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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 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.