Teacher, Apple Education Trainer and CEO of DroneLabs, James Hannam, uses Casio’s Green Slim Series for his work trips to farms around the UK. Here’s how.

DroneLabs is a land surveying and data analysis company for the agricultural sector. In a nut shell, we save farmers time and workload by rapidly providing feedback on plant growth, flood risk, crop counting, and land quality using drones. A typical day involves flying multi-rotor drones across agricultural land, gathering imagery, analysing the photos and videos, and presenting our findings to farm managers / agronomists or the land owner, thanks to Casio’s Green Slim Series.

The interesting stuff comes from the instant feedback. Our method/workflow often requires us to liaise with agronomists who would typically have to walk each field and survey crops to get a full understanding of the land they are analysing. Using our drones, and mobile setup (more on that later) we can provide each agronomist with a quick snap shot of each field, allowing them to target/investigate areas of interest - often saving hours.

The very nature of the work we do means that more often than not we are working from mobile offices (usually a 4x4 or truck). Typically we use a mixture of mobile devices: beefy mobile workstations (think a powerful laptop with all the bells and whistles) for analysis of large volumes of data - where the agronomist needs fast number crunching of the images we capture, and lighter weight iPads or Chromebooks with cellular data.  Here, super fast imagery is needed for crop counting and quality purposes. Both setups often require at least three pairs of eyes on a single (often smaller than 10") screen.

We have tried using monitors and larger TV screens, but often the weight and bulk in the vehicles we use, makes them prohibitive for use. Instead (and taking from our experience in the education sector - our parent company MakerLabs) we use Casio Green Slim Series projectors. Their light weight and low energy usage make them the ideal products to display results across our mobile field offices.  The fact they are also small (roughly the size of A4) and portable are huge bonuses, along with their durability – we haven’t had one die on us yet after we purchased our first Green Slim 4 years ago!  The lamp-free technology uses a LED and Laser Hybrid light source which is much safer for the environment and helps extend the shelf life of the projector.  The auto keystone, fast focus and fast set up means we can get straight to the presenting part of our training without having to worry about any delays and good lumen levels are ideal when using against white trucks or inside farm buildings. 

Find out more about the Green Slim series here.

For more on Maker Labs visit: makerlabs.org.uk

Follow James on Twitter and Instagram: @iamjameshannam