ok so this is maybe a weird use case but bear with me. we do a fair amount of work in the film industry, not just aerial photography but actual on-set stuff, and someone on a production asked us whether the Inspire 3 could be rigged to drop a small practical pyrotechnic igniter on cue, basically a timed drop mechanism, weight is under 200 grams

now i know DJI doesnt officially support third party payload attachments on the Inspire the same way something like a Gryphon or a Freefly Alta does, but ive seen people cobble together servo-based release mechanisms on the landing gear and it seems like it works for light stuff. the issue im worried about is the effect on flight dynamics and whether the I3's obstacle avoidance gets confused by anything dangling underneath

has anyone actually done payload drops on an Inspire in a professional context, even if it was a bit of a hack job setup. and yes i know the legal/safety side of this is its own whole conversation, we have the permits sorted

we did something similar on a music video shoot, rigged a small servo release to drop confetti over a crowd scene, the mechanism itself was pretty simple, just a 3D printed cradle bolted to the landing leg with a RC-controlled servo triggered through a spare channel. under 150g total and the Inspire 2 flew completely normally, no weird yaw or anything. the obstacle avoidance stuff we just turned off entirely because it was getting triggered by the rig itself during preflight checks which was annoying. probably not the most elegant solution but it worked fine for what it was

on the I3 specifically i cant speak to but i imagine its similar, the platform is stable enough that a small asymmetric load isnt going to cause issues as long as you balance it reasonably

this is the kind of thing i wish DJI would just officially support with a proper payload interface honestly. the Alta 6 and X8 exist for a reason but theyre way overkill and way more expensive if all you need is to hang something small under a camera drone. seems like theres a real gap in the market for a mid-tier cinema drone with actual payload support built in and not just hacked on