weird one maybe but here goes. we have an Inspire 2 that we use pretty regularly and a client has come to us with this project where they want to carry a custom hyperspectral sensor for some agricultural survey work. the sensor itself isnt that heavy, think its around 400g with the housing we built for it, but obviously its not designed to mount to the Zenmuse interface.

ive been going back and forth on whether to just fabricate a static mount that bolts to the camera port or if there's some third party adapter situation out there that people are using. the I2s max takeoff weight is 4.25kg and with the drone itself and batteries we've got headroom, its more about how to actually attach the thing without voiding everything and also without it becoming a liability if something shakes loose.

has anyone done custom payload work on an Inspire 2 specifically? i know the M series are more the go-to for this kind of thing but we already have the I2 and the client timeline is tight so buying different hardware isnt really on the table right now. any thoughts or if you've seen anyone do similar stuff id love to know what approach they took.

yeah we did something similar a while back, not hyperspectral but we were mounting a custom lidar unit to an I2 for some infrastructure inspection work. what we ended up doing was fabricating an aluminum plate that clamped around the lower chassis ? not using the Zenmuse port at all because that interface is designed for DJI gimbals and actively communicates with the flight controller, hanging something dumb off it can cause weird behavior we found out the hard way.

the clamp approach worked fine, just make sure your center of gravity is still close to where it should be. the I2 handles small CG shifts okay but if your sensor housing is asymmetric at all you'll feel it in the yaw authority and in windy conditions it becomes a real issue. id also think about vibration isolation seriously, hyperspectral sensors can be sensitive and the I2 vibrates more than youd think at certain RPM ranges especially during transitions.

honestly for ag survey work the M300 or even M30 would be so much better suited for this kind of integration but i get it if you're locked into the I2 for now. one thing to watch ? i dont think DJI supports any of the payload SDK stuff on the Inspire 2, that was kind of an M-series only thing so youre on your own as far as the flight controller knowing anything about what youre carrying. just means you gotta be extra careful about preflight checks and not expecting any intelligent assist features to compensate for the extra weight properly