Home > Services > Infrared/NDVI/Thermal
Infrared / NDVI / Thermal
Infrared
Infrared is lightwaves just below what we can see in the Red area. It is also known as NIR which stands for NEAR INFRARED. For plants, most of the dominant wavelengths are in infrared. The healthier the plant, the brighter the infrared wavelengths will be. Faster growing plants such as corn and grapes have brighter infrared wavelengths
than other plans. The below image show corn compared to almonds on the left.
​
There is often confusion with infrared and thermal terminology - even with professionals! Some people call thermal as infrared. Others just call it thermal. Well the answer is - their are both right! Thermal is part of the spectrum called called FAR infrared or FIR. The above pictures show NIR wavelengths which is
NOT heat but just an extension of our RED wavelengths that we do not see.
On the other hand, FIR is ONLY heat wavelengths. Common FIR products
would be the infrared space heaters for homes and bathroom heat lights.
To avoid confusion, we only refer to Near Infrared NIR as infrared and Far
Infrared FIR as thermal.
NDVI
NDVI is a subset of Infrared photography. NDVI comes from satellite imagery days. They found out if they merger an RGB normal image with an infrared image and do some manipulation and add false colors, it will make it easier to see healhty plants vs. stressed plants. NDVI is good for comparing healthy to stressed
plants as a visual comparison. It isn't that good about showing exactly how
healthy a plant is or isn't. See our spectrometer section for accurate way to
see plant health.
Thermal
Thermal sensor 'sees' only heat. Technically this isn't a camera since it is only
seeing heat temperatures and not objects. False colors are added to help show
the temperatures.
This sensor is amazing for finding leaks: gas, water, AC / heating, etc. In these
sample images, the left image is a standard RGB image. Would you be able to
see a broken sprinkler? Now
look at the thermal image. If
there were a broken sprinkler,
there would be a break in the
blue color making is really easy
to see.
Irrigation from 100' in the air. A break in the blue water pattern would be very obvious.
Thermal Demo Video