bit of a half baked idea here but bear with me. ive got access to an Inspire 2 through work and theres a project coming up that would really benefit from either multispectral imaging or a lightweight lidar pass over some agricultural land, about 60 acres. the standard Zenmuse lineup obviously doesnt cover that use case and i know the I2 wasnt really designed with open payload integration in mind the way something like the M300 or M350 was, but the airframe is solid and the flight time is decent enough for the area we need to cover if we plan it right.

has anyone actually rigged a third party sensor to an Inspire 2, im thinking about how you'd even handle the data link and power if you bypassed the gimbal port entirely and just physically mounted something. or is this just not worth the headache and i should be pushing the client toward renting an M300 with a proper lidar payload like the Zenmuse L1 which actually makes sense for this use case but is also significantly more expensive to get in the air.

yeah the Inspire 2 is kind of a dead end for this kind of thing, the gimbal interface isnt open in any meaningful way and even if you physically bolted something to the frame you'd have no integration with the flight controller for triggering or data logging. ive seen people do janky gopro mounts on Inspires for oblique photography but that's a far cry from a calibrated multispectral sensor. the M300 with the L1 is genuinely the right tool if lidar is actually required, or even the P4 Multispectral if they just need NDVI data over the ag land, that thing is stupidly capable for the price and the DJI Terra workflow for the outputs is pretty solid.

honestly the P4 Multispectral suggestion above is probably your answer for the ag use case. we used one last summer for a vineyard survey and the NDVI outputs were exactly what the agronomist needed. the Inspire doing lidar just sounds like a lot of pain for no real gain when the M300 ecosystem exists specifically for that. also 60 acres isnt that big, the P4M would knock that out in one or two batteries with proper waypoint planning.