Transforming Agriculture With Drones - Heliguy Teams Up With MicaSense

DJI Gold Partner Heliguy has added more world-class technology to its stock pool by teaming up with leading American brand, MicaSense, to offer high-quality imagery to our agricultural clients.

The strategic partnership will allow UK-based Heliguy to sell MicaSense’s smart sensors, the Altum and RedEdge-MX, which are at the forefront of the industry and can be integrated with a range of DJI enterprise drones.

We are proud to announce that MicaSense multispectral sensors are now the latest payload offering from Heliguy. The reliability and precision of our sensors, coupled with the drone expertise and dedicated support from the Heliguy team, will enable customers to get the most out of their remote sensing applications.

Emily Ciesielski, Channel Sales Manager with MicaSense

Drones and their sophisticated payloads have revolutionised agriculture and MicaSense’s cameras help to improve crop management, enhance workflows, drive key decision-making and maximise results.

The MicaSense RedEdge-MX integrated with a DJI M200 drone.

The collaboration comes just a week before Heliguy - one of Europe's leading DJI authorised resellers and channel partners - and MicaSense - headquartered in Seattle – are to talk at DJI’s flagship drone conference, AirWorks, which is being staged in Los Angeles.

Heliguy’s Business Development Manager Ruairi Hardman will give a presentation – in partnership with Terra Drone – entitled Global Cooperation: The Key Driver to Mainstreaming Industrial UAS Technologies. MicaSense’s co-founder and CTO, Justin McAllister, will speak about Return on Investment In The Field: Client Success From Actionable Analytics.

The MicaSense Altum on a DJI Matrice aircraft.

‘MicaSense Sensors Will Help Our Clients Achieve Actionable Data For Agriculture’

Heliguy is delighted to become a partner with MicaSense and Business Development Manager Ruairi Hardman believes that the collaboration will be well received by our clients in the farming industry.

He said: “It is a real coup for Heliguy to be able to sell MicaSense’s high-quality sensors, which in turn will help our clients in the agriculture industry achieve actionable and immediate data, obtain key insights which would not be possible using traditional methods and maximise their outputs and profitability.

A closer look at the MicaSense RedEdge-MX.

“Heliguy serves a cross-section of industries, offering products from major names such as DJI, Elistair and ParaZero. This exciting collaboration with MicaSense builds on this and means that we continue to bring the best in the world systems to our clients.

“I am honoured to be speaking at AirWorks and my presentation will focus on global collaboration within the drone industry. Fittingly, Heliguy teaming up with MicaSense is a fine example of how companies from around the world can work together to benefit the client.”

The MicaSense Altum sensor is helping to transform the agriculture industry.

Emily Ciesielski, Channel Sales Manager with MicaSense, shares this excitement about the beginning of the new partnership.

She said: “Heliguy provides a wide array of commercial drone solutions for applications from agriculture to public safety.

The MicaSense RedEdge-MX provides in-depth information about your site, helping to drive decisions and improve results.

"We are proud to announce that MicaSense multispectral sensors are now the latest payload offering from Heliguy. The reliability and precision of our sensors, coupled with the drone expertise and dedicated support from the Heliguy team will enable customers to get the most out of their remote sensing applications.

“We look forward to working with Heliguy to grow the MicaSense brand in the UK, servicing customers in agriculture, forestry, environmental monitoring and beyond.”

Five high-resolution lenses on the MicaSense Altum means you get detailed plant health imagery (5.2 cm Ground Sample Distance) and detailed Digital Surface Models from 400ft. This image shows pumpkins and a standard-sized wheelbarrow for context.

How MicaSense Can Help You

Through drone-based, multispectral sensors MicaSense provides a complete solution that empowers growers to more effectively manage their crops.

For researchers, MicaSense’s technology helps to conduct phenotyping studies, establish optimum methods for fertilisation and validate new precision agriculture practices, while service providers are able to generate RGB and the full spectrum of crop health analytics in one flight.

When it comes to agronomists and growers, MicaSense sensors have the power to accurately identify crop stress, track the success of a nutrient application and discover disease earlier.

MicaSense is at the forefront of multispectral sensor development and is pushing the boundaries on agricultural data analysis - helping professionals make the right call at the right time.

Both the Altum and the RedEdge-MX sensors are industry-leading tools to transform agricultural practices and they can be integrated with a range of DJI aircraft - as the video below explains - as well as other drones.

Want to know more about each product? Then read on...

The MicaSense Altum

Altum integrates a radiometric thermal camera with five high-resolution narrow bands, producing advanced thermal, multispectral and high-resolution imagery in one flight for advanced analytics, and accurate and reliable results.

Altum comes with DLS 2, a next-generation light sensor. With cutting-edge technology for irradiance and sun angle measurements, it provides more accurate, reliable data, substantially improves radiometric accuracy, and greatly reduces post-processing time.

MicaSense Altum with a DLS 2.

The MicaSense RedEdge-MX

The RedEdge-MX is described as the sensor that doesn’t compromise and can integrate with various different drone platforms.

This professional multispectral camera kit is calibrated for precise, repeatable measurements. It captures five narrow spectral bands (blue, green, red, red edge, and near-infrared, which are optimal for sensing crop health), generates plant health indexes and RGB (colour) images from one flight, and operates in temperatures up to 60℃.

MicaSense RedEdge-MX.

Atlas Flight

These sensors can be complemented by Atlas Flight, which allows you to quickly and easily plan missions for your DJI drone and collect valuable data.

About Heliguy

Founded in 2008, Heliguy has grown to become one of DJI’s largest and most trusted European enterprise channel partners and is recognised as a Gold Partner, certifying our expert knowledge and services to enterprise customers.

Earlier this year, Heliguy was honoured with a Top 10 Partner of the Year (Europe) award from DJI Enterprise, recognising our industry-leading approach to servicing the enterprise drone market across a range of industry verticals. This includes a drone hire service.

Clients of Heliguy include Balfour Beatty, Network Rail, Sellafield Sites, the BBC, and National Grid. We also look after more than 40 UK emergency services, including Greater Manchester Police and London Fire Brigade.

Balfour Beatty is one of Heliguy’s esteemed clients. To read how the major infrastructure firm is benefiting from drones, click here.

Heliguy also specialises in drone detection and has installed DJI AeroScope into a number of airports around the UK.

As the UK’s largest and most-established one-stop-shop drone provider, Heliguy also offers a DJI-accredited repair centre and R&D lab.

On top of this, we are a renowned training provider, running industry-leading UK courses such as the Permission for Commercial Operation (PfCO), Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and Emergency Services Drone Operators Training (ES-DOT).

Heliguy has designed and performed closed training courses for a range of commercial clients including UK police forces and other critical government enterprise.

Heliguy's Ben Shirley delivering specialist training to UK police officers.

Heliguy is accredited by the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority), Achilles, CPD (Continuing Professional Development) and Cyber Essentials and is also ISO 9001 rated.

Earlier this week, we were named as a National Winner in the prestigious 2019 European Business Awards – one of the world’s largest business competitions.

To find out more about how Heliguy can equip you with MicaSense products, or help you to start or scale your enterprise drone programme, send us an email or give us a call.