Best aftermarket camera mountable on evo ii for doing plant health analysis

[Pablo Dronero]

Hello

I was wondering what would the best aftermarket camera be for monitoring plant health that could be mounted easily on an Evo II under about 1000 dollars. I'm hoping within the next couple of months to be in the experimentation phase of using drones to help increase crop yield at my current employer. I am also a part 107 licensed remote pilot so if anyone knows of any other agricultural outfits in Cali operating drones I would love to hear about what they are using.

Thanks again

 

[herein2021]

Hello

I was wondering what would the best aftermarket camera be for monitoring plant health that could be mounted easily on an Evo II under about 1000 dollars. I'm hoping within the next couple of months to be in the experimentation phase of using drones to help increase crop yield at my current employer. I am also a part 107 licensed remote pilot so if anyone knows of any other agricultural outfits in Cali operating drones I would love to hear about what they are using.

Thanks again

I am confused over why you think an aftermarket camera could perform a function that the integrated camera cannot. Photogrammetry analysis is mostly about the software not the camera. if you have the proper software to create, stitch, and analyze the images the native EVO II camera will suffice. For plants I would imagine any kind of photogrammetry software that could analyze the levels of green vs brown saturation over a given area and provide a trend analysis over time for those images would suffice.

This is definitely not my area of expertise but I have researched it in the past and its the software that makes it all come together not the camera.

 

[Pablo Dronero]

I am confused over why you think an aftermarket camera could perform a function that the integrated camera cannot. Photogrammetry analysis is mostly about the software not the camera. if you have the proper software to create, stitch, and analyze the images the native EVO II camera will suffice. For plants I would imagine any kind of photogrammetry software that could analyze the levels of green vs brown saturation over a given area and provide a trend analysis over time for those images would suffice.

This is definitely not my area of expertise but I have researched it in the past and its the software that makes it all come together not the camera.

ah well thats good to know, I am currently using an Autel Evo II 8k for work. I keep hearing things thrown around like using an NVDI camera and I was under the impression that you could get better results with a camera that specializes in that.

 

[Dave Pitman]

Hello

I was wondering what would the best aftermarket camera be for monitoring plant health that could be mounted easily on an Evo II under about 1000 dollars. I'm hoping within the next couple of months to be in the experimentation phase of using drones to help increase crop yield at my current employer. I am also a part 107 licensed remote pilot so if anyone knows of any other agricultural outfits in Cali operating drones I would love to hear about what they are using.

Thanks again

Micasense is probably the leader is small NIR cameras. Unfortunately, they are more than $1k new.

https://micasense.com/

 

[gschulzuio]

Hello

I was wondering what would the best aftermarket camera be for monitoring plant health that could be mounted easily on an Evo II under about 1000 dollars. I'm hoping within the next couple of months to be in the experimentation phase of using drones to help increase crop yield at my current employer. I am also a part 107 licensed remote pilot so if anyone knows of any other agricultural outfits in Cali operating drones I would love to hear about what they are using.

Thanks again

You can do a lot of photogrammetry with the integrated RGB camera of the EVO IIs, particular structure, topo, 2D/3D, even basic plant health. However if you are looking to do more advanced plant monitoring, you would want to explore adding something more than just the built in RGB camera with multispectral capabilties such as near infrared e.g. NDVI or similar. Have seen an add on camera/payload for doing NDVI with Autel EVO IIs advertised on this form, however not yet tried using them.

 

[gschulzuio]

ah well thats good to know, I am currently using an Autel Evo II 8k for work. I keep hearing things thrown around like using an NVDI camera and I was under the impression that you could get better results with a camera that specializes in that.

Correct, if all you are doing is basic photogrammetry, with a little bit of basic plant health, the built in RGB camera on the EVO IIs will do fine. However if you are looking to do more advanced plant health monitoring or other multi-spectral projects, then you would need to add another camera usch as for NVDI, or other sensors for what you are looking to do (e.g. thermo/IR, etc).

 

[Pablo Dronero]

Correct, if all you are doing is basic photogrammetry, with a little bit of basic plant health, the built in RGB camera on the EVO IIs will do fine. However if you are looking to do more advanced plant health monitoring or other multi-spectral projects, then you would need to add another camera usch as for NVDI, or other sensors for what you are looking to do (e.g. thermo/IR, etc).

I am interested in an aftermarket thermal camera as well as buying a new thermal equiped drone would be expensive. I would much rather not spend like 6 grand on a thermal drone.

 

[gschulzuio]

I am interested in an aftermarket thermal camera as well as buying a new thermal equiped drone would be expensive. I would much rather not spend like 6 grand on a thermal drone.

If you have no need to do therm, then dont worry about spending around $6K for a thermo or radiometric camera. Otoh, if all you are doing is enhanced plant plant/vegitation photogrammetry and want to get into multispectral (e.g. beyond just using RGB), have seen some affordable NVDI type add on cameras in this forum and elsewhere.

 

[Pablo Dronero]

Survey3W Camera - Red+Green+NIR (RGN, NDVI)

Reflectance calibration requires using our calibration targets. Images that are not calibrated will not contain accurate/correct pixel data. The Survey3 is the newest in our line of simple to use survey cameras. Every Survey3 camera includes an external USB GPS receiver to automatically geo-tag...

www.mapir.camera

I looked at that one I think that is the one that I am going to end up using now the question is what type of software would be ran to analyze the data that the Drone collects currently I am using webodm but I have heard of qgis I have tried using it but I am curious about if there is a better package for handling the data

 

[gschulzuio]

Survey3W Camera - Red+Green+NIR (RGN, NDVI)

Reflectance calibration requires using our calibration targets. Images that are not calibrated will not contain accurate/correct pixel data. The Survey3 is the newest in our line of simple to use survey cameras. Every Survey3 camera includes an external USB GPS receiver to automatically geo-tag...

www.mapir.camera

I looked at that one I think that is the one that I am going to end up using now the question is what type of software would be ran to analyze the data that the Drone collects currently I am using webodm but I have heard of qgis I have tried using it but I am curious about if there is a better package for handling the data

You can use webodm with qgis
For example: Tutorial: WebODM: Use the results in QGIS