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I chair the tech and garden committees at the PTA at my kids' elementary school in Brooklyn, a small, Title 1 (the majority of the families are poor) school with limited resources. A couple months ago the PTA gave money for expensive self-watering planter boxes, flowers, hoses, and other gardening implements to improve the austere, institutional exterior, which resembles a prison. As we discovered this morning, some of the flowers, boxes, and hoses were stolen over Memorial Day weekend.
Since planter boxes must be outside, and the thief must be in the neighborhood to know the boxes are there, it occurred to me that they must be visible from the air and perhaps a camera drone with decent range could be used to recover the stolen property and put a stop to thefts that will surely continue if we merely replace what was lost.
Ideally I imagine flying it from the flat roof of my 4-story apartment building to search in a .5 mile to 1 mile radius, with roughly 30 minutes of flying time and a "go home" feature if it loses contact with the controller or runs too low on battery.
Are there drone aficionados in the SN community who can speak to the feasibility of such a project and/or can recommend models to buy?
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday May 27 2015, @03:35PM
About as intrusive as looking at your neighborhood on google maps. He isn't talking about hovering outside anyone's windows, he's talking about scanning the area from altitude. Getting into semi-autonomous drones would be a lot of fun. I agree that it isn't as practical as security cameras but it sounds like Phoenix666 was going to spend his own money, not the schools.
I'd guess the property was stolen but i doubt it was by someone less than a mile away (unless this is really urban). It was probably stolen by a parent who does pickup/dropoff by car.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tramii on Wednesday May 27 2015, @07:02PM
About as intrusive as looking at your neighborhood on google maps.
There are two different views I am familiar with on Google Maps. Overhead and street view. The street view maps are what anyone would see walking/driving down your street. If the OP wants to drive his car around the surrounding neighborhoods looking for the planters, that is fine. The overhead view is a one time snapshot probably taken years ago. No one really cares about people looking at that because while you might be able to peer into their backyard, the information is totally outdated. The chances of catching them sunbathing nude is pretty low.
He isn't talking about hovering outside anyone's windows, he's talking about scanning the area from altitude.
OK, so what happens when he's scanning from altitude and sees some planting boxes in someone's backyard or on someone's balcony? You don't think he's going to go in for a closer look? Or maybe he'll just report to the cops every house that has similar looking planting boxes? Perhaps he should just go himself and knock on all the front doors and demand to inspect their planters.
For this plan to work, yes he will have to essentially hover around people's windows. Now maybe the drone will have a good zoom camera and won't need to fly close to the house to peer in, but it's the same thing. He's planning on peeking into everyone's house and violate their privacy.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday May 27 2015, @07:30PM
So for you it is okay to "spy" as long as the data is very old? Would it be acceptable if his drone recorded the neighborhood and then he waited a few years to look at the video? Also, in my experience google maps are no more than 3 years old. That number is only going to get smaller too!
Phoenix666 is here, there is no need to make assumptions about what he would do. But we can certainly debate about what you or i would do. If i saw what looked like the planters then i would turn the image over to the school and let them decide. I'd probably see who is living at that address and see if it was school faculty, as that could affect who i gave the image to.
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 27 2015, @09:15PM
It's very interesting to see the responses to this idea and the visceral reaction it has provoked. What I'm talking about is a slightly different take on the age-old, time-honored practice of me walking past your house and seeing my stolen property sitting in your yard, calling the cops, and having you arrested. The only difference is I'm talking about an RC craft that can do it from 60 ft in the air. But the emotional reaction to it has been, it seems, much stronger than the general reaction, even here on SN, to having the NSA in every most intimate part of your home and person, on your computer, on your smartphone, reading every thought and intimacy you share with those closest to you, stealing your medical data, profiling you, flagging you, and truly, totally invading your privacy.
Why is that?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by KGIII on Wednesday May 27 2015, @11:22PM
It is likely because you walking by their house does not mean you are able to look in their back yard or over their fence. In the back yard or beyond a fence I, personally, have an expectation of privacy from government bodies and from nosy neighbors. That would be why I would be out back or behind a fence. Of course I live in a very wooded area about a half mile from the road so this is figurative in my case.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 28 2015, @02:53AM
In that context, yes, for someone to see into your backyard they'd already have to be trespassing on your land. Here, I can look out my kitchen window right now and see into every neighbor's back yard on the block (our blocks are like donuts, with the back yards in the holes, surrounded by 2, 3, and 4 story brownstones and apartment buildings. In an area with this kind of density the only expectation of privacy you can reasonably have is to be inside with your drapes drawn. If the thing you want people to not see is by definition a thing which must be visible (plants that need light to grow), then there's a chance someone can see it.
But this is a long-standing precept of law in the United States, at least. When I was a kid in the 80's the government flew choppers over our valley for weeks to catch people growing marijuana out in the open. They didn't need search warrants because the plants were visible from the air. It's also the same precept that protects the paparazzi who sit in boats offshore celebrities' beach homes with tele-photo lenses and snap pics of stars sunbathing in the nude. They also hire choppers to get pictures from the air, which are like drones that carry people to operate the cameras. Like those guys or not, what they do is perfectly legal. When I lived in Chicago my car was stolen, and when I reported it the first thing the cops asked me was if I had gone around the neighborhood to see if I could see it. Why would they suggest such a thing if it were impossible for me to report that I had seen my car because it was sitting on someone else's property?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by KGIII on Thursday May 28 2015, @05:26PM
That is why it is figurative. If I were a star and had people shooting pictures of me I would still be unhappy about it. This does not mean that it is illegal, it means that it is something that would perturb me. Just because it is legal does not mean I have to be happy about it. Just because it is illegal does not mean I have to be happy about it. Legality does not mean it is ethical either. You are free to go about spying on your neighbors, and while their response may be illegal, do not be surprised if your children are shunned or if someone takes offense and does the same to you - also do not be surprised if someone slashes your tires. The tire slashing would be illegal, immoral, and not entirely surprising. In my neighborhood (not nearly as dense as your area) I would not be surprised to have the RC shot down, doing so would be illegal but it would not surprise me to see it happen.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 27 2015, @09:07PM
The planter troughs are unusual, and visibly distinctive from the brands that Lowes and Home Depot, the two home supply stores in the area, carry. They also have the water meter that protrudes from the top [edgesuite.net] of the box so you can see how much water is in the reservoir and if it needs re-filling. They're also planted with 4 blue pansies (the school colors are yellow and blue) that haven't been in Lowes or Home Depot for 6 weeks (and the gardening committee wishes they had, in order to replace the original single plants that presumably the same thief had dug out of the troughs and stolen from the school 3 weeks ago). So, if we see a planter like ours, with the water meter, planted with 4 blue pansies with red mulch, hanging on somebody's fire escape or back patio, I think it merits a knock on the door from the cops. Especially since we're talking about a schmuck who's stealing from a school where poor kids go. Does it constitute an open-and-shut case? No, but then we're more interested in deterring repeat theft than in necessarily getting the planter trough itself back, and a visit from the police might do that.
No, it doesn't. Let's say that the stolen item was an electric blue Ducati. It gets stolen from you, and you walk down the alleys in your neighborhood and see it sitting on someone else's back patio. Does the thief get a get-out-of-jail-free card because it's sitting on his property? Can he invalidate your claim of theft because you saw it sitting on his property? Of course not. You call the police, tell them you saw it sitting on your neighbor's patio, and they serve the guy with a search warrant and arrest him if they find the bike. Let's take it a step further and say that you can see the bike sitting inside his house through his sliding glass doors. Can you still report its location to the police in response to your original complaint? Of course you can.
There are no alleyways in this part of Brooklyn, or we certainly could walk down them. On my block, I can go to the roof of my building, which is slightly taller than most, and see down into all the neighbors' back yards. Can I be arrested or sued for doing that? No, of course not. And if I do that and see that the guy on the corner has what looks like the stolen property, can I report it to the police? Of course I can.
Using a drone is the same thing, looking at the exterior of a house at something that is plainly viewable, except that it's using propellers to gain that elevation in the x-axis instead of huffing up 4 flights of stairs.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:36PM
It's a densely populated part of Brooklyn, and you wouldn't know the school had the planters to steal unless you walked by them on the way to the store or the subway; driving past the school on the street, which is an arterial road with a higher than average speed limit and volume of traffic, makes it pretty unlikely a driver would discern the quality of the planters from 30 ft away at 35mph and then say to himself, "I'm gonna steal that!" The zoning of the school itself, which is pretty small and less desireable than every other school in the neighborhood (because it's a Title 1, meaning "poor" school), ranges 3 blocks radius at most from the school. Even people who are zoned for the school try their darnedest to get their kids into other schools in the neighborhood because of that bum rap, which is why we on the PTA have been trying to improve the outward appearance of the school and make it seem more desireable. It is 95% certain that the thief lives in the immediate vicinity and passes the school frequently.
It does not make sense to buy a drone for a one-time use, of course, even if it were successful in helping the school recover the stolen property and deter repeat theft. So I had thought that it could also become the seed for a drone-flying club as a fun way to get the kids into computers and technology and give them early experience in what, for better or worse, is a burgeoning industry. It would also help us get some good press for the school and change our reputation.
Washington DC delenda est.