Tetracam Announces Multi-spectral Imaging Workshop February 10 – 12
Chatsworth, CA, December 7, 2013 – When plants are stressed, the near-infrared radiation they reflect drops. Tetracam multi-spectral imaging systems enable users to react to vegetation problems long before any indications visibly appear. The original market for these systems consisted of government scientists, university researchers and educators. With the development of sUAS, Tetracam now sells most of its systems to commercial end users such as farmers and foresters. Most of these sales have been made to customers outside of the US but, with the FAA more clearly defining UAS regulations, sales to US farmers are now beginning to grow.
“We’ve had to change the way we market our products,” says John Palacio, Tetracam’s Vice-President of Sales and Marketing. Farmers don’t want to buy multi-spectral cameras without some way to lift them over their fields. So, we’ve developed partnerships with sUAS providers who sell integrated UAS/Camera solutions to our customers. We’ve made our web site, documentation and technical support more application-oriented. And we’ve adapted the content of our classes to better train commercial end users as well as the people who sell them imaging-related products.”
“The biggest complaint we hear from farmers is that the people who sell them technology products for the farm don’t know beans about farming” says Palacio. “Our upcoming class teaches attendees how to operate our hardware and software, how to interpret multi-spectral imagery, how to integrate our systems with manned and unmanned aircraft and how to use mosaicking and geo-referencing software with our systems. Most importantly, Olan Moore, a farmer, crop consultant and remote sensing expert, teaches the practical use of this technology for precise agriculture management.”
All of the students who come to class are provided multi-spectral cameras to capture images of native flora outside the classroom. Back in the classroom, they use software that comes with the cameras to extract vegetation indices such as NDVI from the images. This allows them to determine the health of the plants in each image. People who attend this class not only come away with an understanding of multi-spectral imaging technology but also learn how, when, where, and why this technology is used on farms.
Tetracam’s 3-day workshop will be conducted in Los Angeles February 10 – 12. For more information on this class, phone 818-397-0469 or visit:
