okay so this is a bit of a weird one. we have a project coming up where the client wants us to fly a multispectral sensor that is decidedly not a DJI camera. its a micasense altum-pt and i know people use that on other platforms all the time but the question is whether the inspire 3's gimbal interface is going to cooperate at all or if we're basically just deadweighting it somehow.

the total payload with the altum and its sunlight sensor is sitting around 480g which should be fine for the aircraft itself, the inspire 3 is rated to handle the X9 series gimbals which are not light, but the integration side is what im worried about. has anyone actually tried running a third party payload on an inspire 3 or are we better off just putting this on the M300 like we normally would for sensor work. the client specifically asked for the inspire because they saw it on another project and liked how it looked i guess, which is not a technical reason but here we are

the M300 is going to be the right answer here honestly. the Inspire 3 gimbal port is locked to DJI's own cameras, theres no open payload API like you get with the M300/M350 through the Payload SDK. you CAN physically mount something underneath but you lose all the stabilization and camera control integration, its basically just a flying bracket at that point. for multispectral survey work that gimbal stabilization matters a lot for your data quality too depending on altitude and speed.

if the client wants the inspire aesthetic for some shots and the sensor data separately that's a two-aircraft job and you should price it accordingly

yeah what the guy above said about the SDK situation is correct. ive messed around with third party stuff on older inspire 1 bodies years ago and even then it was janky. the M300 with psdk is just purpose built for exactly this use case, the inspire is really a cinema platform first and everything else is kind of fighting the design. tbh if the client is asking for inspire specifically because of how it looks on set thats kind of a red flag that someone made a decision without fully understanding what the mission actually requires lol