Autel robotics thermal drone, any good?

[johndrone33]

Just found out that autel robotics have a thermal drone for around 3k usd but since i not seen much video and review about it, i dont know how good it is.

My plan is to search for animals with it and then use my mavic 3 pro to record them.
Bear,moose, lynx,wolf is seen regulary in my area but they are shy and not that common so I have only seen them a few times over the last 15 years wandering in the woods.

For example, at what distance can the thermal camera detect a human?
100 feet, 300 feet, or even more?

These animals often have big terretories so the longer the distance i can find an animal at,the better.

Youtube dont have much info on this drone wich is weird i think.

 

[mavic3usa]

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[Felix le Chat]

Just found out that autel robotics have a thermal drone for around 3k usd but since i not seen much video and review about it, i dont know how good it is.

My plan is to search for animals with it and then use my mavic 3 pro to record them.
Bear,moose, lynx,wolf is seen regulary in my area but they are shy and not that common so I have only seen them a few times over the last 15 years wandering in the woods.

For example, at what distance can the thermal camera detect a human?
100 feet, 300 feet, or even more?

These animals often have big terretories so the longer the distance i can find an animal at,the better.

Youtube dont have much info on this drone wich is weird i think.

Read through the reviews and spec sheets for the Evo 2 thermal payload a few years back. Pretty much every reviewer agreed that it was superior to the camera fitted to the DJI equivalent.

The other tick in the 'plus' column is the fact that all three camera types (8K/6K/FLIR) can be swapped whenever the user wants to deploy different optical solutions.

 

[LandWaterSky]

I did a deep dive into thermal drones about a year ago, for search and rescue, and I ended up purchasing a DJI Mavic 3T Enterprise. I have no regrets.

I strongly considered the Autel Evo II v3. The main thing that steered me away from the Autel Evo were reliability problems expressed by owners on this and other drone forums. According to the owners, they also experienced terrible customer service support when they had problems with their drones.

I am not trying to be ugly about Autel. I have nothing against them. I am suggesting that you continue researching various opinions of the drone before you purchase one.

 

[Felix le Chat]

Wholeheartedly agree. Autel drones have the capability of being just as good as DJI, but... and here I can offer first hand experience... there is a degree of mechanical unreliability that turns the purchase process into a bit of a crap-shoot. You might get a good-un from word 'go' and get to see how top-notch the Evo 2 is... but you might end up with a turkey and have to send it back for replacement under warranty (which is what happened with me... not once, but twice on the trot with the model I chose).

 

[LandWaterSky]

Wholeheartedly agree. Autel drones have the capability of being just as good as DJI, but... and here I can offer first hand experience... there is a degree of mechanical unreliability that turns the purchase process into a bit of a crap-shoot. You might get a good-un from word 'go' and get to see how top-notch the Evo 2 is... but you might end up with a turkey and have to send it back for replacement under warranty (which is what happened with me... not once, but twice on the trot with the model I chose).

Thanks for your detailed response, Felix.

 

[jaja6009]

OP, for your use case, the Autel Lite Enterprise will more than meet your needs.

If you wanted in the future to do other use cases, you may run into trouble.
If you wanted to expand into infrared inspections, make sure that this new model works in Autels proprietary thermal inspection software. Also you will not find any easy solution for creating thermal orthomosaics (maps).

When comparing the quality of the thermal image, Autel produces a very competitive product. They use a Chinese spec thermal core that looks better than when they used a FLIR Boson core in their first thermal iteration.

I use 2 different Autel drones and have found them to be reliable and valuable tools. But their life cycle support tends to be short, some promised features never became reality, and there were some firmware hiccups.

For what your use case is and the price, it looks like it fits your needs.

 

[LandWaterSky]

OP, for your use case, the Autel Lite Enterprise will more than meet your needs.

If you wanted in the future to do other use cases, you may run into trouble.
If you wanted to expand into infrared inspections, make sure that this new model works in Autels proprietary thermal inspection software. Also you will not find any easy solution for creating thermal orthomosaics (maps).

When comparing the quality of the thermal image, Autel produces a very competitive product. They use a Chinese spec thermal core that looks better than when they used a FLIR Boson core in their first thermal iteration.

I use 2 different Autel drones and have found them to be reliable and valuable tools. But their life cycle support tends to be short, some promised features never became reality, and there were some firmware hiccups.

For what your use case is and the price, it looks like it fits your needs.

Excellent suggestions and overview.

 

[johndrone33]

I did a deep dive into thermal drones about a year ago, for search and rescue, and I ended up purchasing a DJI Mavic 3T Enterprise. I have no regrets.

I strongly considered the Autel Evo II v3. The main thing that steered me away from the Autel Evo were reliability problems expressed by owners on this and other drone forums. According to the owners, they also experienced terrible customer service support when they had problems with their drones.

I am not trying to be ugly about Autel. I have nothing against them. I am suggesting that you continue researching various opinions of the drone before you purchase one.

Why do you mention mavic 3t enterprise?
Its not a thermal drone.

 

[LandWaterSky]

Why do you mention mavic 3t enterprise?
Its not a thermal drone.

Hi John, I believe you are thinking of the Mavic 3E Enterprise. That model has no thermal capability. With the Mavic 3T Enterprise... the "T" designates it as the thermal model.

 

[johndrone33]

Hi John, I believe you are thinking of the Mavic 3E Enterprise. That model has no thermal capability. With the Mavic 3T Enterprise... the "T" designates it as the thermal model.

Its about twice the price as the autel drone so I dont really see how its a fair comparison.

 

[LandWaterSky]

Its about twice the price as the autel drone so I dont really see how its a fair comparison.

You're right. But there is no fair comparison. There are very few choices for thermal drones under the price point of around $5000 US.

 

[Dmcvey]

we own 50 Autels and 30ish DJIs; both are workhorses. I would compare them to Chevys: Autel is solid and will get the job done, and DJI is the Cadillac, the same vehicle with leather seats.

 

[drone036]

Currently, the more affordable options for Autel Robotics thermal imaging drones are autel evo lite 640t enterprise and autel 640t v3, both of which have the function of identifying people and other objects.

 

[jackkal22]

OP, for your use case, the Autel Lite Enterprise will more than meet your needs.

If you wanted in the future to do other use cases, you may run into trouble.
If you wanted to expand into infrared inspections, make sure that this new model works in Autels proprietary thermal inspection software. Also you will not find any easy solution for creating thermal orthomosaics (maps).

When comparing the quality of the thermal image, Autel produces a very competitive product. They use a Chinese spec thermal core that looks better than when they used a FLIR Boson core in their first thermal iteration.

I use 2 different Autel drones and have found them to be reliable and valuable tools. But their life cycle support tends to be short, some promised features never became reality, and there were some firmware hiccups.

For what your use case is and the price, it looks like it fits your needs.

I’m looking at buying either the evo 2 thermal or just the lite but I’m needing to do 2d maps so do I need the evo 2 or does the lite one do maps?

 

[johndrone33]

Autel robotics support seams to be quite bad.

I did some test resently.
1. Told them the camera on the drone was broken and had bad pixles in it, they told med i would have to pay 120 usd for the shipingcost and send it back to them, big no no for me.
Also it tooke them 11 days to respond.

2. I asked them about the termal drone and at what distance it could identify a human and i got a reponse after 9 days where they told me they did not know.

I dont think i want to order a 3k drone from them and then have bad support.

 

[johndrone33]

we own 50 Autels and 30ish DJIs; both are workhorses. I would compare them to Chevys: Autel is solid and will get the job done, and DJI is the Cadillac, the same vehicle with leather seats.

At what distance can you identify a human with the autel drone?
So few reviews on youtube on autel drone so i dont have any clue how good it actually is.

I have seen videos of the mavic 3t and that thermal camera is insane.

 

[AnzacJack]

Autel robotics support seams to be quite bad.

I did some test resently.
1. Told them the camera on the drone was broken and had bad pixles in it, they told med i would have to pay 120 usd for the shipingcost and send it back to them, big no no for me.
Also it tooke them 11 days to respond.

2. I asked them about the termal drone and at what distance it could identify a human and i got a reponse after 9 days where they told me they did not know.

I dont think i want to order a 3k drone from them and then have bad support.

At least they would do a repair for you. Mine stopped talking to the extremely expensive controller i purchased after about 3 months and i was just told ‘bad luck’
I couldnt even pay them to look at it and fix

 

[jaja6009]

At what distance can you identify a human with the autel drone?
So few reviews on youtube on autel drone so i dont have any clue how good it actually is.

I have seen videos of the mavic 3t and that thermal camera is insane.

Autel drones with a 640 resolution thermal sensor will be very similar to DJI drones.

They have very similar specifications.

The newer offerings though from both start to separate though. The Autel Alpha and H30T are better with the H30T having a 1280x1012 resolution and the Alpha having 2 thermal sensors with one of them with a lens to give a similar effect, but is still only a 640 resolution sensor.

While your use case may need identifying a human as the primary goal for a thermal, there are other specifications that matter depending on what work you are doing.

Resolution and NETD are very important. With resolution, if a target or anomaly is far away or very small, the thermal camera will not be able to see it no matter what lens is on it. In something like a solar panel inspection having a higher resolution thermal camera will allow you to fly higher on the same job and still ensure that you can see small in cell anomalies.

NETD is the thermal sensor's ability to detect a smaller degree of difference between items on the screen. A lower NETD means that you can see smaller differences in temperature. This has a large effect the image on screen and also when providing quantitative analysis.

Lens choice is also important as it will effect your field of view on screen. Some tasks will be better zoomed in while others zoomed out. Since these lens are fixed you have to choose the solution fitting your needs since digital zoom on a 640 x 512 images gets pixelated really quickly. Lens choice now is picking a drone for your use case. DJI used to have different attachable payloads for the Matrice 200 series that offered different lens choices for your thermal sensors.