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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 27 2015, @08:55PM
> First, don't have those boxes outside.
Hello? Did you read the post?
They are planter boxes. They have plants in them. There only purpose is to be outside.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Thursday May 28 2015, @12:29AM
They are planter boxes. They have plants in them. There only purpose is to be outside.
Plants (and boxes) can be also installed in enclosed courtyards, and indoors, and on balconies, and on the roof, and in many other safe locations. Given the variable weather in NYC, it may be even better to put them inside and plant perennials [sunset.com].
I understand the intent to liven up the exterior of the building... but in the end it all gets down to what you can protect. Obviously, expensive (hydroponic) boxes are attracting attention of thieves. The cheapest boxes cost about $140 new. Solar boxes are more than $200 each [modernsproutplanter.com]. Would you leave $200 in cash just sitting outside, near an empty school, at night? Would you expect to find the money there in the morning?
And from the POV of the thief - what is the chance that the police will start aggressively searching for thieves who got away with several boxes of plants? The expectation is that the police will ignore this crime, even if it is reported. The boxes have no serial numbers, no unique ID, no way to prove that they are exactly the boxes that got stolen. The loss is small; nobody was injured or killed - it's a petty crime. Short of catching the thief in the act, the police can't prove anything. The submitter hopes that the police will act if he only tells them where the stolen property is. Will such a word from "a civilian" be a sufficient probable cause [thelawdictionary.org] for a search warrant if 100,000 of these boxes were made and sold in the state? The judge will simply ask Phoenix666: "How do you know that those are YOUR boxes?" - and that will be the end of it. Perhaps it's for better, because the wrongly accused gardener may file his own lawsuit against the submitter, and the school, and the city... A citizen cannot walk around, peek into people's backyards, and sic the police onto those who he thinks have his property.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Thursday May 28 2015, @06:11AM
And I seriously do not think you will find your flowers in the planter.
Its probably in some warehouse filled with marihuana plants by now.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]