right so this has been an ongoing thing for a few months and im finally just asking here because ive gotten nowhere googling it

we do inspection work and the client wants thermal alongside the standard RGB and someone on our team had the idea of rigging a FLIR Boson to a custom 3D printed mount on the underside of the Inspire 2 ? not replacing the Zenmuse, running it alongside on a fixed mount pointing roughly nadir

the weight is fine, the Boson itself is like 18 grams and even with the mount and cabling were well within the total payload budget. the issue is the vibration. even with some dampening foam in the mount the thermal footage has this low frequency wobble that makes it really hard to use for anything precise, like we're trying to do heat loss mapping on building envelopes and the wobble means the overlay registration is off

has anyone done anything like this on an Inspire? im wondering if the issue is the mount flex or if its actually airframe vibration coming through and if theres a way to properly isolate it. thought about a small ball head style dampener but not sure what to use

the issue is almost certainly prop wash harmonics coming through the airframe ? 3D printed mounts are notoriously bad at this even with foam because the material resonates at specific frequencies. what you want is something like sorbothane isolators, not foam. foam compresses too easily and doesnt actually absorb the right frequency range for multirotor vibration. sorbothane is what a lot of custom payload guys use and you can tune it by varying the durometer rating based on your payload weight

also where exactly on the frame are you mounting? if its anywhere near the landing gear attachment points youre basically on a node for vibration transmission. centering it as close to the battery bay as possible gives you the most structurally stable point on the airframe

we did somethig similar on an M600 for a survey client not the inspire but i imagine the principles are the same. ended up using a gimbal stabilizer ? a tiny 2 axis one meant for action cams ? and it made a huge difference for the thermal. obiously adds weight and complexity but for precision mapping work it was worth it. the Boson is light enough that even with a small stabilizer youre probably still fine on payload

the registration drift thing is a real pain though even with stabilized footage you might still need to do some post processing alignment with your RGB reference layer depending on how tight the tolerances need to be