New Thermal Imaging Software Helps Drone Operators Keep It Cool
Emily Pollock posted on June 19, 2018 | | 140 views
A building in Thermal Live Map view. (Image courtesy of DroneDeploy.)
Drone software company DroneDeploy recently announced the launch of its Thermal Live Map, a thermal mapping tool that allows drone operators to see temperature variability on the ground in realtime. The tool joins the company’s recently released Live Map, which performs the same kind of real-time data transfer for visible-spectrum light.
Previous thermal imaging software was generally low resolution and relied on post-flight analysis of the images. Ryan Moret, southern regional field solutions manager for McCarthy Building Companies, had been lobbying DroneDeploy to release a tool like this one for almost a year. “You have countless solar panels. You fly the thermal camera over, and maybe you break it down into a grid,” said Moret describing the situation to Engineering News-Record. “Every time you find an abnormality, you mark it on a plan to give context of where the photo was taken—and do it all day long sitting in the desert working on snapshots, using whatever markup tool we have.”
With Thermal Live Map, drone operators can get live thermal footage from their drones streamed directly to their smartphones, without needing an SD card or an Internet connection. The display is colorcoded to show temperatures, and operators can view both the data as it’s…