Introduction

Use the following pages to learn about what equipment is needed to offload data from the 6X, how to offload the data, and how to import the data into post processing software.

Equipment

Offload Process

Data Import

File Structure

Getting Started

The 6X stores the imagery on an internal solid state hard drive that is not removable from the sensor. Use the process outline below to access the collected data.

Power On Sensor

Power the 6X using the AC adapter or keep it attached to the aircraft and turn the aircraft on.

Then wait for the LEDS on the sensor to do the following:

This verifies that the sensor is fully booted and ready for data offload.

Connect USB-C Cable to Sensor and Computer

Connect the sensor to the computer using a USB cable.

Verify Connection

Open your wifi/network panel from the task bar. Verify that you see "unidentified network - No internet". This is the 6X appearing as a network device.

Open A File Browser Window

Navigate To Sensor Storage

Navigate to the 6X internal storage by typing \\192.168.42.1 into the address bar of the file browser and pressing enter.

Login To Sensor

Windows will display a network credentials pop-up. The user name is sentera and there is no password. Press OK.

Select Data Folder

Select Snapshots

Select Session Folder

Session folders are the folders where the imagery is stored for each flight.

Copy Folder

Introduction

6X uses standard metadata tagging formats and labels, such as EXIF and XMP. They are compatible with standard GIS and image processing tools, such as Pix4D.

6X implements a custom processing pipeline that is designed to maintain high linearity between a recorded digital number (DN) and irradiance. This characteristic is critical for utilization and analysis of multispectral data.

Co-Registration

All image layers are captured simultaneously. The TIFF image layers are co-registered by the 6X onboard and in real-time. Registration, vignetting correction, and RGB color correction, can all be turned off, if desired.

Folder Structure

Each session folder created by the 6X will contain 6 subfolders. One for each imager on the sensor.

Common Post Processing Tools

Getting Started

The 6X stores the imagery on an internal solid state hard drive that is not removeable from the sensor. Use the process outline below to access the collected data.

Power On Sensor

Power the 6X using the AC adapter or keep it attached to the aircraft and turn the aircraft on.

Then wait for the LEDS on the sensor to do the following:

This verifies that the sensor is fully booted and ready for data offload.

Connect USB-C Cable to Sensor and Computer

Connect the sensor to the computer using a USB cable.

Open A Finder Window

Once the 6X is fully booted it will appear as a network location in the left hand menu of the Finder window.

Select Data Folder

Select the 6X location and then select the data folder.

Select Snapshots

Select Session Folder

Session folders are the folders where the imagery is stored for each flight.

Copy Folder

Eject Sensor

FieldAgent Desktop Import and Ordering

FieldAgent Web

Post Processing In Metashape

Post Processing in Pix4D

Introduction

The 6X uses an internal SSD to store the captured data. This article will describe the file storage structure.

File Structure

The 6X file structure is as follows:

data > snapshots > session folders > data sub-folders (rgb, NIR, Red Edge, etc) > image files

The session folders are labeled as YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS. Where YYYY-MM-DD is the date that the imagery was collected on, and HH-MM-SS is the UTC time that the session folder created at (when the 6X status lights turned green).

Inside of each session folder there are 6 sub-folders. These sub-folders contain the imagery from each individual lens/channel of the 6X.

The folders are labeled based on the lens filter (Blue, Green, Red, Red Edge, NIR, RGB, etc). The center wavelength and filter width are also displayed.

Inside of each sub-folder the imagery that corresponds to the folder will be found.

Post Processing In QGIS With Sentera Plugin

Required

Optional

Thermal Temperature Conversion Formula

.Tif files from the 6X thermal are recorded in Kelvin*100. As a result, images must be converted to be viewed in Celsius.

To convert thermal pixel values to degrees Celsius:

Grey Images

Raw 6X images off the 6X Thermal will appear solid grey when viewed on most basic image viewers (ex. Windows Photo Viewer). The color scale on a basic photo viewer is set to the range of all possible temperatures that the 6X thermal sensor can record; Black being the coldest and white being the hottest. Relative to the range of possible temperatures, the range of temperatures recorded in a typical 6X image is relatively small. This relatively small range is somewhere in-between the coldest (black) and hotest (white) extremes, causing the image to appear as a nearly constant grey.

Most advanced imagery software will automatically adjust the displayed color range to match the range of temperatures recorded in an image. As a result, raw images viewed using most GIS tools will highlight the temperature differences you'd expect to see in a thermal image.

The image shown below is the same "grey" image seen above, but as it appears in Irfanview. QGIS and other GIS tools will similarly convey the temperature differences in raw imagery.

Free Recommended Image Viewers