this might be a weird question but im working on a project that needs multispectral imaging from a crewed aerial platform and we've been going back and forth on whether to use the Inspire 2 with a custom mount versus just going straight to a dedicated mapping drone. the Inspire 2's payload bay is obviously designed around the Zenmuse line and DJI doesnt make it easy to mount anything that doesnt talk to their gimbal interface.

we did some tests with a passive mount bolted to a modified quick release plate and it works but the CG shift is noticeable and we had to retune the IMU settings manually to compensate. flight characteristics are fine but im not totally confident in the thermal management since we're basically blocking part of the underside airflow. anyone gone down this road or is this the kind of thing where you just bite the bullet and use a Matrice for proper third party payload support

yeah dont do that, the Matrice line exists exactly for this reason. i spent way too long trying to bodge a Workswell thermal camera onto an Inspire 2 for an infrastructure inspection contract and it was just one headache after another. the SDK payload interface on the M300 and M350 is actually properly documented and the payload weight and balance envelope is designed to accomodate real third party gear. the Inspire 2 is a cinema bird, trying to turn it into a survey platform is kind of asking the wrong tool to do the wrong job.

we actually pulled this off for a vineyard health monitoring project but it was genuinely more work than it was worth. had to write a custom script to log the multispectral data timestamps against the GPS from the RC controller because there was no direct integration obviously. it flew fine once we sorted the balance but every time we updated the Inspire 2 firmware we had to retest everything from scratch because DJI has a habit of changing flight dynamics in updates without really documenting what changed. ended up migrating to an M300 RTK about halfway through the season and never looked back. the payload SDK on that thing is a completely different world.