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View Full Version : Thermal imaging drone?



utahjeepr
03-04-21, 10:25
To pile on with more nightlarper stuff. Does anyone have first hand experience with drones running thermal? I didn't know this was available on the consumer market. The military apps are obvious, but the LEO, SAR, and civil/sportsman applications seem pretty huge.

I so gotta get me one of these. Email inbound to my CPA to query writing one off as a livestock/nuisance animal management tool.

Would love to hear any experience!

Eurodriver
03-04-21, 10:28
Email inbound to my CPA to query writing one off as a livestock/nuisance animal management tool.


Shouldn’t be an issue assuming you have an actual schedule C business that owns livestock.

B Cart
03-04-21, 10:48
Our SAR team has worked with drone teams a few times on searches and body recoveries, and I believe they had some drone thermal capabilities. I know the heli pilots we work with use NV and Thermal when we're searching at night, and I take my personal thermal unit on SAR callouts, but it would be awesome to have a drone with thermal!

We were searching for a lost hiker on the top of a snowy mountain ridge 2 nights ago, and the hiker was in a cluster of trees so the heli pilots couldn't see her with their NV. She was eventually able to turn on her flashlight so the pilots could spot her, but thermal would have been much quicker. I can spot deer and elk in pretty thick trees with my thermal, that you can't see with the normal eye.

It's definitely game changing tech, and i think drone mounted thermal with video, could offer pretty cool capabilities to LEO/SAR and even civvy applications.

monkeywrench
03-05-21, 13:28
We use thermal drones at my work. Looking for hot spots on power poles. There are different levels of thermal cameras. The drone is not as good as our handheld thermal cameras.

I use a thermal camera every day.