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Public Lab Research note


Surveying by Drone, Need help with Cfastie's .lut Usage

by PatrickC | March 09, 2015 04:13 09 Mar 04:13 | #11663 | #11663

with_mobius.jpg

Tri-copter drone with forward looking Mobius' on pan servo.

ground.jpg

Under1.jpg

water_flight_shasta.jpg

Flight over the Shasta College natural life science ponds. Dipping a tethered instrument. (This was scary.)

me_and_blue.jpg

Here is a high altitude pic from a hillside with a good range of plant types, and myself visible too.

3_pic.jpg

Here is a composition of the images from the drone.

NDVI.jpg

Here, cfastie's wonderful work, using a special .lut file.

At one point I was able to figure out how to convert from the blue pics to the false color seen in the top most pic, about 2 months ago. But now I cant remember, and I've been desperately trying for 4 hours now using GIMP. I didnt see any specific instructions for those of us new to this.

Id like to have a button for button, click for click tutorial for everyone.

Im attempting GIMP and ImageJ right now, but in ImageJ im not sure how to get the new .lut in the tools with the existing .luts.

i found this... http://imagej.1557.x6.nabble.com/LUT-td3703281.html

Useful Links:

http://publiclab.org/wiki/ndvi-gradients

http://rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/docs/guide/146-28.html#toc-Subsection-28

I may have figured it out:

First, go into your program files (the installed ones, not the icon one), open ImageJ's files. then, youll see several folders, one named " luts ", in this folder paste cfasties' or other .luts from public lab. Next, close and restart the ImageJ program. Now, open the desired pic, then click "Image" then "type" then select "8-bit". Finnally, press your chosen .lut

me_and_blue_NDVI.jpg

In the above pic, i think i took the pics when the hillside wasnt fully lit by the sun. I of course keep the sun at the machines back, but i dont know what settings would be best for the mobius cameras. http://publiclab.org/notes/cfastie/04-24-2014/mobius-white-balance


4 Comments

WOW. That is a nice looking UAS you have there. The process you mentioned is how I do my NDVI processing in Imagej so that sounds like you got it. I can't comment on white balancing Mobius but the image you have there looks good. I would like to see a video of this system in action if you make one. I have never flown a tri-copter before so I'd be interested in knowing how well it flies.

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yes the tri-copters do look sexy...by video do you mean an NDVI or just a normal vision video? i do see alot of false returns and noise in my images so i think white balance is a problem.

As far as the tricopters, i love them, if you build them right they're just as stable as quads', hexs' and octos'. the advantage (in my opinion) is that only the bi and tri copters give you real true yaw. the other machines just give a psuedo- yaw kind of approximation. with instrumentation being aimed, we'd like real yaw.the price we pay is a little servo, hinge and link to tilt the rear motor.

here's a kickstarter of mine... it does have a few videos.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/215756405/uav-for-humanitarian-aid-and-environmental-researc

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This UAS in of itself is quite a accomplishment let alone if you get good remote sensing data. I have known many who start building their own UAS for a purpose and sadly never get past flight testing phases. I have seen some tilt-wing RC craft (video below) which have a similar configuration (though have extra motors) but had not seen a tricopter in flight till seeing yours. Really fascinating work you are doing! Can you change the white balance on Mobius cams or is it locked in?

http://youtu.be/ZOtVyxwNHQg

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Heres a update, look here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/215756405/uav-for-humanitarian-aid-and-environmental-researc/posts

Flying over water and flying at 200 feet to see tree crowns was always stressful, that machine could crash-in so many ways!

Ive seen a series of settings in the mobius configure program that allow for a whole host of changes, one being white balance.

I also have two of the common blue filters, and followed the instructions on CCD vs CMOS.

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