Drones for agriculture: Drone Ag launches Skippy Scout's Spheres V2

• Drone Ag releases major update for Skippy Scout: Scout Spheres Version 2;

• Find out about the key updates, created to deliver a faster, cleaner, and more powerful way to visualise your fields.

• Skippy Scout is compatible with a range of DJI drones, and heliguy™ can help you get started.

Drone Ag has unveiled Scout Spheres Version 2, a major upgrade to its advanced field visualisation tool within Skippy Scout.

Key takeaways

• Scout Spheres Version 2 features a fully redesigned, mobile-friendly interface.

• Improvements include faster navigation, cleaner visuals, and new tools such as autorotate, settings menu, and layer controls.

• Major upgrade: Spheres Indexing — real-time crop health indices with scout point AI imagery and deeper analytics.

• The update is designed to help farmers and agronomists assess crops and pinpoint areas of interest with greater speed and accuracy.

• Drone Ag's visualisation tool is proving popular in other sectors, such as mapping festival sites and helping organisers identify suitable camping areas.

• Upcoming features: Comparison tools, crop zoning, annotations, area measurement, OS map layers, and more.

• New capability: Third-party drone operators and developers can upload panoramic imagery via web portal or API to generate shareable Scout Spheres.

New Scout Spheres: Faster experience, enhanced insights

This latest release introduces a redesigned user interface, developed to deliver a cleaner and faster experience for users.

Spheres Version 2 enhances navigation and improves clarity, allowing users to assess their crops and identify key areas of interest with greater ease and precision.

The updated layout not only simplifies use but also strengthens decision-making by providing clearer insights at a glance.

The new version includes a fresh design that is fully mobile-friendly, along with new functionality such as a settings menu, autorotate, and the ability to show or hide layers.

Users can now calibrate more accurately, zoom into images, view scout point AI images, and access all-new indexing tools for deeper analysis.

Skippy Scout update: Expert insight

“I for one am most excited about the potential of Skippy’s new Spheres Indexing tool, which will bridge the gap between the prescription mapping tools that farmers are used to in satellite-powered farm management software, and the on-demand drone imagery that Skippy Scout provides.

Farmers and agronomists will now be able to use this tool to quickly pick out differences in vegetation density and type, in combination to scout point imagery as a ground truth, with a view to exporting zoned prescription files for application of inputs.” - Alex Macdonald-Smith, C.O.O. at Drone Ag.

Deeper understanding of crops

Indexing allows crop health indices to be applied directly in real time within the interface, combined with close-up scouting and AI-based analytics, this helps farmers gain a deeper understanding of their crops by showing which areas are healthy and which may need attention, allowing them to respond quickly and plan with greater confidence.

Its easy-to-use design and practical tools make field assessments faster and more precise, and this update further improves the overall experience.

Alex said: "We’ve improved so many aspects of the interface with this new update, such as the new mobile version of the interface, and more useful features will be following shortly, such as comparing imagery across time, area measurements, and more."

Spheres offers versatility

Spheres is not only a valuable tool for farmers, but is also proving useful in other fields.

It has been used to map festival sites, helping organisers identify suitable camping areas, and has supported environmental projects such as the river restoration work on the Harehope Estate.

Its versatility makes it an effective solution for anyone needing clear and accurate land visualisation.

What's coming next?

Further updates are already in development, with upcoming features including a field and date selection list, comparison tools, crop zoning, additional layers of interest such as infrastructure and OS map features, one-click calibration, annotations, and area measurement.

Users will also soon be able to share links and embed iframes, and benefit from direct export options minutes after flight.

Which DJI drones are compatible with Skippy Scout?

The list below shows the DJI drones that offer full support of all Skippy Scout features.

• DJI Matrice 4E.

• DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise.

• DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise Multispectral.

For a full breakdown of drone compatibility, click here.

Commitment to drone innovation

This release represents Drone Ag's continued commitment to innovation, ensuring that users have access to tools that make field analysis more efficient and accurate than ever before.

Finally, in an exciting development, drone operators, manufacturers, and software providers will be able to make direct use of Drone Ag's Scout Sphere technology. Via web portal or API, they will be able to upload panoramic imagery captured by any drone platform and receive a fully featured and shareable Scout Sphere within minutes.

Spheres Version 2 is available now, bringing a redesigned interface and improved functionality to enhance your experience in Skippy.

heliguy™ is a proud partner of Drone Ag, and can help organisations integrate Skippy Scout into their workflows. Contact us for more details.