Detail of a 40 acre field in Lyon county that was seeded with a pollinator friendly mix. We did some aerial survey work at two sites yesterday. The goal is to scatter these fields full of native plants throughout farm territory so that good things like bees have a place to thrive. However, once in a while some bad stuff gets in the seed mix so we are watching 33 sites very closely this summer. The drone survey work is intended to support the boots on the ground efforts. This is part of a cooperative project between the Minnesota Dept. of Agriculture and the University of Minnesota Aerospace Engineering Dept.
Sounds interesting… What hardware are you employing?
I’m flying a Sony A6000 camera with a 20mm fixed focal length lens. The autopilot is developed in house (not apm, not px4). The airplane is just a simple skywalker … nothing fancy there. I bought a seagulluav map-x to help with the camera triggering.
Hi Don, thanks for the pointer. I’ll look into it. I’m on the palmer amaranth response side of the coin, not the original pollinator project but I’m discovering everyone in MDA and entomology knows each other. I’m still the new kid on the block.