There are two ways to upload your imagery to FarmLens™:

1) Direct Upload

Format, geotag and zip the image set yourself an use the ‘Upload’ button on the FarmLens home page. Your upload must comply with the following specifications:

• All images must be geotagged.

• All images and any associated files must be compressed in a single folder to create either a ZIP or RAR archive.  You’ll upload the ZIP or RAR archive as a single file to FarmLens.

• HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Only include survey photos you want stitched. Remove any images from before or after the actual survey (pictures of the ground, during takeoff or landing, etc.)

For additional details on how to prepare and upload your imagery, see ‘Flow Chart’ below.

2) FarmLens Uploader

This is the quickest and easiest way to upload to FarmLens™ if your imagery is not geotagged in flight. The FarmLens™ desktop client, FarmLens Uploader™, automatically formats, geotags, and uploads your image set to FarmLens™. This is only compatible with drones using a 3D Robotics flight controller.

Click here for the latest FarmLens Uploader™ Instructions.

FarmLens™ and Process Imagery with Agribotix

If you can send us images that already have accurate latitudes and longitudes in the EXIF metadata, then life is simple. We’d like to have altitude in there as well if that’s possible. Agribotix can stitch non-geotagged photos, and often results are good, but sometimes results can be less than acceptable. Some of the causes for less-than-acceptable results when stitching non-geotagged photos include low overlap and attempting to stitch homogeneous photos. If your photos aren’t geotagged, the best way to see if they’ll work is to upload to app.agribotix.com and try it out. Back to the top.

Geo-referencing allows programs like Google Earth or QGIS to place your stitched mosaic in the correct place on the earth. This is a requirement for precision agriculture or surveying. However, if your needs are only to see a visual aerial image then perhaps you don’t need geo-referencing. There will be no absolute distance scales on a non-georeferenced mosaic.

FarmLens Uploader, our custom client-side software package, is optimized for 3D Robotics hardware and software. If you use 3DR then the process of getting images to us becomes largely automated. But if not there are still ways to handle the process.

Many cameras have built-in GPSs but our experience is that they don’t refresh fast enough to get accurate location data. (Your aircraft is probably traveling around 15 m/s, so a one-second GPS refresh delay results in a big error in the ground location.) If you have a camera like the Canon S100 with a built-in GPS, then you can use the GPS to accurately set the camera clock so that it perfectly syncs with the flight log clock. Be sure to set your camera up so the GPS updates the clock. The default setting on most of these cameras is to have the GPS turned off.

If your camera does not have a GPS, there is still a way to sync the camera clock and the flight log clock. It’s a bit more work but not too bad. Shortly before you mount the camera into your plane, take a picture of the ground control station (GCS) screen, including the on-screen clock in the photo. With this photo, Agribotix techs can look at the EXIF timestamp of the photo and compare it to the screen clock in the photo. That gives us a time offset, which allows the synchronization. Do this before every mission because these clocks drift a bit. If you are using a GoPro, you can also sync your time before flight by connecting the GoPro to a device with either GoPro Studio or the GoPro mobile app.

A KML file is a Google Earth XML-format file that includes the plane’s trajectory and altitude. Check with the supplier of your ground control station software to see if it allows creation of KML files.

Check this blog post for instructions on using exiftool to insert the lat/lon/altitude into the EXIF photo metadata.