Can you use Thermal Imaging in Building Inspections?

Thermal cameras are excellent tools for building analysis; their specially-designed detector picks up on the heat given off by objects, allowing you to easily pinpoint issues with buildings such as moisture damage, poor insulation, repair, and building defects and much more. Better still with a thermal drone, every single angle of the building can be captured and analysed from the ground to the roof, with precision capturing from whatever angle you need.

Missing, damaged, or inadequate insulation, building envelope air leaks, moisture intrusion, and substandard work are costly to residential and commercial building owners. An infrared camera can help you quickly see and find the sources of energy inefficiencies, destructive water damage, and structural issues so you can make informed decisions on needed repairs that can save energy and stay more comfortable.

Thermal Imaging cameras make it easy to perform non-destructive inspections that isolate cold and warm air infiltration/ex-filtration so necessary repairs and improvements can be made to tighten energy efficiency. Thermal Imaging can also instantly show temperature differences that verify what’s wet and what’s dry and offer fast and reliable diagnosing of a full range of building applications, from energy audits and restoration to roofing and commissioning.

Can you use Aerial Thermal Cameras to review high-voltage Infrastructure?

Heat is an important factor in high voltage installations. When electrical current passes through a resistive element, it generates heat. Increased resistance results in an increase in heat. Over time the resistance of electrical connections will increase, due to loosening and corrosion for instance. The corresponding rise in temperature can cause components to fail, resulting in unplanned outages and even injuries. In addition, the energy spent on generating heat causes unnecessary energy losses. If left unchecked, the heat can even rise to the point where connections melt and break down; as a result, fires may break out.

Examples of failures in high-voltage installations that can be detected with thermal imaging:

• Oxidation of high voltage switches
• Overheated connections
• Incorrectly secured connections
• Insulator defects

These and other issues can be spotted at an early stage with a thermal imaging camera. A thermal imaging camera will help you to accurately locate the problem, determine the severity of the problem, and establish the time frame in which the equipment should be repaired.

Thermal Imaging in Search and Rescue

When searching or rescuing injured or missing persons seconds always count. High-sensitive thermal cameras can provide the important minutes required to save lives.

Using our Zenmuse XT Radiometric 640 thermal camera fitted to a drone, we are able to offer search and rescue agencies and services a hire service to complement their existing teams and equipment.

We are able to deploy quickly and efficiently and with our Matrice M600 fitter with the XT we can stay airborne for an amazing 35-40 minutes on a set of batteries.

Can drones be used in Farming and Agriculture?

Thermal Imaging technology is a non-invasive, non-contact, and non-destructive technique used to determine thermal properties and features of any object of interest, and therefore it can be used in precision agriculture farming, where heat is generated or lost across land, crops, and livestock. The potential use of thermal remote sensing in agriculture includes irrigation schedules, plant disease detection, nursery, and greenhouse inspections, fruit yield estimation, evaluating the maturity of fruits and bruise detection in fruits and vegetables.

Crop monitoring for nutrients, water-stress & deployment, disease, insect attack, and overall plant health is a vital aspect of successful agricultural operations. Traditionally this has been carried out by visual examination of crops on the ground or sometimes from the air. However, these methods are limited by the ability of the human eye to discriminate between healthy foliage and foliage suffering various kinds of stress. Often a specific condition must be well-advanced before visual symptoms become noticeable even to experienced observers.

Modern precision agriculture relies on site-specific management tactics to maximise yield and resources while reducing environmental impacts such as over-fertilisation and the broad applications of pesticides. Pin-pointing areas requiring attention – be it water, weed or pathogen treatment, or nutrient adjustments – allows for spot application rather than whole-field treatment. The collection of key data at a sufficient level of accuracy depends on the availability of equipment that can be operated at a cost-effective level.

Can Drones be used in Land Surveying?

Underground fires at landfill sites are a continuous danger and if not dealt with in a professional way, they can spread. Using Drone Thermal Imaging Technology and the latest high resolution radiometric thermal imaging sensors, we can very quickly and competitively survey the landscape and provide data that specialist thermologists will react.

A landfill fire occurs when the landfilled solid waste ignites and spreads. When the landfilled solid waste is not covered daily, the increase of temperature due to biological decomposition can promote the spontaneous ignition of the waste. It is important to underline that often the landfill fires are also attributed to arson.

An infrared camera detects radiation in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum and produces images of that radiation. The amount of radiation emitted by an object increases with temperature; therefore, the thermography allows us to see the environment as variations in the temperature of the target objects. When viewed by infrared cameras, warm objects stand out well against cooler backgrounds. We use the Zenmuse XTr Radiometric camera with our drones which offer the availability of viewpoints at different altitudes to monitor a wide area with a full geometrical resolution with geo-tagging.