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Topic Type: 
Idea

What a fun day! I'm too tired to write anything up right now but I figured I'd set up this forum for everyone to say hi in case we want to get in touch with each other later.

eric's picture

I really enjoyed it too and am excited to see how the images turn out. Thanks again to everyone who made it happen and to Jeff for connecting me and Jessica. I had a great time spending the day with you all.

dorn's picture

Thank you all for such a fun day. I hope we can all get together again in the near future. With all the imaging that took place, I am really excited to see what kind of mapping and analysis can come out of it.

I just created a "sandbox" wiki for us to use http://www.farmhack.net/tools/covercrop-remote-sensing-imaging

I am downloading the single camera images tonight and will get them sorted for sending of for 3d imaging.

We went over to the second site at the woodman farm research station down the road, but the wind was not blowing enough to get a kite up, so that might be a project for another day. I think I may have to get my own rig set up...Perhaps a basic farm hack tool entry could be the basic balloon/kite camera setup from open labs?

jywarren's picture

I changed the name of the Dropbox to "Lee NH Balloon Mapping" since i already have some "balloon mapping" shared dropbox folders :-)

As soon as people drop some more data in there, I'm happy to copy it over to the Public Lab archive server so we don't have to keep using Dropbox. Is everyone invited to that Dropbox? Email Louis (or me?) if you're not. Or just share a separate dropbox folder with me and I'll copy things to somewhere we can all get them.

BTW the 3d thing is at: http://hypr3d.com

Thanks again everyone, it was very exciting.

R.J. Steinert's picture

@Jeff What's the url of that dropbox folder?

Chris Fastie's picture

That was a superb day. Great to meet everyone. Thanks to Dorn for sharing your work and bringing us together. Also for the excellent campsite. I was up in time to photograph the chicken tractor being moved through the fog. Ned and I got home for a late lunch ready for the next FarmHack FlashMob. Thanks to Jeff for supplying the noble gas, and to everyone for the great photos already at dropbox. I just added two. Note the strong evidence therein that shirts photosynthesize more than pants.

It appears that we might have pretty complete coverage of the study plots in NIR and visible, so NDVI here we come.

Next time!

jywarren's picture

Almost everyone has removed their images -- Sorry, can you move them back into the folder so I can copy to the PLOTS server? i was gone this weekend and didn't get a chance. If you want a copy please copy them out, leaving the folder in there for everyone else. Dropbox can be kind of a weird system i guess.

but otherwise, the folder is at:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0eaer53x07kgi0w/v9p3xnI-GV

and I believe I can invite you if you like, so you get it via your desktop interface instead of via the website.

user1's picture

Just ran across an update from the Farm 2 Plate initiative in VT and thought it might be interesting to those pushing this forward. They mentioned that LiDAR data has been used to aid in food system planning/implementation efforts in the Mississquoi watershed. I'm no expert on LiDAR but I wonder if the ways they use use LiDAR might be helpful for what Dorn is trying to accomplish. They do mention that the data is useful for "biomass".

"This data will be extremely useful to a wide variety of applications from identifying agriculture soils that are available for production, flood plain mapping, renewable energy siting, Forestry, Biomass, & Vegetation Management.Existing LiDAR coverage has been completed within the Mississquoi watershed, Essex County and a few small regional efforts; statewide coverage will greatly enhance our food system planning and implementation efforts. This is a high priority strategy within the F2P Plan and connects to Goals 5, 6, and 7."

Check out "Team LiDAR"

R.J. Steinert's picture

Woops, I posted as user1 :P

Louis's picture

I believe LiDAR would be used in this context to generate a topological map. It would be interesting to convert the 3D displays in topological maps and see how they match LiDAR.

LiDAR is kind of expensive - last time I checked the most affordable ones were about $800 but those didn't have a huge range... In the practice of topology mapping I believe they fly over with LiDAR so I would guess you need a decent range.

jywarren's picture

I've seen some DIY Lidar setups (http://unterbahn.com/2010/11/3d-laser-scanning-with-record-player-arduino-processing-blender/) and there are some NYC area PLOTS folks interested in trying it out. But I think the balloon mapping >> bundle adjustment approach is kind of elegant in that it uses equipment we're already good at using.

dorn's picture

I just came across this article that uses range finders (which are fairly cheap) to triangulate and give crop height measurements. I will see if I can get the whole text - here is a link to the abstract.

I am certainly a supporter of keeping the hardware costs of any of this kind of measurement to a minimum, and then do more processing on the backend (which is more easily shared).

jywarren's picture

At PLOTS, Juan posted this link to a very interesting pair of glasses which filter out the wavelengths of chlorophyll and let you "see" crop stress:

http://publiclaboratory.org/notes/cfastie/6-3-2012/nrg-images-cover-crop-trials#comment-858

Whoa. I ordered a pair, $20 shipped.

dorn's picture

I am really impressed with how clear the NRG images show the different cover. I really like the idea of using slide film as a camera filter - the costs just keep going down! We will be harvesting the plots that were imaged on Monday the 11th. I am in the middle of planting more plots right now and getting the oilseed sunflower planted, but on the other side of that I will be able to dive into this more. Looking forward to it.