curious what people are actually doing with thermal cameras on drones outside of the obvious stuff like roof inspections and powerline surveys. ive got access to a FLIR Vue Pro R through work and we barely use it for anything creative. started thinking about wildlife monitoring stuff but im not sure the resolution is really there for anything useful, its 640x512 which sounds okay but at any real altitude the thermal signature of a deer or whatever is pretty small.

also wondering how people are handling the gimbal side of things for thermal, most of the mounts i see for FLIR units are basically just shock isolation plates rather than actual stabilization. wondering if thats good enough or if anybody has figured out a proper 3-axis solution for the vue series. the radiometric data is useless if the image is blurry from vibration i would think.

search and rescue teams use thermal quite a bit and not just professionally, some volunteer groups have built their own setups around the Vue Pro. the resolution thing is real but you compensate by flying lower and doing systematic grid patterns. a warm body shows up really well even at 60-80m AGL honestly, deer are a bit harder because their temp differential isnt as dramatic as a human but still detectable. the shock mount question is interesting though, most people doing serious work do run active 2-axis at minimum. theres a couple guys over on the RCGroups forum who built custom mounts for the Vue using Gremsy and DJI Ronin internals.

we used one for a film project last year, looking for heat signatures in an abandoned factory at night for this sort of documentary thing. the directer wanted the thermal look aestheticly not just for information. honestly the footage was incredible for that purpose but the vibration issue you mentioned is real, we were getting a lot of wobble in the image because the shock plate wasnt cutting it on our platform. ended up having to do a lot of stabilization in post which kind of defeats the purpose when youre trying to preserve the radiometric data. if i did it again id budget for a proper gimbal solution from the start rather than trying to hack something together.