Student startup building a thermal security patrol drone: platform advice and startup/education options?

[Obinna Amadi]

Hi all,

I'm a co-founder of Lantern, a student-founded startup in Tulsa, OK building an autonomous aerial security system for college campuses. Our prototype today is a Holybro X650 with a Pixhawk on PX4 1.15 and an NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX. We want our next aircraft to be US-built and NDAA-compliant, and ModalAI is our first choice.

What we need the aircraft to do:

• Night patrols over a campus, launching from and returning to a small dock
• Onboard person detection from thermal video
• Live video to a security operator about 1 km away

Two things I'd like help with:

1. Platform choice. Is the Starling 2 Max the right starting point, and can it carry a Boson-class 640 thermal camera instead of the Lepton? If a different VOXL 2 build suits outdoor patrol better, I'd like to hear it.

2. Working with ModalAI. Do you offer education or early-stage startup pricing, or a custom configuration service for a one- or two-unit demo build? We're budget-constrained and would rather build on your stack from the start than migrate later.

Happy to share more detail on the detection pipeline or dock design if useful. If this is better handled over email, please point me to the right contact.

Thanks,
Obi Amadi
Lantern | lanternaero.com