Minneapolis-headquartered Sentera has announced the availability of its gimbaled Double 4K and Quad sensors for DJI Inspire 2 drones.
Sentera says its swappable sensors paired with the Inspire 2 offer agronomists, crop consultants and growers an economical way to capture diverse vegetation indices, such as normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) or normalized difference red edge (NDRE) data, while investing in a single drone platform.
“Our customers experienced tremendous success during the 2017 growing season using our suite of sensor upgrades for DJI Phantom, Mavic and Inspire 1 drones,” says Kris Poulson, vice president of agriculture for Sentera. “Integration of our gimbaled Double 4K and Quad sensors with the Inspire 2 is a fitting next step that allows customers to leverage the same radiometrically accurate data from our sensors but now with all the added benefits the Inspire 2 platform has to offer – most noticeably being longer flight times and swappable payloads.”
Using plug-and-play technology, Sentera’s sensors can connect to the Inspire 2 in just a few seconds. Poulson explains why this is important to users: “Being able to swap payloads on-the-fly gives our customers the ability to decide what crop health indices they want to collect while they are in the field. If you’re an advisor and support multiple growers in a single day, this flexibility of data capture increases operational efficiency and allows you to completely customize a crop-scouting mission based on specifications unique to your application and needs.”
The Double 4K sensor is equipped with twin 12 MP sensors and is capable of collecting various combinations of RGB, NDVI, NDRE or multispectral vegetative indices in a single flight.
The Quad sensor has 1.2 MP imagers with virtually limitless custom filtering options – an ideal solution for universities, researchers, large growers and advisors with specialized data-gathering requirements, says Sentera.
“There is no downtime or need to send a drone to Sentera or a dealer to swap sensors,” Poulson adds. “In seconds, users can attach our Double 4K or Quad sensor to the DJI Inspire 2’s existing mount and be scouting fields immediately, capturing RGB, NDVI and NDRE data. No additional tools or cables are required.”
