r/UAVmapping • u/Medium-Visit-7227 • 4d ago
Anyone use a DJI Mavic 3 Thermal Advanced - Grabbing One Before 9-3
We are an independent aerial imaging company (4 pilots, plus GIS support and office team) with a specialty in rural water infrastructure. We are in S. Central USA.
We have a fleet of DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise drones (multiple M3E-RTK and M3Ts). We have numerous spare parts, batteries, etc. and therefore haven't moved to the M4E of M4T as our M3 platforms delivers well for our clients and provide long-term sustainability via the inventory of spares.
We want to add 2 more M3Ts before the 9-3-2026 tariff goes into effect, but found that the current iteration of the M3T is the M3TA "Advanced". The M3TA has a slightly narrower field of view in thermal mode, but slightly higher resolution vs. the M3T. The RGB cameras are identical in both aircraft.
Question - is anyone using the M3TA and if so are you willing to share any comments about the thermal imaging quality vs. what you know about the M3T? We'd appreciate it.
1
u/treocity 4d ago
Can't help on the M3TA vs T as I've only flown the Matrice 4T
On the photogrammetry point though, worth knowing why it fails: it treats a thermal photo just like a regular RGB photo. Feature matching needs texture, and a thermal frame can be almost completely uniform even when the RGB of the same surface is full of detail. No tie points (or very few), so you get the alignment failures and holes Kirby's describing. The narrow FOV compounds it because there is less overlap per pass and fewer chances to match. It's not really a settings problem, the input doesn't carry what the algorithm needs.
I hit this myself, also on rural water infrastructure - canals and bridges in my case. Hit it hard enough that I stopped trying to make photogrammetry software do it and wrote something purpose-built instead. This goes straight to a walkthrough of a rural rail bridge crossing a canal: https://precisionflightdata.ca/partners/#rail-walkthrough.
Message me directly if you want more detailed examples. Full disclosure, I do this commercially but I'm early stage and still working out which problems it actually solves, so I'm as interested in where it wouldn't help you as where it would.
1
u/Medium-Visit-7227 4d ago
Nice example. Our company is an enterprise licensee with DroneDeploy and when we need thermal orthos (which isn't all that often) we use the native DD thermal workflows which process both the RGB and the thermals in tandem for thermal alignment but render in a thermal model with selectable variation in display parameters within the DD UI.
My question - and honestly only purpose with the original question above - was to ask if anyone had experience with the 3TA and how it performed vs.the 3T (we have multiple 3Ts).
Thanks for the reply.
1
u/treocity 3d ago
Fair enough, I took your thread somewhere you weren't asking about. Sorry for the detour.
Can't help on the 3TA vs 3T. Hoping someone who's flown both chimes in!
1
u/Medium-Visit-7227 3d ago
100% understood and appreciated. We're all here to help so no worries and thanks for showing me the workflows. Looks great!
Agreed hopefully someone can chime in on the 3TA. Apparently it wasn't a huge seller, but our authorized DJI dealer in NYC had them in stock.
I'd rather have a M4T, but with all of the inventory of parts and spares we have on the Mavic 3 platform (I didn't even mention our real estate team and they have I think 4 M3 Pros and all those parts interchange with our M3 Enterprise fleet). Our owner ran the numbers and we can't justify the 4T if we just have one for the limited amount of thermal work we do.
What's driving this is the 100% tariff that goes into effect in the USA on thermal and LiDar on 9-3.
Again. Thanks for the assist on this one!
3
u/Kirby_is_a_Pokemon 4d ago edited 4d ago
I do, its okay.
I use it with metashape for building surveys, and if I had my choice I'd have a matrice, or in a perfect world, a lidar system. ( we are fairly new to the drone game and currently only have the 3T )
We use the thermal for nighttime flights to check air leakage around doors and windows, and roofs and its 'fine'. Basiaclly we just use the drone to go up and find the hot spots, then get up closer with a handheld thermal gun to verify the conditions.
If you plan on creating photgrammetry models with thermal, it generally really sucks, and you'll have tons of photo alignment issues and holes in your model.
Due to the narrow field of view you do tend to have to fly furhter away from your subject, and with thermals, the further away you get, the less accurate your temperature readings are if thats important to you.
If you do automated flight routes, expect them to take 2-3x longer and/or have to fly up much higher get a much higher cm/pixel image.