Thermal Drone FOV Calculator - Drone Project

Gman757

Active member
I am in the process of setting up a thermal drone for locating hogs at night in open fields because the crops are getting up now and they are hard to locate without elevation.

I ran across this thermal FOV calculator for thermal drone cameras when I was doing research and I thought if might be of use to some of the guys out there trying to decide about lens size with relation to FOV.

Distances are in feet.

https://www.oemcameras.com/fov_tool

https://www.oemcameras.com/thermal-imaging-cameras/thermal-imaging-cores/flir-boson-series.htm
 
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That would be plum neat to have a thermal drone. If or when you get one, it will be very interesting to see video.
 
I looked into a thermal drone too.

I finally gave up on the idea when I read the noise from the drones (even the mavic platinum) scares off coyotes and deer several hundred feet up in the air, but it doesnt bother pigs.
 
Originally Posted By: Mr. PoppadopalisI hope you have a really quiet drone!

My drone spooked the cattle and it was about 200’ above them.

I have a Mavic Pro

That's the main concern...... Which lens size to get for the camera so that I can ID the hogs far enough away to not spook them but still have a good FOV.

I also have the Mavic Pro and I installed the quiet props that are used on the Platinum. I did some noise testing today and it seems that somewhere around 150' vertical and horizontal and 200' vertical and horizontal was not too bad. The horizontal distance seemed to be an important factor to reduce noise more so than altitude.

Which camera and lens did you try?

I am thinking of going with Boson camera and the 6.3mm lens with a 34 degree FOV or the 9.1 mm with the 24 degree FOV. It will be trial and error with the noise issue.


 
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Originally Posted By: capitolI looked into a thermal drone too.

I finally gave up on the idea when I read the noise from the drones (even the mavic platinum) scares off coyotes and deer several hundred feet up in the air, but it doesnt bother pigs.

I might have to get a bigger lens so I can ID from far enough away to keep the noise level down. I will find out how it affects the coyotes also because I see them frequently when I go hog hunting on farmland. If it is near the end of the night for hog hunting we call them in and shoot them.
 
Even with a hunter mkiii with 60mm lens positive id might be 150-200 yards??? Theres no civilian drone thats going to lift that big of a payload.

The few thermal drone cameras that I found are in the 19mm range. Yes, that will tell you something is there, but getting close enough to get a PID is going to be an issue before theyre spooked.
 
Originally Posted By: capitolEven with a hunter mkiii with 60mm lens positive id might be 150-200 yards??? Theres no civilian drone thats going to lift that big of a payload.

The few thermal drone cameras that I found are in the 19mm range. Yes, that will tell you something is there, but getting close enough to get a PID is going to be an issue before theyre spooked.


I have been scanning with the Trijicon M300 19mm for several years now and I can tell a hog from a deer from several hundred yards in most cases. The 12 micron core makes the digital zoom much more usable when needed. Sounders of hogs in open fields are usually lower profile targets bunched together. The deer in the field have a higher profile unless they are bedded down and they don't usually bunch up to feed..... they are more spread out. Coyotes move differently than hogs and other vermin like skunks, armadillos and possums just look like small targets that move very little. Let me qualify this by saying I can "detect" well enough to make a decision as whether to start a stalk or not but i never shoot at any targets that I cannot ID with my Trijicon 35mm Mark III as a hog or coyote.

That being said, the M300 has a 640 core as apposed to the 320 Boson core. I have decided to go with a 13.8mm lens so that I can keep the drone at a further distance from the fields and hopefully still be able to see well enough to ID targets or at least ease the drone in close enough to get more pixels on the target when needed without spooking the hogs. The major issue right now is that the cotton and peanut crops are getting high enough to make locating the hogs very difficult.

I am also going to use a controllable gimbal for camera stabilization and a touchscreen so that I can control the Boson camera.....pan/tilt/zoom/change thermal color pallets, etc. I will try to wring out as much performance as I can from the Boson 320.

In any case the thermal will be used to see if there is anything out there that is viable enough to stalk for further evaluation. As of now there are a lot of unknowns but it should be a fun project and I will find out if the thermal drone setup is usable for my terrain and hunting style.

And..........I will be using 3 different screens when flying this rig so it may end up in the top of a tree before I kill my first hog with it.
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Imo, i would go with VR goggles and ull need several battery packs. Other than that, this should work out fine for u. Just like IDing animals with a thermal from the ground, from the air will get easier as u become more exp. with it. In time ull be able to tell a sounder of hogs from deer and other animals real easy. Ive got a friend of a friend that uses a thermal drone, and has been for about a year, amd it takes him no time to launch it and scan a field to figure out if there is anything there worth looking at. In the beginning he was very slow and it seemed like it took him forever to just scan one field and now he can do it in a matter of just a few minutes with very little flight time.

In my experience when it comes to thermal, time spent behind the thermal looking at animals is some of the most valuable experience you can gain. Nothing replaces just time spent behind the thermal looking through it. So the thermal drone will end up being the same exact way the more time you spend with it the better you'll get
 
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Originally Posted By: Kevinfarmer3456Ive got a friend of a friend that uses a thermal drone, and has been for about a year, amd it takes him no time to launch it and scan a field to figure out if there is anything there worth looking at. In the beginning he was very slow and it seemed like it took him forever to just scan one field and now he can do it in a matter of just a few minutes with very little flight time.


Hey Kevin. This is exactly what I am hoping I will be able to do. I have to drive at least 80 miles round trip to hunt so anything that will save me time would be great. Also, a lot of my properties are in the same general area so I could cover more of them by just checking several of them at different times with the drone and not having to commit my time to just a couple of locations on any given night. In a few hours I could check numerous fields without having to drive in or drop my 4 wheeler.

In addition to my feeders and crop fields I have three 800 acre tracts and two 1000 acre tracts that are hard to cover because of their size.

 
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Originally Posted By: Gman757Originally Posted By: Kevinfarmer3456Ive got a friend of a friend that uses a thermal drone, and has been for about a year, amd it takes him no time to launch it and scan a field to figure out if there is anything there worth looking at. In the beginning he was very slow and it seemed like it took him forever to just scan one field and now he can do it in a matter of just a few minutes with very little flight time.


Hey Kevin. This is exactly what I am hoping I will be able to do. I have to drive at least 80 miles round trip to hunt so anything that will save me time would be great. Also, a lot of my properties are in the same general area so I could cover more of them by just checking several of them at different times with the drone and not having to commit my time to just a couple of locations on any given night. In a few hours I could check numerous fields without having to drive in or drop my 4 wheeler.

In addition to my feeders and crop fields I have three 800 acre tracts and two 1000 acre tracts that are hard to cover because of their size.

just be patient with it and give it time. I promise you that it will seem like a waste the first 3-4 months that u use it. But give time...and more importantly, give urself time. Like many things the more u play with this day or night, hunting or just fooling around, the better u will be in a years time. Keep committed to it and this time next year you will see the huge benefits.

What that friend of mine does now is, he laucnhes it from the truck. Goes straight up about 400feet. Does a quick 360, and back down. If theres nothing withing visible range at that altitude, bring it down and drive to a different area. He really never sends it out to scan a field per say unless he spots something that looks good from the 400 ft launch.

If theres nothing visible during the 400 foot altitude launch then it's more beneficial to bring the Drone back down and drive to a different area and relaunch it. You're much more better to do that than to fly the Drone several hundreds of yards away and then wait for it to come back to you. I hope I'm typing this clear enough where you can understand what I mean. You will waste more time flying the Drone to and from an area then you would if you were to just fly it straight up and scan real quick and bring it back down and then drive to a different area and relaunch it.
 
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I am in the process of building myself a drone that I am planning to mount a flir vue pro 640 19mm to for locating coyotes. I have been trolling youtube and have found a few channels with videos with coyotes and hogs.


here is a link to a flir vue pro 640 19mm scouting hogs. Thee video also shows the height of the drone above the hogs. take a look. Mike Baker's youtube channel

here is video from Garret Bryls channel where he is following a pack of coyotes

Please keep us up to date on your progress.
 
Gman

I think the flir vue pro may be a better solution than the boson as the boson does not have built in on-board recording and video streaming like the flir vue pro.

with the vue pro you get the video out cables in the box along with the camera. it also supports mavlink and PWM inputs that allow you to control the camera from the drone radio switches.


just my two cents
 
Originally Posted By: Shaun SimmaGman

I think the flir vue pro may be a better solution than the boson as the boson does not have built in on-board recording and video streaming like the flir vue pro.

with the vue pro you get the video out cables in the box along with the camera. it also supports mavlink and PWM inputs that allow you to control the camera from the drone radio switches.

just my two cents

Thanks Shaun.....I know there are multiple options and if the budget allowed it would be a 640 core with Zenmuse XT and problem solved. However, I am trying to accomplish my goals without spending a ton of money.

I have found a lower cost solution that uses a controllable 3 axis gimbal and includes a control screen for the Boson as well as the VPC module to support remote control functions of the camera. It is a self powered 5.8 GHZ system and also contains a MDVR for video recording and another screen for the thermal display. A big plus is that it is supposed to work on the Mavic Pro drone which I already own and it has a quieter sound footprint than the Inspire or Phantom. You may want to check it out because it is an independent gimbal system and can be used on almost any drone.



https://www.suas.com/product-page/3-axis-gimbal-for-flir-boson-640-320-for-dji-mavic-pro

I am interested in the Boson because it is super light and has a 12 micron pitch which should help the resolution since I am trying to get by with a 320 core and run it on the Mavic Pro.

This is the Boson 320 (60Hz) with a 13.8mm lens. When I get the gimbal system all I need to do is install it on the VPC board.

(It barely weighs more than the quarter)

sqrKJpP.jpg
 
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Thanks Gman. I looked at the video. Wow looks like they have a great solution for the boson core. please update this thread as you make progress in building out your thermal drone. I'd like to see how well the 320 thermal core performs in locating hogs and coyotes.

I too have a limited budget and a DJI out of the box solution with the zenmuse/flir solution blows my budget. my plan is to design and 3d print a gimbal for the flir vue pro that I can mount to my tbs discovery frame.

good luck
 
Originally Posted By: Shaun SimmaThanks Gman. I looked at the video. Wow looks like they have a great solution for the boson core. please update this thread as you make progress in building out your thermal drone. I'd like to see how well the 320 thermal core performs in locating hogs and coyotes.

I too have a limited budget and a DJI out of the box solution with the zenmuse/flir solution blows my budget. my plan is to design and 3d print a gimbal for the flir vue pro that I can mount to my tbs discovery frame.

good luck

Shaun.... the gimbal system in the video is a completely independent self powered system. All you need is a mounting bracket for your drone. Maybe you coukf design one provided your drone has enough lift.

My only concern is that it is an analog video feed instead of digital. Hopefully it won’t make a big difference with the screen resolution since I’m going with the 320 core. It will not have the range of the digital but should be sufficient for my use.

 
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Gman did you have a chance to view the performance of the 13mm 320 lens on the ground yet and what is the quality of the video. you got me re-thinking my plans.

thanks
 
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Originally Posted By: Shaun SimmaGman did you have a chance to view the performance of the 13mm 320 lens on the ground yet and what is the quality of the video. you got me re-thinking my plans.

thanks


Hey Shaun... I shipped my Boson up to 1UAS so they could go ahead and install on the gimbal system and test it before shipping. I never got a chance to see the resolution because I purchased it without a VPC module since they include one in the gimbal package.
 

Update. I got the thermal drone package yesterday and it took a while to get it set up. I set my screens up for night use so I won't be using any type of screen shading devices.

I have not had time to do any flight testing yet.

The top screen is for controlling the camera settings and gimbal, the middle screen is the feed from the thermal camera, the bottom rear unit is the drone controller which sends the drone camera feed and flight data to my iPhone at the bottom front.

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