[enriquto]

I guess drones are much more expensive. You can buy a satellite tasking plan for much less than a continuously running drone campaign for the same area.

Of course drones are better, as in having an arbitrarily high resolution and being 100% under your control.

[treis]

If I have a 2 sq km farm that I want pictures of once a week that will cost me $1500 through Albedo. Drones can be had for half that. I don't know that there's an out of the box solution that can automate it, but it seems like the better long term solution.

[Brajeshwar]

I believe the drones with a camera that can take such high precision shots (assuming hyperspectral) will cost lot more than that. For quick reference, check out DJI's Agri Drones[1].

For context; we talked to a few tea growers in the eastern side of India. They spend north of $150,000 - $200,000 on drones and UAVs to track/collect data over 20,000 hectares of tea farms. Our sample satellite date can do the same at a fraction of the cost though the precision drops by about 10%. The idea then now is to combine satellite imagery solution + occasional high-precision drone sweeps.

1. https://ag.dji.com/

[prewett]

I don't think I understand how pricing works, but at the most expensive level, it seems to be $15/km^2, so 2 km^2 once a week would be $30/week, right?

[Brajeshwar]

I believe, his calculation is roughly at $30 per week x 4 weeks per month x 12 months a year.

Anyway, the cost of a 3-meter resolution loaded with multispectral bands and metadata will be just about a dollar per sqkm or even less.