Integrat(ed) a FLIR (Vue Pro) to a (3DR Solo)

[stevenrs11]

So I have been tossing around ideas for aerial thermal imaging ever since I purchased a drone. Existing solutions are either professional end user products (10k+), overpriced low resolution sensors (lepton), or diy-ish aftermarket modifications that generally attach a fixed boson to a DJI product and stream video to a separate receiver.

Now, I have an actual need to fly a thermal camera so its time to do this (if possible).

What I want/hope is possible- Replace the existing camera in a DJI Mavic with a Boson core, keeping the original gimbal intact and streaming video to the native DJI smartphone app.

I currently own a DJI Mavic pro, and the boson core will physically fit to the gimbal, and with the 13.8mm lens the boson is only slightly heavier.

The question is, can the boson be configured to output video using the same method/format as the original camera? I know very little about camera/imaging specific electronics, but it seems that most of these small cameras use similar industry standard outputs. I imagine this will be a case of "yes, they just happen to be able to speak to each other" or "no, and there is no simple way to do it". I can purchase a damaged DJI camera/gimbal assembly that I will take apart before I hack away at my mavic.

I have experience with microcontrollers, small electronics (I prototyped a BLE ultrasonic rangefinder iphone dongle recently), have access to plenty of fabrication equipment, and have a flexible budget of ~3K.

If its not possible with the mavic, I may look at other drones that can use a gopro or even build a drone around the boson, but the mavic (or mavic 2) is so perfectly suited to my application that its worth trying to adapt it.

[Dianyang]

hi, in my opinion, Boson can not be mounted on Mavic, since they have different interface.

Boson is a standard core, normally is LVDS, LVCOMS etc. interface, but DJI use their own CAN protocol, so they can not easily communicate, the camera which can be mounted on DJI's UAV should support DJI's CAN protocol.

[Hyper_Spectral]

You're better off setting up some sort of auto-capture with local storage than trying to translate protocols. Especially considering the fact that DJI is a toy drone manufacturer. I get your motivation, but as someone who works in the sUAS industry and has a decade of experience, you're not going to get this to work without serious effort and time.

Notice how little information there is online about using DJI's gimbal interface

[Vipitis]

As far as I understand the requirements it's for hunting and exploration so it needs a live downstream. Going with a old Vue instead of a new Boson allows to use the core built for carrier application. But sadly it needs a larger platform and that does not meet the requirements that well.

[Hyper_Spectral]

OP, you can find tx/rx for just about any video output out there and simply stick the thing to the mavic if you want 

I wouldn't want to do this unless you're really tearing into the mavic to integrate it like the solution provided by DJI, though.

$4200 for the package isn't too bad so the 320 plus mount should be wayyy cheaper than the $10-$12k tau 2 integrations

[TooQik]

I've only taken a cursory look at this link, but you might find some helpful information here:



[Edit] - after looking at the video and reading the information they've posted on the YouTube video, they actually have a kit you can buy to mount the Boson on the Mavic:

https://www.suas.com/product-page/vuir-boson-smart-thermal-vision-system-for-dji-mavic

[Hyper_Spectral]

Yep not surprised that package exists

[Bill W]

Both DJI kit and FLIR Boson run on Intel Movidius video processor.

https://www.movidius.com/news/intel-movidius-myriad-2-vpu-enables-advanced-computer-vision-and-deep-learn
https://www.flir.co.uk/news-center/press-releases/flir-systems-announces-industry-first-deep-learning-enabled-camera-family/
http://investors.flir.com/news-releases/news-release-details/flir-releases-high-resolution-thermal-camera-development-kit-0

Bill

[stevenrs11]

Thanks for all the info! I had looked at that kit before, the problem is it uses a separate transmitter/etc for the thermal. Ends up reducing flight time pretty significantly, and looses most of the user friendliness and portability that makes the mavic work so well.

Due to advice from a forum member here, I ended up getting a vue pro 640 used. I mounted it to a 3dr solo (200usd!), which is designed to work with a gopro via HDMI. That worked literally the first time I plugged it in. Its flying on a fixed mount at the moment, but I plan on using a tarot gimbal thats designed for the vue once it comes in. Attaching the vue to the solo gopro gimbal is probably possible, but plug and play is nice.

These drone platforms are so tightly integrated that making them do *anything* they are not meant to do is very hard ive learned. Even getting telemetry over mavlink from the pixhawk controller in the solo to the vue was difficult, and those are designed to work together!

[Hyper_Spectral]

Good work. You've figured out the absolute state of the industry 

But succeeded regardless 

[stevenrs11]

So, I figured an update is due. I did eventually get the Vue Pro on a 3 axis tarot gimbal, controlled correctly with all original 3DR Solo hardware. Took just a little tinkering, but I've been flying it for several years now with no issue.

Probably one of, if not the cheapest way to get good quality thermal footage from the air. All in, less than 3K for 640 res, 30hz, 15 min flight time, 2km range.

*happy face*

[stevenrs11]

So, here is a short video from the camera-

https://youtu.be/03JCv0EfwXg

I still need to fiddle with the settings a bit but looking good!

[cynfab]

Very nice video, This reminds me of my attempt at a 3DR Solo Flir combo that I did 6 years ago, I used a Flir One Gen 2 and a small SBC running linux and gstreamer to generate an HDMI stream that the Solo could use.

My first flight of the system.


I was later able to modify the Solo internal CPU to do the same thing (no external SBC required) However it took well over 1/2 the CPU power and I was uncomfortable robbing the Solo of that much processing power. Project sort of abandoned. The Solo linux kernel needed to be brought up to a much newer rev to enable a newer rev of gstreamer to reduce the CPU load. Never got around to it ;>(