The equipment, and why each piece is here

This is the working inventory with the reasoning attached, including the parts that are unglamorous — the batteries, the generator, the traps — and a section at the end on what none of it can do. The last one is the part worth reading if you are comparing operators.

Purpose-built enterprise-class aircraft

Both airframes come from DJI's enterprise line — the category sold to fire services, utilities and search and rescue teams rather than to hobbyists. The names below link to the manufacturer's own pages, so that is checkable rather than something you have to take on trust. What it buys on a search is a radiometric thermal sensor, optical zoom good enough to identify an animal from altitude rather than merely spot a warm shape, and airframes rated for the weather and the darkness a search actually happens in.

You do not get to choose the weather on the night your animal goes missing, and you do not get to choose the neighbourhood either. These two aircraft cover the cases the other one is wrong for, and picking between them is a decision made per search rather than a preference.

DJI Matrice 4TThe daily driver

Quieter, and quieter matters more than it sounds. A frightened animal that hears something overhead moves, and an animal that moves during a search is harder to find than one that stays put — so on the residential streets where most searches happen, the less disruptive aircraft is also the more effective one. It is the default for that reason, not because it is newer.

Specifications Manufacturer’s video

Thermal and visible sensors on the same gimbal, so a heat signature can be checked optically without a second pass
Flown on most searches: suburban streets, greenbelts, the yards and easements either side of them
Less noise reaching the ground, and fewer neighbours woken at four in the morning

DJI Matrice 30TThe weather aircraft

Purpose-built for search and rescue and rated for conditions that ground most aircraft — torrential rain, freezing cold, scorching heat, gale-force wind. Bad weather is not a reason a search can wait, and it is frequently the thing that caused the animal to bolt in the first place. This is what flies when the forecast would otherwise be the reason to say no.

Specifications Manufacturer’s video

Built to endure the conditions that often precede a search rather than follow it
Exceptional thermal and optical sensors, with the optical zoom that makes a positive identification possible from altitude
Hot-swappable batteries, so the search continues instead of pausing to charge

Both are flown under FAA Part 107, and which one goes up is decided by the conditions and the ground, not by which is closer to hand. If the answer for your case is that neither should fly tonight, you will be told that instead.

What goes up with them

DJI RC Plus controller

Redundant systems and hot-swappable batteries mean the controller is not the thing that ends a search early. In poor light or heavy glare its output drives a 20-inch high-brightness console, because a thermal image read on a small dim screen is a thermal image read badly.

7,000-lumen search light

Thermal tells you something warm is there; it does not tell you what. The light illuminates a target from 150 feet up, and paired with 16x optical zoom — 200x hybrid — it turns a warm shape into an identification. That is what keeps a search from ending on a false positive, and it is also what stops a real animal being dismissed as a rabbit.

Power that outlasts the search

A 2,000W solar generator with 3kWh of storage keeps the aircraft flying continuously for six to eight hours, and a 2,000W vehicle inverter extends that indefinitely. Searches run long, and the difference between finding an animal and nearly finding one is sometimes just whether there was power left at dawn.

Ground thermal scope

An 1800m detection range, paired to a tablet, usable from a moving vehicle. It covers the cases the aircraft cannot — airspace that cannot be flown, weather that grounds everything, or a sweep of several blocks on the drive in. Every warm animal in line of sight shows up, which is often how a search starts before anything takes off.

Finding an animal and recovering one are different problems

This is the half most equipment pages leave out, including the one this replaces. A located animal is not a recovered animal: a frightened dog in survival mode will run from the people calling its name, including its owner, and a cat that has gone to ground under a deck will not come out for anybody. Knowing where they are is the first problem. Getting them home is the second one, and it needs different equipment. What we offer here is spot-trapping, on a best-effort basis. Once your animal is located and we understand where it is moving and when, a trap goes in along that line, and where we have eyes on it we will usually attempt the catch — in most cases that has worked. What we are not is a trapping organisation: we cannot run a campaign over weeks, some animals need exactly that, and the people who trap every day of the week are better at it than we are. When your case is one of those we will say so and refer you on.

Tru-Catch live traps

Humane box traps in sizes from a small cat trap up to the Tru-Catch 48F, which is large enough for a good-sized dog. A trap is frequently the only thing that ends a search for an animal that will not approach a human — and having the range on hand means the trap suits the animal rather than the animal having to suit the trap. Carried and used on a best-effort basis: we are thermal drone operators first and trappers second, and a dedicated trapper or trapping organisation is more experienced and more capable at this than we are.

Trail cameras

Placed on a feeding station to establish whether the animal is still in the area and when it moves. This is what turns a sighting into a pattern, and a pattern is what makes a trap work — a trap set in the wrong place is just furniture.

Reolink live-feed cameras

A live feed rather than a card to collect later, so a trap can be watched in real time and closed on the animal that is actually in it. It also means nothing sits in a trap for hours unattended, which is the part that matters for the animal's welfare rather than for the search.

What none of it can do

Worth stating plainly, because somebody may have told you otherwise, and because an operator who will not tell you the limits of their equipment is telling you something else instead.

Thermal does not see through anything. It reads surfaces, so an animal under a deck, inside a culvert, beneath a car or behind a wall is invisible to it — and those are exactly the places a frightened animal chooses. This is the single most common misunderstanding about what a drone search is.
Dense canopy and heavy brush hide animals from the air. A cat in deep cover can be twenty feet from the aircraft and not appear at all.
A drone cannot pick anything up. Everything after the sighting is traps, cameras, patience and the owner — which is why that equipment is on this page at all.
The hour matters more than the hardware. The best aircraft flown at the wrong time of day will find less than a modest one flown before dawn, and no amount of equipment compensates for a ground that is still radiating the afternoon's heat.
Weather that is survivable is not the same as weather that is useful. The Matrice 30T can fly in rain; rain still degrades what the sensor returns, and you will be told when conditions mean a search is worth less than it costs.

When a search does not fit your case, the honest answer is cheaper than the search — and you will get it before anybody is dispatched rather than after.

Tell us what happened

Send the details and you will get a straight read on whether a thermal search fits your case, which aircraft it would call for, and when it should be flown. Nothing is booked and nothing is charged at that stage.

Tell us what happened

Or call 512-808-0246