okay so this is probably a bit of a weird one but bear with me. we have an Inspire 1 that mostly sits on a shelf now since we upgraded the rest of our fleet, and i've been thinking about whether theres a way to use it as a payload testbed for a custom sensor setup we're trying to get airborne. the standard Zenmuse mount is fine but were not trying to use a Zenmuse, were trying to hang a small multispectral unit off it that has its own stabilization built in.

the quick release on the I1 is proprietary obviously and the data connection through the axle is part of how the whole retracting gear system works so im not even sure you can just bypass it cleanly. has anyone modded the undercarriage or used a third party adapter plate that let them get a non-DJI payload on there without it just throwing errors constantly. i know some survey companies were doing stuff like this a few years back but i cant find much documentation that isnt completely out of date

yeah a few survey outfits were doing exactly this around 2017-2018, there was a company making adapter plates that basically spoofed the gimbal handshake so the aircraft wouldn't freak out about the missing Zenmuse connection. cant remember who it was off the top of my head, might have been a UK company. the problem is the I1 airframe wasnt really designed with payload flexibility in mind so your weight distribution has to be really close to what the stock setup expected or you get weird handling at low speeds.

if the multispectral unit has its own stab you also have to think about vibration isolation because the I1 motors are not exactly silky smooth and that'll mess with your sensor data regardless of onboard stabilization.

wouldnt it just be easier to put that payload on a purpose built survey platform at this point? like an M300 or even one of the cheaper hexes. the Inspire 1 airframe is getting pretty long in the tooth and you're going to spend a lot of time fighting the proprietary stuff when you could just have a platform that was designed to take third party payloads from the start. just my two cents, i know it's not the answer you were looking for