ArcGIS Drone2Map 2024.1 - DJI Thermal Camera Support

MarkBarker1

With the release of 2024.1, ArcGIS Drone2Map now has enabled additional capabilities for some much-requested DJI thermal cameras. A new optional DJI thermal camera support installation package can be installed alongside Drone2Map. It can be found on My Esri under the same location as the main installation files. This is not required for True Ortho processing, but installing this package allows imagery from the specific DJI sensors to be recognized properly when creating new projects and enables Drone2map to report pixel values in temperature units in the thermal True Orthomosaic.

Figure 1: DJI Zenmuse H20T Thermal True Orthomosaic processed in Drone2Map 2024.1

This support is for the following sensors:

Zenmuse H20N

Zenmuse H20 Series

Matrice 30 Series

Mavic 2 Enterprise Advanced

DJI Mavic 3 Enterprise

For more information on the DJI Thermal SDK please see the following: DJI Thermal SDK

Will

Good news, thanks! I also noticed this is available for ArcGIS Pro 3.3 as well. Question - we use both Drone2Map and Site Scan Manager for processing our drone imagery - does Site Scan Manager also include this same DJI thermal camera support, or is this support unique only to Drone2Map 2024.1+ and ArcGIS Pro 3.3+ amongst Esri apps? Thanks for any insight.

NicoBonnafoux

@Will, yes, the ability to use the radiometric data in DJI's proprietary thermal image format is currently only available in the desktop offerings of our ArcGIS Reality product family, but not on the cloud with Site Scan. Some organizations cannot use the DJI Thermal SDK for legal or security reasons, which is why we offer it as an optional installation on desktop.

Will

Thanks for the additional info. For more context, we have some Mavic 2 Enterprise drones with thermal, but I don't believe they are the later-released "Advanced" model, and we also have some older Zenmuse XT thermal cameras we've adapted to use with a Matrice 210 and/or Inspire 1v2 drones - if we wanted to create thermal (true radiometric/temperature) orthos from these cameras, we would be able to do so in Esri products, if so, which apps? Is it just that with the newer DJI models listed above they've gone to a newer proprietary format which requires the add-in compatibility installer, but thermal imagery from older DJI drones can still be processed without that add-in? Thanks.

MarkBarker1

Hi @Will,

You can process the older model DJI thermal drone imagery without the SDK. You are correct in that the newer models are the drones that require the additional SDK install to process properly. I can’t say for certain, but I suspect this will be the case going forward with DJI thermal drones. As for which Esri software can process the older model DJI thermal imagery, we have ArcGIS Drone2Map, Site Scan for ArcGIS and Orthomapping in ArcGIS Pro. All three should support the processing of thermal imagery from the older DJI sensors. If there is a camera model that you find is not working for some reason, then please let us know and we can investigate.

Regards,

Mark

BrentDoty

@MarkBarker1 we're trying to extract temperature data from a thermal true ortho in Arc Pro. Our drone is Mavic 3T, processed in the latest version of Drone2map with the DJI camera support downloaded as well. What am I missing here? I don't see a way to convert pixel data to temp.

Any help would be much appreciated.

MarkBarker1

Hi @BrentDoty,

The M3T camera didn't get fully added to the digital cameras file we use to populate the camera information. We have fixed it in our patch coming this next month, but for now you can try to edit the file yourself to get it recognized. Just keep in mind this is a try at your own risk, so I would recommend creating the backup of the file. Steps would be as follows:

Make a backup copy of DigitalCameras.dat (C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Drone2Map\bin\DigitalCameras.dat)
Copy the DigitalCameras.dat to another directory
Open it with a text editor
Find the M3M RGB camera
Add the entry below that camera and make sure it looks like the screenshot
Save the changes
Copy the edited DigitalCameras.dat into C:\Program Files\ArcGIS\Drone2Map\bin

Let me know if you are still having trouble if you attempt the above steps and we can discuss it further over a call or through email.

Regards,

Mark

BrentDoty

@MarkBarker1 thanks for the update and workaround. We will try to implement it this week.