Thermal cameras mounted to drones are becoming ever more popular, however, there is a significant difference in the levels of quality offered, which has a major impact on the data that can be gathered.
Some of the cheaper drones and cameras give a very blurry and distorted image, making inspection work difficult if not impossible, but the high-end equipment, as you would expect gives excellent results.
"What can a thermal camera show you?"
This question is best answered with some sample images and a few things we have found recently:
The first image we are going to look at shows quite clearly a missing window in a façade inspection, although you would be able to see the missing window with the standard RGB camera the thermal camera assists in making the missing window stand out in the image a lot clearer, which in turn makes our job easier and faster.
The second image we will look at shows three large pools of water on an overhanging residential roof, the client contacted us as they were struggling to identify a leak in this area.
The use of a drone mounted thermal imaging equipment allowed these locations to be identified, the underlying leak found and fixed before it caused any more damage.
The third and final image we are going to look at is one most people will be familiar with. Drone thermal inspections of solar panels are becoming the industry go to method, with the ability to cover large areas faster while removing the risk to an inspector and delivering stand out results, it is clear to see why.
The image is from a commercial property with an aging solar system installed, one of the panels in the image from the flight controller shows that the spot temperature is at 82.7°C way above the normal operating range.
There are still many other issues and observations from a thermal drone inspection we could talk about such as overheating air conditioners, fans, switch boards and so on. But for now that is all until the next time.
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