Thermal Drone Services
A thermal camera sees heat, not light. That means it finds things in tall grass, in timber and under brush that a person standing twenty feet away cannot see — and it covers ground faster than any number of people walking it.
We fly a DJI Matrice 4T carrying a 640×512 radiometric thermal camera alongside a 112x hybrid zoom and a laser rangefinder, out of Newark, Illinois. Same as our spray work: we fly the equipment we sell as an authorized dealer.
See it working — the footage from the night we found Bear in Plainfield →
What we use it for
Lost pets and missing livestock
A frightened dog goes quiet and still, usually in the thickest cover it can find. That is exactly the situation a ground search loses and a thermal camera wins. Same for cattle or horses that got through a fence and are standing in a creek bottom at two in the morning. Full details, pricing, and what to do before we get there →
Search and rescue support
We work at the request of fire departments, sheriff's offices and SAR teams — missing person searches, fire scene assessment, hot spot detection after knockdown.
We do not self-deploy to incidents. A drone nobody asked for is a hazard to aircraft that were asked for, and it makes the incident commander's day worse. If your agency wants thermal support, call and we will come; if you want to know what we can do before you ever need it, call about that too.
Roof, solar and building thermal
Water trapped in a roof assembly holds heat longer than the dry material around it, so an hour after sunset a wet roof shows you exactly where the problem is — without anyone walking a membrane in the dark. On solar, a failed panel, a bad diode or a dead string reads hot against its neighbors from the air in minutes, and that one is flown in full sun.
Commercial roofs, barn and machine shed roofs, ground-mount and rooftop solar arrays, and heat loss surveys on buildings you are paying to keep warm.
Agricultural thermal
The same camera that finds a dog finds a heifer that went off to calve where you cannot see her. It also reads irrigation leaks, blocked tile and wet spots as temperature differences, and picks up crop stress before it is visible to the eye.
If we are already flying your acres for fungicide, adding a thermal pass is not a second trip.
Timing, and what thermal will not do
Thermal reads the difference in temperature between what you are looking for and everything around it. That gap is usually widest at night and in the hour before sunrise, which is why a good share of search work happens after dark. But plenty of thermal work is daylight work — solar arrays are flown in full sun, livestock and crop stress read fine in the morning, and shade, cloud cover, cool weather and timber all hold the gap open. The right window depends on the job, and we will tell you what it is rather than have you guess.
It does not see through things. Not through a roof, not through a wall, not through a dense summer canopy. It reads heat that reaches the camera.
It does not identify. A warm shape in the brush at 300 feet is a warm shape. Deer, coyote, raccoon and the dog you are looking for all glow. Sorting that out is what the zoom camera and the flying are for.
Who is flying
Erik. FAA Part 107 and Part 137 certified, nine years in the Army including EOD, and more than a decade in aerial application before that. Night flying and reading a sensor for a living is not a new skill here — the aircraft is just smaller now.
Call
Tell us what you are looking for, where, and when it went missing or when the problem started. We will tell you straight whether thermal is the right tool — including when it is not.
630-465-4539 · [email]
Premium Ag Services is a veteran-owned business at 16100 Newark Rd, Newark, Illinois, serving Kendall, LaSalle, DeKalb, Grundy, Kane and Will counties and beyond. We are an authorized Autel and DJI enterprise dealer — if you would rather own the capability than hire it, we sell these aircraft too.