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?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday May 27 2015, @04:06PM
And for good reason. Search warrants exist for a damn reason. People don't like busybodies assuming they did something wrong and poking around.
That said, I'd still like the fundamental question answered. What is a good, cheap camera drone?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 27 2015, @04:37PM
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-drones,review-2412.html [tomsguide.com]
http://www.quora.com/As-of-2015-what-are-the-best-consumer-drones [quora.com]
I think the consensus is the DJI Phantom 2 Vision, which is about $700. There's also the Parrot Bebop [techcrunch.com] which starts at $500 but rises to $900 with the "skycontroller". And the flight time is 12 minutes rather than 25 min. for DJI.
Someone should suggest something in between $200-400.
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(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 27 2015, @09:37PM
I did look at the Bebop, so I'm glad you put the actual flying time at 12 minutes rather than what the sales sheet said. Do you have a sense for how far out the Bebop could practically go in that time?
I'm a complete noob when it comes to drones, which is why I submitted this project to SN. I have seen YouTube clips and have read some forums, but that doesn't really tell you if you could use one of these devices on a project like this. Will it tend to crash if the wind speed gets over 20mph? Will the video be unusable due to poor resolution and shaky-cam? Will the thing shatter if it comes down slightly too hard on a flat roof?
I have checked NYC's Drone User Group, but nothing there shed any light on the project apart from a no-fly map of the city that shows my part of Brooklyn to be in the clear.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 27 2015, @10:45PM
I am no drone expert, so plan accordingly.
I figure 20 mph is not going to harm the drone, but it might depend [dronebly.com] on the model. The DJI should tolerate up to 33 mph [dji.com] and maybe more. You've probably seen videos of drones flying into clouds at 2,000 ft., around fireworks, above Niagara Falls, etc. They don't seem to be impaired by wind or shakycam.
I don't know the extent of how these drones can be made to operate a flight path [dji.com], but I imagine you want to take a Google Map of your neighborhood and divide it into sections that it can film before returning to you. Recharge and repeat. Your calculations may differ, but I think if it's no more than 5 miles away from you before it needs to head straight back to you on 50% charge, then you don't have a problem. Also think about the camera angle. Will it point straight down or at a slight angle?
Height could be tricky. The further up you are, the harder it will be to spot planters, but the closer to the ground you are, the more chance of an unexpected collision. Maybe the flight planning will allow you to avoid taller buildings but keep close.
If you end up with a few hours of footage, you can watch through it in faster than real time or skip around. Also keep the footage to use in the documentary you make if you end up finding the stolen planters.
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(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 28 2015, @02:38AM
Thanks, those are good considerations. I know next to nothing about RC craft, likewise drones, nor have I previously had any desire to learn more, but in this case, for this particular application, it seemed like a solution that is available and that might work (whereas surveillance cameras do not seem to be particularly good at preventing crimes or securing convictions). The suggestion another Soylentil made of GPS/RFID trackers seemed interesting, too, if the battery life could last long enough to be viable. For us, it's not about flying drones per se, but about getting the thefts to stop so we can make our school a better place for our kids. The police will lift no finger to investigate for something so small (to them), so if we can hand it to them on a silver platter to enforce, perhaps they might.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday May 27 2015, @04:56PM
Are you suggesting that the police are going to prioritize flowerpot theft high enough to do anything other than chuckle?
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday May 27 2015, @04:59PM
Broken Windows [wikipedia.org] is a very common policing philosophy. Especially in places with low crime. Some people view it as socially harmful, excessively targeting of poor people, and not a fundamentally correct model of crime, but it's still a really common approach.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 27 2015, @09:44PM
If it were my personal planter troughs, no. But it's the school's (or, rather, the school PTA's). The school is a Title 1 school, which means most of its families are poor. That makes it great fodder for the news media. The school is also half a block downhill from our City Councilman's house, and he is personally invested in it. We have strong connections with our local State Assemblymen and State Senators, half of whom used to be teachers in city schools. Lastly, many of our PTA members have just gotten elected to district- and city-wide Department of Education bodies. So the potential for us to turn it into a black eye for the local precinct is there if they should choose to blow us off.
Even so, the police will do absolutely nothing about it unless they have an actionable tip. That's the idea here. Even if they find the stolen property and cannot prosecute because the evidence isn't solid enough, the deterrent to repeat theft would be enough to satisfy us; we can replace this stuff this time, but we can't do it forever.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 27 2015, @10:50PM
If you make it into the local news (for success, not arrest), post the ultimate "I told you so" submission.
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(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday May 27 2015, @09:30PM
You don't need a search warrant if you can see your stolen property sitting on someone's property. If a guy two blocks down steals your car, and you see it sitting in his driveway, do you not get to call the cops because it's sitting on his property? No, of course not. The proposition is absurd. If somebody steals your kid's electric green BMX bike that he races with, and you see an electric green BMX bike sitting in the back yard of a house .5 miles away, do you not get to call the cops because, "Oh well, I suppose it's possible that somebody else in this neighborhood has that exact same BMX bike in electric green?" No, of course not.
I find it interesting that people here who would not see any issue with those examples, do take issue when the seeing is done from altitude. What if I did the seeing by climbing a tree on the street to gain the altitude? If the stolen property were visible that way, it's still fair game. What if I climb to the top of my friend's high-rise residential building and look down into the backyards with a telescope? That's still fair game, too.
If I fly overhead in a chopper and look down, that's still OK. But if I use a camera drone, suddenly it's not? It doesn't make logical sense, but it's very interesting that so many here are reacting as though it's totally, totally different.
Washington DC delenda est.