Drone based thermography quality and usability.

[bodejodel]

Hello,

I'm an experienced Level 1 building thermographer from The Netherlands and my company is currently looking into getting a drone based camera to do roof and high rise inspections. We might move into the high voltage electrical inspections and other commercial fields with it too.

To start out, we are currently looking into the DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced and getting all the required licenses.

I have been working with FLIR B335, B365 and T640bx camera's for over 12 years and we will probably upgrade to T10XX series soon, so I am used to having quite good quality thermal imaging tools.
How do these enterprise level drones with thermal imaging capabilities hold up against camera's like the T640bx? The drone is "enterprise level" but going by the prices I expect the thermal imaging capabilities to be a lot lower than my handheld camera. The resolution is there, but how do the other parameters compare? Our climate is pretty mild, so we are working with small temperature differences most of the time. Is it possible to do live analysis with these as I can do on my camera or can that only be done afterwards with tools like FLIR Tools?

Thanks in advance!

 

[manutter51]

The images produced by the M2EA thermal camera are not compatible with FLIR Tools, unfortunately. It's ok for roof inspections where all you really care about is locating "hot spots," but if you want to do in-depth analysis you're likely to be disappointed. DJI has their own thermal analysis tool, but I found it crash-prone and awkward to work with.

 

[JimD]

The images produced by the M2EA thermal camera are not compatible with FLIR Tools, unfortunately. It's ok for roof inspections where all you really care about is locating "hot spots," but if you want to do in-depth analysis you're likely to be disappointed. DJI has their own thermal analysis tool, but I found it crash-prone and awkward to work with.

Just wondering did you try any of the conversion tools!

 

[bodejodel]

We actually got a reply from one of the vendors we approached. They sent us a couple of images. One was a converted file and that was perfectly usable in FLIR Tools.

The biggest downside of the M2EA I discovered is the lack of live thermal tuning abilities. That's a real downer for a thermographer. You might miss some smaller issues because of the automatic level/span.

 

[JimD]

We actually got a reply from one of the vendors we approached. They sent us a couple of images. One was a converted file and that was perfectly usable in FLIR Tools.

The biggest downside of the M2EA I discovered is the lack of live thermal tuning abilities. That's a real downer for a thermographer. You might miss some smaller issues because of the automatic level/span.

Wow thanks a lot man very useful information. What would you recommend for an affordable thermal drone? I thought the price on that one was amazingly good but if it’s lacking Well then maybe not.
Sadly DJI is horrible at software which is amazing for the size of the company I don’t get it.

 

[bodejodel]

Wow thanks a lot man very useful information. What would you recommend for an affordable thermal drone? I thought the price on that one was amazingly good but if it’s lacking Well then maybe not.
Sadly DJI is horrible at software which is amazing for the size of the company I don’t get it.

I hope the M3E in any forms will be a bit more capable when it comes to the thermal features. On the other hand I fear they hope to force serious IR users to the Matrice series with locking out features like that.

My experience with software from any company that doesn't solely focus on software development is a bit mediocre at best. This goes for FLIR, as well. It took them a while to get Tools functioning as well. Even the software on their cameras isn't always great. We had one of the first T640 cameras and I found out the temperature reading on the point measurement was actually measuring the temperature of the pixel about 30 pixels northeast of the marker. It turned out all T640's did that and I was the first to report that error.

 

[MCW LLC]

get a drone with a FLIR camera on it, if that's what your used to, the Autel EVO 640R its around 10000$, for a 640 x512 radiometric FLIR and RGB sensor

 

[bodejodel]

get a drone with a FLIR camera on it, if that's what your used to, the Autel EVO 640R its around 10000$, for a 640 x512 radiometric FLIR and RGB sensor

I have seen that one and I like the bigger smart controller. I couldn't find any information on the ability to actually thermal tune it. Just gain settings which let's you choose between 2 temperature ranges, but those were still big ranges.

I would really like them to have the ability to manually adjust the level and span. That's the most used feature for me. And quite honestly that is just thermography basics. Focus, level and span are among the first things that are teached in a thermography level 1 course.

It feels like these 6~10k drones have thermal capabilities as a gimmick rather than a real feature.

 

[dougcjohn]

For the investment.. the XT2 640 (Flir) is still probably the best option. Has the features needed, Flir sensor & software. It's not the newest, and it's compatible with older M210,l v1 & v2, M600Pro up through M300. Plus, I think the XT2 640 at used prices is a great buy.

Although it's not on a small platform, M210... although you could them run a dual gimbal w Z30 or X5S, X4S, LED Flood, etc.

 

[bodejodel]

Although that's a beautiful platform, I think it would be a bit much for a first drone. We have no clients asking for aerial footage yet, we have to create a new market for ourselves first.
Both in price and in size. We'd need bigger cars to haul that around. Our company cars are already filled to the brim with other equipment.

I think we will have to wait or just settle for less.

 

[dougcjohn]

Although that's a beautiful platform, I think it would be a bit much for a first drone. We have no clients asking for aerial footage yet, we have to create a new market for ourselves first.
Both in price and in size. We'd need bigger cars to haul that around. Our company cars are already filled to the brim with other equipment.

I think we will have to wait or just settle for less.

Agree, it's not the small portable we all desire.
Have a M210 v1 and it's not a huge case but much bigger than my M2P or M3.

I've been searching the same... was excited about the M30 but Others familiar with M300 indicate the Thermal still lacks temp features... and that's accurate for M30 too.

I purchased a EVO II Enterprise... returned before 30 day expired. It wasn't acceptable for price for various reasons.

I'm hopeful the rumored M3 Enterprise will have similar Thermal of M30 and maybe little more RGB camera.

Good Luck on decision.

 

[TreeLineView]

I have seen that one and I like the bigger smart controller. I couldn't find any information on the ability to actually thermal tune it. Just gain settings which let's you choose between 2 temperature ranges, but those were still big ranges.

I would really like them to have the ability to manually adjust the level and span. That's the most used feature for me. And quite honestly that is just thermography basics. Focus, level and span are among the first things that are teached in a thermography level 1 course.

It feels like these 6~10k drones have thermal capabilities as a gimmick rather than a real feature.

Unfortunately I believe they are targeting the biggest market in their minds, public safety. If they opened their eyes for a moment, they would see there a a lot of smaller customers out there that struggle with $18,000 for a complete proven solution. If they focused just a little on software, they I believe they could sell a lot more units. I fly a Matrice 200 series with a Flir XT2. Does everything needed and Flir thermal studio software has many features I like and is a mature thermal post analysis software. very hefty pricetag and need to keep in the air to see any type of ROI.

 

[MCW LLC]

Love Mine!

 

[bodejodel]

Unfortunately I believe they are targeting the biggest market in their minds, public safety. If they opened their eyes for a moment, they would see there a a lot of smaller customers out there that struggle with $18,000 for a complete proven solution. If they focused just a little on software, they I believe they could sell a lot more units. I fly a Matrice 200 series with a Flir XT2. Does everything needed and Flir thermal studio software has many features I like and is a mature thermal post analysis software. very hefty pricetag and need to keep in the air to see any type of ROI.

Spot on. The price tag of a bigger/better platform isn't the issue for us, the ROI is. Our handheld FLIR cameras are usually 20-30k when we get them and we have over 100k worth of other equipment and tools in our cars. We use most of that daily.

It looks like we will start with a compromise and work from there.
Once we build up a client base for aerial thermography there is plenty of room to invest in a bigger drone with a proper IR camera.

 

[bodejodel]

Love Mine!

Cute couple! What are the capabilities of the IR suite? Can you narrow down the thermal span in flight?

 

[MCW LLC]

Cute couple! What are the capabilities of the IR suite? Can you narrow down the thermal span in flight?

yes, and it has isotherms, emissivity control, sear for people animal mode, many color pallets, a lot of features

 

[bodejodel]

yes, and it has isotherms, emissivity control, sear for people animal mode, many color pallets, a lot of features

I saw all the other features advertised and in reviews, but not the manual level and span adjustments. So you can actually manually set the level and span like in the attached examples? That would sell the drone for me.

 

[dougcjohn]

yes, and it has isotherms, emissivity control, sear for people animal mode, many color pallets, a lot of features

Sounds very promising… Is yours the FLIR sensor model?
I too would be interested in it’s capabilities.

 

[MCW LLC]

Mine is the 640T not FLIR. Im pretty sure you can do manual adjustments, let me make 100% sure before I say it can, and I will screenshot it... cool?
I know for sure you can set the temp rages you are looking for... Isotherms I believe what its called on the control options

 

[bodejodel]

Mine is the 640T not FLIR. Im pretty sure you can do manual adjustments, let me make 100% sure before I say it can, and I will screenshot it... cool?
I know for sure you can set the temp rages you are looking for... Isotherms I believe what its called on the control options

That would be very helpful!

I would really love the option to manually set the upper and lower temperature where I want to distribute the colors of the palette between. It will really help to pinpoint the smaller issues in structures when viewing them live. I need to be able to cancel out irrelevant hot and cold spots like warm air exhausts and installations or cold night sky (reflections) as in my example pictures. This is so I can see the small temperature variations in roofs caused by moisture ingress or thermal imperfections in the insulation. The Dutch climate is usually quite mild, so we don't get big temperature differences for most of the year. A reflection or hot installation like that will completely wash out the actual issues if the temperature adjusts automatically.

On my T640bx I can pinch the palette to as little as 2 degree difference, for example between 8 C and 10 C, to really bring out the smallest temperature deviations in roofing material. You can always do that in FLIR Tools, but not if you did not see it in the first place and dit not take a picture of it.