Skydio X2 drone software update brings several enhancements to thermal imaging

Skydio has released a new software update for its X2 Enterprise (X2E) drone, and it’s packed with some noteworthy features including new thermal contrast options, the ability to define a region of interest in an image, and improved infrared streaming.

To see the new features, you will need to update the software of your Skydio X2E drone to version 19.4.15, while the Skydio Enterprise Controller software you should grab is called version 20.1.29.

Now, there’s a known bug that you may face during the update process. The progress bar may revert from Step 3 to Step 2. But just wait a moment and your drone should continue updating as normal.

Coming back to what’s new in the June 2022 software update, here’s what to expect:

New thermal contrast settings

While thermal imaging color palette selection has always been available on the Skydio X2 Color/Thermal aircraft, the drone maker has now added four new presets to help users meet their operational requirements. These preset options come with an Automatic Gain Control (AGC) Tuning feature which automatically optimizes the signal noise in the image for the contrast you have selected.

This is what these presets look like:

Reconnaissance uses the lowest contrast settings. The temperatures in your image will be represented with a narrow range of colors or shades.
Low contrast displays a broader range of color than Reconnaissance, allowing for more defined temperature differentiation.
Medium contrast is the default setting. As you continue to add contrast to your image, you will see temperatures being represented with more colors, giving you greater detail in your thermal imagery.
High contrast will show temperatures using a wide range of colors, providing you with the highest level of thermal imagery detail.

To change your thermal imaging presets, go to Device Settings > Controller > On-screen Display > AGC Tuning. Tuning presets are available for all thermal palettes.

Read: Skydio’s secret sauce for making drones smarter, faster is now public

Region of Interest

Once you update the software on your Skydio X2 drone, you will also gain the ability to select a Region of Interest (ROI) on your image and apply AGC to that specific area. This feature will come in handy in situations where you need to quickly diagnose thermal irregularities while ignoring sections of the reading irrelevant to you. And do note that even though the area outside the ROI will not be optimized by AGC, you will still be able to view it.

To change your region of interest, go to Device Settings > Controller > On-screen Display > Thermal. Drag the ROI slider to increase or decrease your region of interest.

Read: Skydio makes a move on filmmakers with KeyFrame autonomous drone cinematography

Video feed improvements

The X2’s infrared stream quality has also improved with the latest software package. Previously, the drone used a constant bit rate regardless of the wireless channel conditions. But now, it will be able to leverage an adaptive bit rate that would adjust depending on the wireless channel conditions of your range and environment, going up to 1 Mbps.

Lastly, the update carries Skydio Cloud bug fixes and improvements as well, including faster uploads with Skydio Media Sync in the US and globally.

You can learn more about the update here.

Read: DJI has new firmware updates for Mavic 2 Enterprise series drones

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