Adding Thermal Imaging to Your Drone Without Breaking the Bank

In recent years, drones have become increasingly popular for a variety of applications, from recreational use to commercial purposes such as surveying and inspection. One area where drones can be particularly useful is in thermal imaging, allowing users to capture high-quality images of their surroundings with minimal equipment.

Fortunately, there are some good hackers out there that figured out the FlirOne USB interface and were kind enough to publish the driver for Linux using Video-For-Linux (V4L2). The FlirOne is designed to work with Android devices, but strapping a phone or android device to your drone isn't very practical compared to using a Raspberry PI. I ended up mounting both the FlirOne and the PI Camera on a 3D printed dummy GoPro using 2-Axis Gimbals.

The FlirOne has an HD camera built in that works perfectly well if you can stand the low frame rate. In my design, I've added a third camera, a Raspberry PI 2 Cam, which has a much higher frame rate for FPV viewing in flight. However, this is not necessary unless you want a higher frame rate.

This thermal imaging camera has a resolution of 160x120 with a frame rate of 10fps. The FlirOne camera actually has two cameras: the thermal imaging camera and an HD (1440x1080) camera for mixing the thermal images with the background.

I chose to use a quad copter as my drone platform, which was 3D printed using the printer files available here. However, this design can be adapted to any drone, whether it's a quad copter or a fixed-wing UAV. My blog will describe how to add thermal imaging to your drone without breaking the bank.

In the above photo, you can see my drone equipped with the thermal imaging camera and the FlirOne device, which is an inexpensive, lightweight thermal imaging camera designed for Android or iPhone devices. You can also view a flight test of this setup here.

Overall, adding thermal imaging to your drone doesn't have to be expensive or complicated. With the right equipment and some creativity, you can create a high-quality thermal imaging system that won't break the bank.

Thermal imaging camera drone