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Thermal Screening Drone For Solar Panels & Electric Towers

This document describes a thermal screening drone that can detect heating issues in solar panels, electric towers, and windmills located in remote areas. The drone uses a thermal camera and video camera to scan structures from a distance and record thermal footage using a Raspberry Pi. This automated process allows for faster and safer inspections compared to manual climbing, saving time and money. Components include a flight controller, thermal camera, motors, and sensors. Applications include inspecting electric towers, solar panels, windmills, and other outdoor structures. Advantages are easy use, long range, and no risk of injury, while disadvantages are limited battery life and inability to perform repairs.

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Ankur Pahilwan
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201 views4 pages

Thermal Screening Drone For Solar Panels & Electric Towers

This document describes a thermal screening drone that can detect heating issues in solar panels, electric towers, and windmills located in remote areas. The drone uses a thermal camera and video camera to scan structures from a distance and record thermal footage using a Raspberry Pi. This automated process allows for faster and safer inspections compared to manual climbing, saving time and money. Components include a flight controller, thermal camera, motors, and sensors. Applications include inspecting electric towers, solar panels, windmills, and other outdoor structures. Advantages are easy use, long range, and no risk of injury, while disadvantages are limited battery life and inability to perform repairs.

Uploaded by

Ankur Pahilwan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Thermal Screening Drone for Solar Panels & Electric Towers

Solar panels, electric towers, large windmills are often located in remote areas and
often have heating issues. To detect these issues an operator needs to climb these
high spaces and check for heating issues. This process has the following
disadvantages:
 It requires a lot of time to climb every single tower/panel and check issues
manually.
 It involves a risk of life.
 It incurs high costs for sending multiple teams with safety gear to so many
tower and panels.

Now this is a very long process with a lot of manual steps which can lead to human
errors because of huge amount testing in remote areas. So here we propose a new
system whereby we use a thermal screening drone to instantly scan for heating
issues at a very fast pace. This will allow for instant issue detection so that
operators can instantly find faults and repair them.
With the new system the testing process works as follows:
 Just a single team can inspect a number of towers/ panels.
 The inspection that required hours of time can be done in minutes.
 The system would save a lot of money and time that was incurred in
previous process.
 There is no threat to life of inspection personnel.

Our drone uses a combination of video camera and thermal camera to get the
closeup solar panel, electrical tower footage along with the thermal scan footage.
The drone uses a controller to operate the flight and ensure a long range control. It
makes use of RF transmitter and receiver frequency to send and receive control
commands from the user RC remote.
The thermal sensor is a low resolution sensor that can be used to find thermal
heating issues from close range of objects. The thermal sensor footage is recorded
using raspberry pi for later screening.
Thus the drone automates and adds safety to thermal screening process.
Components 

 Raspberry Pi
 Flight Controller
 Thermal Camera
 High Torque Motors
 Propellers
 Buttons and Switches
 Drone Body
 Resistors
 Capacitors
 Diodes
 Transistors
 LED’s
 PCB
 Wires and Connectors
 Supporting Frame

Applications:

 Electric Towers
 Solar Panels
 Windmills
 Chimneys
 Building Outdoor Structures
 Airplanes

Advantages:

 Easy to Use
 No Risk of Loss of Life
 Long Range

Disadvantages:

 Limited Battery Life


 Can only check not repair fault
Drone Block Diagram

Thermal Sensing

A thermal imager is a non-contact temperature measurement device. Thermal Imagers detect


the infrared energy emitted, transmitted or reflected by all materials -- at temperatures above
absolute zero, (0°Kelvin)-- and converts the energy factor into a temperature reading or
thermogram. A thermogram is the thermal image displayed by the camera of the object which
is emitting, transmitting or reflecting the infrared energy.

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