Smartphone spectral leaf imaging
Strawberry leaf images and Red Green Blue indices derived using OpenCV image analysis All season we have been monitoring the health of our Strawberry Greenhouse crop. In addition to visual inspection with a loupe, digital leaf imaging has been a useful way to follow the development of the plants. Now that autumn has arrived, the […]
New colour MicroLED display technology
MicroLED chip with 3 micron pitch pixels (Image courtesy of MICLEDI Microdisplays BV) Small is beautiful. Small and brightly coloured is very beautiful indeed! Belgium companies QustomDot BV and chip designers MICLEDI Microdisplays BV have teamed up to produce a major advance in mass producing display devices for augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) […]
Mineral deficiency in bean leaves classified by multispectral imaging
Plants tell us when they are lacking vital nutrients but we can’t always hear what they are saying. Nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium (N, P, K) are well know macronutrients and the appearance of plants lacking any one of them is also well known. Plants lacking nitrogen have small leaves and stunted growth, those lacking phosphorous […]
Coffee leaf miner infection located by multispectral imaging
There’s an awful lot of coffee in Brazil! according to the old song recorded by Frank Sinatra. In 2021 almost 70 million 60kg bags of coffee were produced in Brazil, roughly one third of global production, making Brazil the largest coffee producer in the world. Yield varies from year to year depending mainly on the […]
Raman spectroscopy sorts male hemp plants from females
It turns out that growers of medicinal cannabis and those catering for a more recreational market love females but hate males. Gender bias is certainly in the news today but horticulturalists have long known that female hemp plants have higher levels of pharmacologically active compounds than male plants. The difference in yield between the sexes […]
Smart glasses get smarter
What happens when you put two superior optical technologies together? In the case of smart glasses you get bigger, brighter and less blurry. Kingsman-style smart glasses have been available for more than a year now but they typically have flat glass lenses which are difficult to adjust for the 50% of the adult population who […]
Red microLED breakthrough for AR displays
Autumn is a time of year that the folk at Porotech in Cambridge, UK seem to love. Those deep red autumn colours mark a year of significant growth. This time last year Porotech announced they could fabricate wafer-scale red emitting nano-porous InGaN, suitable for microLEDs. This autumn Porotech are announcing a ‘world first’ red microLED […]
Precision viticulture coming to fruition
Mists, check. Mellow fruitfulness, check. Maturing sun, – eventually check! In the UK the 2021 growing season has been good but not exceptional. A late spring followed by a warm June and July gave way to a disappointing August with plenty of warm damp days to encourage the development of mildew. It has been fascinating […]
Cassava virus infection detected with handheld multispectral imager
One of the most important sources of carbohydrate energy in equatorial countries comes from the cassava plant. It looks like a trendy house plant but the roots are large tubers that provide valuable nutrition. Tubers can be boiled and mashed or dried, ground and turned into flour. Cassava is a robust crop but suffers from […]
Counting grapes with machine learning
As the grapes swell in the late summer sun and rain, vignerons start thinking about the harvest. What is the yield going to be? how much sugar will there be in the grapes and finally how many bottles of wine can be made? It would be really useful to have a way to predict the […]