so ive been running a senseFly eBee for about two seasons now doing NDVI mapping for a few local farms and honestly its been decent but the turnaround time is killing me. by the time i process the imagery and get it back to the grower the scouting window is sometimes already gone. a buddy of mine switched over to a matrice 300 with an altum-pt and hes just pulling way more actionable data per flight it seems like.

my question is more about the actual field workflow than the specs ? like for row crops, corn and soybeans specifically, does the multirotor give you enough of an advantage in revisit rate to justify basically starting over with a new platform? the eBee covers more ground per battery obviously but im wondering if im missing something with how guys are setting up their waypoint missions on the bigger multirotors to compensate for that.

also curious if anyone is doing any kind of variable rate prescription generation directly from the drone data same day or if thats still kind of a pipe dream in practice

made almost the exact same switch about 14 months ago, fixed wing to M300, and honestly the coverage rate thing is real but its not as big a deal as i thought it would be. the farms im working are mostly under 500 acres per field so the M300 handles it fine across a couple batteries. where i actually noticed the difference was in the canopy penetration on the multirotor ? flying slower at lower altitude you just get better look at whats happening under the top leaves, especially later in the season when corn is fully tasseled out.

on the same-day prescription thing, ive gotten it to work a few times using Ag-Leader integration but it requires the agronomist to be basically on standby and ready to push to the planter or spreader same day. most of my growers arent quite at that operational level yet so it ends up being more like 24-48 hour turnaround which is still way better than waiting on satellite imagery

what processing software are you using right now? cause a lot of the delay you're describing sounds like it might be a pix4dfields vs pix4dmapper situation more than a platform problem tbh. fields is way faster for ag outputs if you havent tried it. not saying dont switch just that it might buy you some time while you figure out if the capital outlay makes sense