Reign Maker, a drone and data services innovation company, has announced the launch of Nixie, a drone-enabled water sampling and data collection system, designed to drastically increase sampling rates and accuracy while reducing the number of required field personnel and eliminating the dependence on marine vessels.
To ensure our water supplies remain clean and safe, drinking water utilities, water resource management agencies, and environmental regulators worldwide routinely test water quality through government-mandated sampling and analysis. However, traditional water sampling and analysis methods are logistically complex, labor-intensive, time-consuming and costly. Furthermore, there are no centralized repositories for water sampling data. With Nixie, Reign Maker aims to reduce the costs and complexity of water sampling and analysis worldwide.
Nixie automates water management across the global, commercial, industrial, and agricultural supply chain by using drones, water sensors, software, connectivity, and the Cloud to provide real-time actionable data stored in a central location. The system is designed to be intuitive and straightforward to operate in the field and conforms with the United States Environmental Protection Agency standards for water sampling.
“With Nixie, we are committed to changing how water is analyzed worldwide, one sample at a time,” said Jessica Chosid, Founder and CEO of Reign Maker. “Our mission is to remotely collect, digitize, and transform commercial, industrial, and agricultural water management across the supply chain.”
Nixie Base consists of a patented drone-mounted water sampling attachment and lockable bottle cradle that easily and securely attaches to a drone while hovering. The drone then flies to the sample collection location and submerges the sample bottle 2 feet below the surface in currents up to 5 knots. As a result, it will not stir up sediment in shallow water, thus eliminating the risk of contamination. A technician then removes and replaces EPA-approved sample bottles from the cradle. Each operation can be completed in less than three minutes.
The system currently supports DJI M600 and M300 RTK commercial platforms. It utilizes their GPS systems to log telemetry data, including time and location coordinates, to improve each sample’s chain of custody and to create historic GPS logs so Nixie can repeatedly dip into the same location to record water quality changes over time accurately.
Nixie chose the M600 and M300 RTK enterprise drone platforms from DJI for their proven safety, reliability, versatility, and ease of use. DJI, the world’s largest civilian drone manufacturer, leads the industry in developing drones for critical tasks in public safety, infrastructure, construction, energy and similar industries with high expectations and no tolerance for error.
“Nixie is a revolutionary system to accomplish a critical task better, easier, faster, more safely and more efficiently with drone technology, and DJI is proud that Reign Maker has developed it specifically for use with our premier drone platforms,” said James Thomas, Digital Lead, B2B, at DJI Enterprise. “We’re excited to see how our drone technology can help Nixie improve the safety and quality of drinking water sampling around the world.”
Nixie Advanced is an integrated hardware, sensor, software, data analysis, and cloud-based management solution designed to efficiently enable water quality monitoring in-situ, anywhere in the world, across the supply chain, even in the most inaccessible environments. Nixie is also developing the world’s first water database to be updated in real-time for better global monitoring, management, and water resource protection by tracking naturally occurring events and artificial threats.
“The New York City Department of Environmental Protection alone collects 14,000 water quality samples a year, collecting 30 samples a day using boats, captains, and a crew of three at an average cost of $100 per sample,” added Chosid. “With Nixie, a crew of two can collect 120 samples in the same seven-hour shift, at a cost as low as $10 per dip.”
Source: Press Release