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: 1) by lairdb on Wednesday May 27 2015, @05:49PM
I agree with most of the commenters that this is not a good solution for the OP -- but let's please also answer the question. One of the great values of sites like this is the "oh, I have a very similar problem" value, and if no-one answers the specific question, that value is lost.
(For example, I have a friend who is a cattle rancher, and his mission profile would be nearly identical -- if there were actual answers, this thread would be helpful to him.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @06:24PM
It does sound similar. Your friend wants to fly drones too rather than do the actual work at hand ;)
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:25PM
There are some answers and you can adapt them too. Like:
* weld your cattle to the rebar in the concrete; or
* Find some cheap tiny low-powered GPS/RF trackers and implant them in your cattle... maybe even get them solar powered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:39PM
> his mission profile
Where's the beef?