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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 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.