Drones with a thermal camera are no longer prohibitively expensive or difficult to import. It is safe to say that nowadays anyone can buy a decent thermal imaging drone if there is a practical need. Built on the DJI Mavic 2, the Enterprise Advanced drone will be the undisputed pinnacle of compact thermal drones in 2021 and 2022. In this article, we’ll give you a few examples of what you can do with thermal drones and take a closer look at the DJI M2EA drone.
* As the larger Matrice 300 RTK + H20T camera is similar in thermal imaging capability to the M2EA drone, examples of data collected with this drone are included here.
What can you do with a flying thermal imager?
1. For example, in buildings, find places where warmth or even cold is being forced out – the Health Board’s cold storage concerns would have been detected early by a thermal camera survey. The drone doesn’t just need to be flown. Once the flights are done, the Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced drone can be packed up and used to hand-held capture some indoor or near-object imagery.
2. Solar parks often have faulty panels where some elements no longer work. When an element or panel fails, the energy from the sun is all converted into heat and the surface starts to heat up. The drone can also quickly see if all the series of panels are producing – if a large part of the park is down, you may suspect problems with inverters or connections.
If there is a major problem with birds, vegetation or dust in the park, working with a standard RGB camera can quickly identify such faults and start planning maintenance.
The picture below shows dusty and broken panels. The image is assembled from the drone’s day and thermal camera.
Below is a picture taken with the Mavic 2 EA drone of the inverters under the structures.
3. Thermal imaging drones are also often used for purposes such as animal spotting, searching for missing people, catching predators, etc. In the picture below, you can see how heat-emitting living creatures can be seen as bright spots, and their footprints are clearly visible on the snow. Finding people and animals can be more difficult in the summer, though, because the sun heats up the ground so much that it is difficult to distinguish a person from, say, a rock or a piece of wood in a thermal image – that’s where pilot experience comes in.
What’s included in the Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced drone kit?
The Mavic 2 Pro and Zoom are familiar to many, and the M2EA is built on the same drone body. Added to the standard Mavic 2 are a thermal camera, a 48MP 32x magnification daylight camera, the ability to attach different modules, an automatically warming battery, the DJI Pilot app, a carrying case and a Smart Controller.
The Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced is the only DJI drone available with Smart Controller (SC) only. SC stands for built-in screen instead of the traditional phone remote control. This has a number of advantages: the battery lasts longer, the battery doesn’t die in the cold, the screen is brighter for flying in the sun, the app is more stable, the remote is more comfortable to hold, it’s quicker to set the drone from zero, no one calls in, you can use your phone at the same time, more buttons on the remote and much more.
Under what conditions does a thermal imaging camera work?
Poor conditions:
- The swim reduces the range of visibility. You can see a bit more in the fog with a thermal than with a normal camera, but still a very thick fog prevents ca. 100+ meters away.
- Contrary to popular belief, if the object is behind something, you cannot see through it with a thermo. You can’t see through glass, for example.
- When the sun heats the ground, stones, tree trunks, asphalt, etc., it is difficult to distinguish smaller objects (people in the forest, animals) from the rest of the environment. This rule does not apply to solar panel monitoring – more sun is always better.
- Viewing from a distance of more than 100 metres. It is true that a car with a hot engine can be seen from 500m away and a person from about 250m, but in most situations it is difficult to see from more than 100m and requires a pilot with a great deal of experience to identify the object immediately.
Good conditions:
- Sunrise/sunset is a good condition when the sun hasn’t yet managed to warm the ground and it’s the perfect light to detect anything with a normal camera.
- At night, you can see very well with a thermal imaging camera and only a normal camera can’t see anything in the dark. At night, the ground is usually cooler and smaller objects are easier to see because the difference between the temperature of a warm object and a cold object is greater.
- Observing from a distance of less than 100m will generally give the desired result and will also detect smaller heat sources – this is not the case for large and clearly distinguishable objects such as cars, groups of people, tents, campfires, etc.
What is the M2EA’s capacity in numbers?
Droon:
- Weight: 909 g
- Size: 322×242×84 mm (unfolded)
- Maximum speed: 72 km/h
- Maximum altitude: 500 m (limited by software)
- Operating frequency: 2.400-2.4835 GHz and 5.725-5.850 GHz
- Internal memory: 24 GB + memory card option
- Flying distance including battery discharge:
In open area: up to 3,5 km
Flying over forest road: up to 1km
Flying in city (Tallinn, Pärnu, Tarju etc.): up to 1,5 km. - Distance flown on a single charge: up to 7km
Thermal camera:
- Resolution: 640×512 px
- Frame rate: 30Hz
- Focal length: 9 mm or 38 mm equivalent
- Measuring range: -40 °C to 150 °C (High Gain) or -40 °C to 550 °C (Low Gain).
- Digital zoom step: 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x
- Photo format: R-JPEG (with location, altitude and temperature information).
- Video format: MP4
Standard camera
- Sensor: 1/2″ CMOS, 48 Mpx
- Focal length: 24 mm equivalent
- Digital magnification: 32x
- Video resolutions: 3840×2160@30fps and 1920×1080@30fps
- Photo format: JPEG (with location and altitude information)
- Video format: MP4
Where can I buy DJI thermal drones and how much do they cost?
We try to keep the prices of products sold in the Droon.ee shop as public as possible. Here you will find the products mentioned in the article that are currently in production:
Of course, in case of larger quantities or special cases, we can quote Enterprise products according to the customer. To do this, simply contact us and describe your needs as precisely as possible.
Drones can be purchased from a wide range of online shops, stores and hobby shops, and the physical products are generally the same everywhere. The difference comes in the warranty, availability of parts, training, customer support, repair, good initial recommendation, etc.
As Droon.ee has been striving for years to provide the best possible support for DJI drones, Droon.ee is also currently the only Estonian company that is officially recognized by DJI as a seller of Enterprise products. This gives us the opportunity to deal with DJI Enterprise drones directly in cooperation with DJI, cutting out all the middlemen. We can only be grateful to our loyal partners and private customers!
If you are interested in any of our products or would like more information on how to use a drone in your field, please contact us at info@droon.ee or call +372 5835 1267. If you missed an important question in the article, please send your question to silver@droon.ee and we will try to correct the mistake.