this might be a dumb question but here goes. we have an Inspire 2 that we use for our standard aerial work but theres been talk internally about whether we could use it for some light sensor payload stuff - specifically a multispectral sensor for some agricultural survey work we got asked to quote on. the Zenmuse lineup doesnt really have what we need for that application and im wondering if anyone has tried hanging a third party sensor off an Inspire 2 in any kind of practical way.

i know the gimbal mount is proprietary and the whole TB50 power delivery situation means you cant just bolt stuff on easily. but ive seen some cursory mentions of adapter plates and passthrough setups online and wanted to know if anyones actually done it or if this is one of those things that looks possible on paper and then becomes a nightmare.

total payload capacity on the Inspire 2 with a full battery setup is what, like 1kg above the camera weight roughly? the sensor we're looking at is around 400g so physically it should be fine if we can solve the mounting problem. flight time hit is going to hurt but thats acceptable for survey work.

yeah this is genuinely tricky with the Inspire 2. the CAN bus integration that DJI uses for the Zenmuse stuff isnt open so youre not getting any real communication between a third party payload and the aircraft systems. ive seen people use static mount adapters that attach at the gimbal interface but then you lose all the stabilization obviously and youre essentially just hard-mounting the sensor to the airframe which for multispectral survey work might actually be okay depending on what youre doing.

there are some third party gimbal adapters that claim Inspire 2 compatibility, i forget the brand, something out of europe i think, but i never used one personally so i cant say how solid they are in practice. for serious survey work though honestly you might be better off on a platform that was designed for payload flexibility from the start - matrice series exists for exactly this reason and the payload SDK situation is a lot more open.

we tried something similar a while back, different sensor but same basic problem. ended up being more trouble than it was worth on the Inspire 2 and we eventually just rented a Matrice 300 for those jobs. the Inspire is a cinema tool at heart and fighting against that for survey stuff felt like the wrong battle to pick. clients for that kind of work dont care what the aircraft looks like anyway they just want the data.