bit of a weird one. im working with a survey company and they want to mount a multispectral sensor on an Inspire 2 that isnt in the DJI ecosystem, not a Zenmuse, just a third party unit they already own. the sensor itself is fairly light, probably under 1kg with the housing, but obviously the I2 gimbal mount is designed around the Zenmuse bayonet system and doesnt just accept random stuff.

ive seen some people fabricating custom mounting plates that use the gimbal port for power and just hard mount the sensor without any stabilization from the gimbal, relying on the aircraft stability and post processing to handle the rest. for multispectral mapping thats probably fine since you dont need cinematic smoothness, you just need consistent nadir shots at low speed.

anyone actually done a custom non-Zenmuse payload on an I2 and can tell me what i'm dealing with in terms of the gimbal port pinout, whether DJI will absolutely void everything, and if the aircraft handling changes noticably with a rigid non-gimbaled mass hanging off the front. the weight distribution on these things seems pretty sensitive

yeah we did something similar about two years ago for an ag client, wasnt multispectral but a thermal unit that wasnt a Zenmuse. used a custom machined adapter plate that bolted to the gimbal bayonet without actually connecting to the gimbal electronics, just used it as a mechanical attachment point. pulled power from the payload port separately with a custom harness and it worked fine for what we needed.

handling wise the I2 is pretty forgiving as long as youre within the weight limit and the CG isnt completely off. the aircraft will compensate a lot. where you feel it is in windy conditions, rigid mounts transmit more vibration into the footage obviously but for mapping data thats a non issue like you said. DJI assistant wont know the difference unless you connect with a Zenmuse attached, and honestly the voidng of warranty ship sailed a long time ago on our I2 anyway

the gimbal port pinout has been documented in a few places, check the developer forums and the dji sdk github, someone mapped it out years ago. i can try to dig up the thread if you cant find it

not exactly the same but we looked into doing this for LiDAR on an I2 and ended up just going with a dedicated mapping platform instead because the integration headaches werent worth it for our workflow. if the survey company already owns the sensor and the I2 is what you have then sure it makes sense, but if youre starting from scratch the math on a proper survey drone might be closer than it looks once you add up the custom hardware time