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Watertown, WI | Looking for opinions on drones. Really have it narrowed down to these two. Primary goal is crop scouting. We farm about 400 acres part time (nights/weekends) so I want to reduce crop scouting time and improve the quality of scouting data as it is a weak point for us. Secondary goal would be for variable prescription crop rescue/support. Third goal would be to identify broken tile lines as we bought some fields with damage from a deep till. Would like a quadcopter for checking on details. Field sizes are about 5 to 30 acres. Running Ag Leader SMS for farm management software.
DJI Mavic 2 Pro w/ Sentera NDVI
Solution price is $4,207.
5 mile range w/ OccuSync 2.0.
20mp camera and 4k video.
6 direction obstacle avoidance and object tracking.
Would use Sentera FieldAgent software for which is $29/month.
Parrot Bluegrass Fields w/ Parrot Sequoia
Solution price is $4,500.
1.2 mile range. <- Not impressed
14mp camera and 1080p video. <- Not really impressed either. While 1080P should be fine for scouting, it would be nice to take some higher quality for shooting some season videos.
No obstacle avoidance. <- Again, not impressed. Is it really needed for scouting as long as field boundaries are set?
Would use ParrotFields app (can't find any details yet, appears brand new.) Detailed scouting would need Pix4Dfields which is insane at $250/month.
So overall, I feel the Mavic 2 is an around better drone. But I have little experience with Parrot products. The specs don't seem to shine, but are they a good quality product? I like how the Bluegrass Fields is a compete integrated solution. Parrot provides everything from the sensor, the drone, and the software. I also like how the Sequoia is a multispectral sensor so that I can experiment on different indices such as NVDI or NDRE. However, as complete as the solution is, I feel like the Bluegrass Fields is a flying brick that is pretty much useless outside of scouting(maybe that's a good things for farm durability). The Mavic is portable, has a compact remote, an army of users, and better drone performance.
I like the Sentera sensor and the software. The price is practical and it seems to meet all my requirement. I'm not sure what ParrotFields app is capable of, but the Pix4Dfields seems way over priced for it's capabilities. Even if I only use it for 6 months year, that is still $1,500 a year just for getting the data out of the drone. I know DroneDeploy is a good software solution, but I really don't like having everything web based. We don't even have cell service in some fields. Having local, in the field data is very important to me.
That all said, what is everyone's opinions...
DJI vs Parrot?
Sentera vs Sequoia?
FieldAgent vs Pix4Dfields?
Thanks, Aaron
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DJI Mavic Pro 2 w/ Sentera NDVI or Parrot Bluegrass Fields w/ Parrot Sequoia
