Wageningen, NL

Agricultural Image Analysis

Hardware Software Image Data

We build custom imaging hardware, write the firmware and software that runs it, and process the captured imagery into clean, structured data your team can use. Come in wherever the chain starts for you.

Drop us a folder → See the work →

The haystack

Thousands of images. We find the Needle in the Haystack.

Field campaigns, breeding trials, greenhouse surveys, lab imaging setups - they all generate more imagery than most teams have time to process. The measurements you actually need are buried somewhere in there. Turning those pixels into clean, analysis-ready numbers takes a rare combination of skills. Haystack Imaging finds the needle.

Three doors

Pick the door (or all three).

Most projects walk in through one of three doors. The mix gets configured to your scope. No standardised packages. No 47 vendor logos in the footer. One person doing the work, one invoice at the end.

For when you have

a folder of 4,000 drone photos.

Drone images → trait data.

Per-plot NDVI, canopy cover, height, emergence, stress maps. Clean, plot-numbered, ready to model. The kind of work your stats person doesn't have to clean up first.

  • Per-plot CSV with all extracted traits
  • GeoTIFF maps (orthomosaic, indices, DSM, stress)
  • PDF report your supervisor can actually skim
  • Reproducible pipeline you can re-run next season
  • Vegetation indices: NDVI, NDRE, GNDVI, custom indices on request

Single trial · Multi-season · Ongoing service

For when you need

a device that doesn't exist yet.

Custom sensors, built end to end.

Lab imaging stations, UAV payloads, field loggers, IoT crop devices. PCB, enclosure, firmware - designed, soldered, calibrated, all under one roof.

  • PCB design + production-ready prototype
  • 3D-printed or machined enclosures, field-tough
  • Embedded firmware (ESP32, RP2040, Arduino, STM32)
  • Calibration + bench test report you can show a reviewer
  • Small-batch production (1–50 units) when you need to deploy

Prototype build · Small-batch run

For when you want

code that does the thing, but no headcount.

CV pipelines, firmware, glue code.

Computer-vision models, photogrammetry pipelines, embedded firmware, web APIs, dashboards. The code that connects pixels to insight, written by someone who understands both ends.

  • Trained CV models (YOLOv11, U-Net, custom)
  • Photogrammetry & DSM pipelines you can re-run unattended
  • HTTP APIs your existing tools can call
  • Internal CLIs, Streamlit dashboards, Flask apps
  • Code review or pair-programming on your team's stack

Per-project · Retainer · Open-source collab

Case studies

From the field

A selection of live projects - sensor-to-insight pipelines built for real breeding programmes and research groups.

Phenotyping · CNN · Potato

Canopy Coverage Pipeline

U-Net classifier from raw drone imagery to per-plot cover percentages - automated weekly delivery.

>95% pixel accuracy

Read the case →

Phenotyping · Thermal · Potato

Canopy Height & Temperature

RGB surface model meets FLIR thermal - height and temperature per plot from one flight.

2 traits · 1 flight

Read the case →

Phenotyping · Instance seg · Blueberry

PhenoSelect - Leaf Trait Extraction

Instance segmentation that isolates individual leaves across thousands of high-throughput phenotyping images.

mAP50 0.949

Read the case →

Hardware · Spectral · Apple

Full-Surface Apple Imaging Device

Custom 3D-printed rotator for a research group - complete hyperspectral map of a whole apple surface.

0.176° motor resolution

Read the case →

How it works

From idea to data.

One partner handles the full chain. Pick up at any stage, or let us run it end to end.

  1. 1

    Hardware

    Custom sensors, UAV payloads, lab imaging stations. PCB, enclosure, firmware — designed and built from scratch.

    PCB firmware ESP32
  2. 2

    Software

    CV pipelines, photogrammetry, APIs, dashboards. Code that connects sensor to insight, written by someone who understands both ends.

    Python YOLOv11 U-Net
  3. 3

    Image

    RGB, multispectral, thermal, hyperspectral — raw imagery from field flights, lab captures, or existing archives. Any wavelength, any platform.

    .tif .raw .jpg
  4. 4

    Data

    Per-plot CSVs, GeoTIFF maps, PDF reports. Clean, plot-numbered, reproducible. Ready to drop into R or your stats tool.

    .csv .tif .pdf

The sensors

Haystack Imaging works across the spectrum... literally

Different sensors answer different questions. Pick the one that fits what you actually need to know.

RGB

What the plant looks like. Canopy cover, plant spacing, emergence counts, visual scoring. The workhorse of most trials.

Multispectral

How healthy the plant is, before stress is visible to the eye. Vegetation indices like NDVI and NDRE translate reflectance into a health score per plot.

Thermal

How hot the plant is, and what that reveals. Water-stressed crops run warmer. FLIR thermal sensors detect drought stress and heat damage without touching a leaf.

Hyperspectral

What the other sensors miss. Hundreds of narrow spectral bands can detect nutrient deficiencies, early-stage disease, and variety differences invisible to RGB and multispectral.

Point Clouds

Where the canopy actually sits in 3D space. SfM photogrammetry turns overlapping drone frames into a dense point cloud, then into a DEM. Canopy height per plot, ridge-corrected, no extra flight required.

Why Haystack Imaging

What sets Haystack Imaging apart

Not an agency. One engineer, the full pipeline: sensor to insight, haystack to number. The scope fits the project, not the other way around.

We say no when it matters.

If your data can't support a claim, you'll hear that upfront — not after the analysis. We won't report robust NDVI from RGB-only imagery, or deliver accuracy numbers that don't survive a reviewer's scrutiny. Every result is technically and statistically defensible — or we tell you why it isn't.

Your data stays home.

All processing runs on hardware owned and operated by Haystack Imaging in Wageningen, NL. No third-party cloud in the pipeline. Your sensitive imagery, never leaves hardware under direct control. GDPR-compliant by architecture, not paperwork. European sensors and tooling wherever a viable option exists.

One contact. One invoice.

The person you email is the person who builds it. No account managers, no agency markup, no handoffs between departments. Small enough to take on unusual scopes — custom constraints, one-off integrations, specific sensor requirements — at rates that reflect the work, not the org chart.

Moritz Nelle, founder of Haystack Imaging

About

Who's behind Haystack Imaging

Moritz Nelle · Founder

Moritz is an agtech engineer based in the Netherlands, working at the intersection of crop science and imaging technology. He founded Haystack Imaging to give breeding companies, research groups, and agtech startups access to the full sensor-to-data pipeline without the overhead of a large integrator.

Haystack Imaging builds hardware, writes firmware, designs CV pipelines, and delivers trait data, all under one roof. If your project involves crops and cameras, there's a good chance it's exactly the kind of haystack Haystack Imaging was built to search.

Contact

Got crops, cameras, and a deadline?

Have a project in mind, or just want to see if Haystack Imaging is the right fit? Drop a line. Replies land within two business days, occasionally much faster.

Email Haystack Imaging
info@haystackimaging.eu

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