Commercial use of drones in farms and other agriculture

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  • Moderator

    Well if you have some recommendations for replacements <$1k, I'd love to look into all of them. I've been spending all afternoon looking at the adapted GoPros, JUST because I want something that is very durable.

    I'm not dealing with people that are willing to spend much for NDVI, and only 9% of them have the equipment in place to take advantage of shapefiles and management zones.

    Basically, I'm building the platforms to be used for firefighting....the agriculture side is just to generate a little revenue for the few people in the area that will take advantage of it. If the service is popular after next year's growing season, I'll make more of an effort to get better sensors.  

  • The camera doesn't have to cost $15K, unless you are doing something much more advanced, for example FOPEN.

    Many of these cameras are under $1000, the lenses $200-300 each. Filters are cheap any more, unless you like Semrock or some other highend, high quality manufacturer of filters?

    Edmund Optics sells the cheap stuff and it is not bad quality.

    I had some Chinese USB3 cameras in here for $500 each. I just got an excellent camera from a US manufacturer for $580 with a grade 1 sensor.

    Heck I have some Long Wave Infrared cameras coming under $600 complete with f/1.2 lens. They are going to vineyards in drought areas so they can measure the stress on their grapes from the drought.

    Sure if you want to do some real R&D, I have cameras over $100K, but that is not what you are doing.

    I have a great project going using a new lens I designed for 400-1700nm. The lens weighs <8gms. My partner in the military project is using it on a Raptor Photonics Owl & a UTC CSX camera. The plan is to replace the PVS 14 in the military with something smaller, lighter and more powerful for Day/Night vision.

  • Moderator

    Vega, lets not forget the name of the website you're on right now. Most of us would go for a $15,000 camera if it was in our price range and wouldn't bother with modifying consumer grade sensors. 

    Hopefully I'll be able to acquire a true multi spectral in the future, but it's not in the cards right now. I am looking at something more rugged than the s100, though. 

  • OK, you have to realize what you have there, a consumer grade camera with the cheapest of everything. A cheap grade 3 sensor with a lot of bad pixels, if it has a mechanical shutter, ditto for this too, as well the lens. I probably could carve out a better lens out of the bottom of an old glass coke bottle.

    If you have done thousands of shots so far, I would say, if it has one, the mechanical shutter is wearing out. If not, the sensor is heating up and is malfunctioning. I have seen both problems when cheap sensors and shutters are placed in environmental chambers, heated, cooled, thousands of images taken.

    Buy Grade 2 or better sensors, most are found in industrial cameras such as those from TeleDalsa, Imperx, ISG Cameras, AVT, SICK, Quest Innovations, Basler, Point Grey, etc. The same for the mechanical shutter, buy industrial grade.

    If this is just a hobby, buy another Canon.

    Sure this stuff is more expensive than what you are using, but in the long run you won't have the problems you are having now and it will last a very long time, trouble free. Industrial grade mechanical grade shutters will last millions of cycles, not less than 50,000 in any of the off the shelf consumer cameras you may buy.

  • Moderator

    Well, took 3 shots and then all blank. 

    Even with CHDK disabled, not seeing anything through the viewfinder now. I think I'm going to have to bury the s100 in the backyard today. 

  • Moderator
    I just don't get why it would start doing this after 40 flights and thousands of pictures if it was a settings/software issue.

    I've got the camera taking pictures on the desk right now, I'll let you know what the results look like, but I'm thinking the s100 might have just been through too many landings.
  • If the problem occurs after a some picture the problem may be that your buffer is full.
    The ISO must be fixed. if your camera must calculate iso for every picture it is a time and proccess consuming task, and this can generate illumination variations.
    Set ISO to manual and try it.

  • Moderator

    I did swap out SDcards and had no change, but I haven't let it run on the ground yet.

    2 things I did notice yesterday when trying 4 more flights:

    The first 20-30 pictures are always normal-the problem starts after that.

    the blank shots all have an ISO of 800, and all of the other exif data is normal/GPS coords are logged. 

    I did find a few shots that had white specks from high ISO, and a few that were partially obscured, I'm guessing from the shutter itself? 

  • Todd.
    The NDVI is a measurement of photosynthetic activity, and is a relative value. one isoleted value means allmost nothing. you must compare with another values on the same field.
    You also need field data to correlate your NDVI measurements with nitrogen content or things like that.

  • Do you make any tests ?
    ie. try same configuration withouth flying. on and off the airplane, low the shutter speed, change the memmory card, try a faster one.
    Do tests like this one at a time and see the results to find the source of the issue.
    As you say, I think is a shutter speed problem, I saw this issue when you send the cammera the order to take a picture before the previous picture end to be saved. Usually you have a buffer. test everithing, and dont trust on the makers performance numbers.

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