Gender
Male
About
Location
Boulder, CO
About Me:
Founder, Agribotix LLC
Please tell us a bit about your UAV interest
Agriculture, Wildlife conservation.
Hometown:
Boulder
Activity Feed
"I've travelled to Mongolia, New Zealand, and Panama with various drones and never had a problem. The biggest concern is the LiPo batteries -- make sure you follow all the rules there (carry on/ don't check, smaller than 100 W-hr per battery). It's…"
"UAVs already have all the information required by ADS-B at the ground control station. So there is absolutely no need for an expensive and heavy bit of electronics to be added to the aircraft. A simple, low-cost cellular data modem could send the…"
"@Jonathan. Can you recommend your favorite 915MHz antennas?"
"@mP1. Yes, it is a bit jingoistic the name us yanks gave to the radio network. But just to make it up to you, we did appear on ABC Radio Australia yesterday. Here's a link to the story."
Luke Runyon of Harvest Public Media came to Agribotix last week to do a story on the use of drones in agriculture and the FAA issues involved. We took him out to our favorite local farm and had a grand time flying quads. Fortunately the story was…
"@Neal. Thanks for your insights on thermal imaging. It's something we've been testing out on a low level using the cheap FLIR Lepton but maybe we should move that project to the sideline. Most of what we know about thermal imaging comes from…"
"Gerald, We haven't processed imagery from very much sugar cane so we'd be very interested in helping you out with your project.
Best,
Tom McKinnon"
Best,
Tom McKinnon"
"@Dan. Thanks for the kind words and best wishes with your (ad)venture. Yes, we should explore collaborations and compare notes on our FLIR experiences. Reach me at tom (at) agribotix.com."
"@James. You hit the nail on the head. We use Agisoft Photoscan Pro and QGIS, as well as some custom software to process our images. Our full price list for image processing is on our web site. We currently have an introductory offer for…"
"@Gerald. We agree that thermal imaging may provide some good insights for agriculture. In our case we are interested in using leaf temperature as a direct measure of the transpiration rate. Certainly the use as an irrigation monitor that you…"
"Neal, Thanks for your comment. You are correct -- in the raster images the pivot tower tracks are clearly visible. The image we put in the blog post was a vector shapefile generated from the raster image. This is the file format needed for…"
Last summer, with the help of the DIY Drones community, Agribotix set out to discover how drones could be used to help growers make better decisions. Some of you followed the journey through our blog posts, and we are grateful for all the discussion…
"Hughes,
Thanks! It always seemed like a waste not to use the integrated BEC as a backup but I wasn't 100% sure how to configure the diodes. This setup is just the trick.
Best,
Tom"
Thanks! It always seemed like a waste not to use the integrated BEC as a backup but I wasn't 100% sure how to configure the diodes. This setup is just the trick.
Best,
Tom"
"Craig,
Thanks for the detailed explanation. A few questions:
1. Do you ever consider the built-in BEC on an ESC to be a reliable supply? Or is the environment of the ESC (heat, etc) just a bad place to put a mission-critical piece of equipment?…"
Thanks for the detailed explanation. A few questions:
1. Do you ever consider the built-in BEC on an ESC to be a reliable supply? Or is the environment of the ESC (heat, etc) just a bad place to put a mission-critical piece of equipment?…"
".."
"Yes, I found that the wire length is very important. First I used a large cap with long leads (15 cm or so) but I found that a 680 uF/10V with leads about 2 cm did a better job."
