MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Sentera, a global provider of remote sensing hardware and data management solutions, signs a reseller agreement with DroneMate, New Zealand’s premier agriculture and inspection drone and sensor distributor. The agreement gives New Zealand’s agriculture industry access to Sentera’s proven end-to-end normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) solutions including agriculture drones, precision sensors and AgVault Software. Using Sentera’s crop health solutions, DroneMate’s customers can capture more images and cover more acres, in less time – increasing yields and ROI.

“We are excited to offer Sentera’s easy-to-use, precise NDVI drone solutions and AgVault Software to our extensive network of customers,” say John Bampfylde, marketing director for DroneMate. “New Zealand is an agriculture-focused economy and is always looking for smarter ways to grow crops more efficiently.”

Bampfylde continued, “The timing is excellent. Our customers are planning for the coming growing season and Sentera’s crop health management solutions provide the perfect, affordable solution for New Zealand farmers – allowing them to capture color, near-infrared and NDVI data, and view it right at the field edge. We haven’t found anything on the market that is comparable to Sentera’s end-to-end NDVI offering.”

DroneMate will offer Sentera’s NDVI Upgrade for the DJI Phantom 4, Phantom 3 and Inspire platforms. Each upgrade utilizes a Sentera NDVI Single Sensor. The ultra-light weight, high-precision NDVI sensor creates a powerful and affordable precision agriculture tool. Since the drone’s factory-supplied gimbaled camera is not modified, the full functionality of the DJI stock sensor is preserved. With the Single Sensor, users can capture spectacular visual-band, near-infrared and NDVI data simultaneously – in a single flight.

Bampfylde described Sentera’s NDVI Upgrade: “It’s a brilliant sensor [single sensor] allied to the world’s most popular drone, making for a super-reliable, smart and easy-to-use survey system. The testing results have absolutely amazed us. It is a quantum shift in the market with regard to price and quality.”

The drone’s standard camera also works to survey, creating data that can be used to make 2D and 3D precision maps, measure plant height or perform crop counts.

AgVault Software will be available through DroneMate, allowing farmers to evaluate and respond to crop health data in real-time by reviewing a QuickTile Map, while at the field’s edge. AgVault Mobile can be used to autonomously fly a DJI drone with NDVI Upgrade, ensuring the sensor is capturing imagery with the correct overlap and elevation to paint a useful picture once the drone lands.

“This agreement with DroneMate provides Sentera with a broader and deeper reach to deliver world-class precision remote-sensing products to customers in New Zealand,” said Greg Emerick, executive vice-president of business development for Sentera. “By 2050, the world’s farmers will need to feed 9 billion people while using the same arable land that we have today. To do this, growers around the globe are adopting precision agriculture technology like Sentera’s drones, sensors and AgVault software to grow more food, at a higher rate of return.”

“Drone technologies are becoming much more affordable and easier to use, so New Zealand is seeing more farmers incorporate precision agriculture in their standard operations,” observed Bampfylde. “Very soon, countless farmers and local aerial professionals will own a drone and provide extremely accurate, low-cost surveys as frequently as they want.”

For more information, contact DroneMate at sales@dronemate.co.nz

About DroneMate

Creativity, innovation and teamwork drive DroneMate. Whether its aerial film work or 3D mapping, this group brings its talents together to provide a completely customized experience to the clients. DroneMate has evolved with the modern revolution in UAV technology, and we proudly sit at the forefront of the technology and its applications. DroneMate Agriculture is your UAV friend in the farming business. We bring together UAV technical expertise, aerial surveying, mapping and data management capabilities with international experience and the world’s best hardware to create an affordable commercial UAV. Learn more about DroneMate at www.dronemate.co.nz.

About Sentera

Since its inception in 2014, Sentera has raised $8.6 million in capital from strategic investors and its technologies are being used today by real people, to solve real problems. With more than 200 years of combined experience with sensors, software, UAV, data management and engineering solutions, Sentera is a leading designer, developer and manufacturer of remote-sensing technologies in the agriculture, infrastructure and public safety industries. Sentera’s equipment has collected 25,000,000 acres of images, gathered 175 terabytes of data and conducted over 8,000 flights. Learn more about Sentera at www.sentera.com.