March 27, 2014 at 7:37pm

      Hi Keith quick question,

      Why do you suggest Pixhawk over ArduPilot?

    • hotelzululima > Dale Hutton March 27, 2014 at 10:15pm

      Ardupilot is AVR 8 bit processor completely maxed out..

      pixhawk is STM32 chip ie 32 bit processor.. where the future of APM development is..

        

                        HZL

    • Dale Hutton > hotelzululima March 27, 2014 at 11:09pm

      Ah I see. Thanks for the input!!!

    • Dale Hutton > Keith Geary March 26, 2014 at 3:55pm

      Wow thanks for all the info Keith! I will start putting together a list of all the things I need to start acquiring and will keep posting progress to the forum!

      You have been super helpful!

      Thanks.

    • Nik Izwan > Keith Geary March 26, 2014 at 1:47am

      Hi Keith

      Do you think the skywalker will perform better than the Maja?

      I'm looking to built one for mapping as well. now hunting for the best platform.

    • Keith Geary > Nik Izwan March 26, 2014 at 7:06am

      Hi Nik,

      I have yet to try the Skywalker 2013, but I believe the PixHawk is a great AP and Skywalker has been used by people I know for FPV and they love it. The Maja comes in several parts for you to build, so if you're short of time or the skills to build it, buy the ready to fly Skywalker 2013 with RC Tx from 3DR.

    • Keith Geary > Dale Hutton March 25, 2014 at 5:45am

      Hi Dale,

      I will let you into a trade secret; Advanced Camera Services from Cambridgshire in the UK, converted my s90 camera to 720nm for around £120 ($180) two years ago, ACS you can email them using; ACS_2005@BTconnect.com or you can do this yourself and there are many videos online, which show you how to do this, but for me the £100 was worth it, as you can damage the CCD or other parts and ACS cover that cost, if it happens? You can buy the cameras secondhand to save some money, search on eBay or a similar web site.

      Make sure the cameras you choose have RAW imagery as a selection, you need to shoot in RAW format, so the Red channel can be slected to obtain NDVI, etc. AgPixel and other programs should be able to do this automatically after you upload the RAW image data sets. The Canon s90's I had allowed me to shoot in RAW + Jpeg, so you have visibe images as posted above and RAW images for processing into NDVI, etc.

      One note of caution, you need failry big SD cards, as the RAW images are 10MB each and the Jpeg 3 / 4 MB each, making 14MB per shot! Also when using CHDK, make sure the SD cards have a fast write speed of "class 4" or higher "class 10" is the best, there was also a limit on the size of 4GB to run CHDK, so you might want to check this out before buying the SD cards, as I have not used CHDK for over one year now. I am now using an IR trigger and Sony NEX7 camera. If the limit is still 4GB, then you will need a few sets of cards to save time in the field, as I prefer to keep the data on the cards and wipe the cards back in the office, once the data is safe on a server or desk top PC.

    • T3
      Thorsten > Keith Geary March 25, 2014 at 2:06pm

      Hi Keith,

      why RAW format? Why should the red channel from a *.jpg image not be suited for calculating NDVI?

      Kind regards,

      Thorsten 

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