okay so this might be a dumb question but i genuinely cant find a straight answer anywhere. working on a project where the director wants a specific thermal imaging sensor integrated alongside the X7 for some industrial inspection crossover content, its a weird brief but the budget is there so whatever.

the official payload spec on the inspire 2 is 1.3kg with the gimbal included and the third party thermal unit we're looking at is light but adding any kind of custom mount bracket starts pushing things. im not trying to void warranties or anything im just trying to understand where the actual margin is. like has anyone flown this thing slightly over spec and how does it behave, does it just get sluggish or does it do something weirder.

the integrator we talked to was kind of vague about it, said 'it depends' a lot which is not super helpful when im trying to quote a job.

the 'it depends' answer is annoying but its also kind of true unfortunately. ive done some heavier setups on the i2 for inspection work and what you notice first is the climb rate and max speed both drop off noticeably before anything scary happens. the flight controller is actually pretty conservative about protecting the motors so it wont just keel over, but your flight time tanks and in windy conditions it gets harder to hold position cleanly. how much wind are you expecting on this job?

id honestly do a ground test with the actual assembled payload before committing to a quote. weigh everything including cables and connectors because those add up, and just hover it in a safe environment and see how it feels. the bird will tell you if its not happy.

thermal plus X7 on the same inspire 2 rig sounds like a pain in terms of data managment too honestly. are they expecting both streams recorded simultaneously or is thermal just for monitoring on set? because if its the latter you might be able to simplify the mount situation and keep the weight down. just a thought, might be worth clarifying with the director before you go deep on the hardware side.