Ask Slashdot: Is a Home Drone Feasible?

dargaud writes "I live in an alpine setting and I'd like to be able to remotely view various remote valleys to check for ice formations for winter climbing. I wonder if there are cheap drones that could do that. Requirements would be: GPS guided on a preset route (no remote control necessary, and anyway there's no line of sight), at least 20km autonomy, 1 or 2 cameras on the sides to record valley walls, easy launching and autonomous landing (parachute?) at predefined point, ground detection to avoid crashes (if preset route is wrong or GPS echoes on valley walls as is often the case). Is there anything commercially available cheap enough, or any DIY that doesn't require a year of assembly?"

Comments

DIY VS. Time

[Osgeld]

Totally depends on your skill levels in meshing the brains together and fabrication. There is not enough information in your post to determine either, but based on the tone I am getting your best bet is money, and for the features you want with the durability just to survive the terrain while carrying a small load, it aint going to be cheap.

Off the top of my head maybe model aircraft with telepresence would be the best mix.

Re:DIY VS. Time

[grumpy_technologist]

I can't stress removing telepresence enough. That requires a reliable, constant-on connection. *IF* 4G is available reliably throughout the deployment area, this is a viable solution. If you are willing to settle for less-than-telepresence (text feed of proprioception (self-sensing), mission status, etc), then 3G or even standard cell coverage is enough. If there is even a possibility of losing connectivity, then skip telepresence all together and build a reliable autonomous system. Unfortunately, "reliable" and "autonomous" don't go together very well in the small-scale-commercial setting.

Disclaimer: I'm not quite an expert, but I have a couple years experience with autonomous robots for this type of application (environmental monitoring) over short-term deployment (1 day maximum).

Re:DIY VS. Time

[rHBa]

I don't think autonomous is the best solution here. If you want to get useful footage of iced up waterfalls or to study the state of a glacier you'll want to adjust the flight path manually (as you don't know what's worth looking at until you get there).

I'd suggest an RC motor/sailplane with a video hook-up. Aircraft like these have covered 90+ mile round trips climbing up to 9,000ft and easily have a 'distance from control' range of 15 miles (although in the UK there are legal issues further than 2 miles).

The video bandwidth is pretty low so you'd want to save the video data onboard for later review.

Re:DIY VS. Time

[CastrTroy]

If you have cellular coverage, you could probably just set up something like this Cellular trail camera. You could probably also rig something up with a cheap android phone. If the place is relatively unpopulated, or you can trust people in the area (stick them up in a tree, make them hard to get at), I don't see how it would be too much of a problem. Would be much easier to deal with than an autonomous plane. And it's not like the ice climbing locations move. If the raspberry pi ever gets shipped, you could use something like that, or similar with a cheap camera, and possibly a solar panel to power it.

Re:DIY VS. Time

[cusco]

We go to Peru pretty much every year, and for years my wife wouldn't let me go hike in the mountains alone. Finally I bought a pair of walkie talkies with a 30+ mile range so that she could keep track of me and know if I'd done something exceedingly stupid like fall off a cliff or argue territory with a bull. Unfortunately what we quickly found out was that within a half mile of around the corner of the first mountain you lose radio contact. Unless the poster puts up some type of relay on the surrounding mountaintops they're going to lose their drone pretty quickly unless they live somewhere like England where they can just fly over the hills locals amusingly call 'mountains'.

The good news is that after going on a couple of 3-4 hour hikes with me my wife realized that I really was smarter than the average bear, and no one else would want to go with me on a >700 meter climb, so now I can go alone. Mostly the walkies get used so that I can call her when I'm coming back so they know whether to wait for lunch or eat without me.

Re:DIY VS. Time

[pclminion]

Finally I bought a pair of walkie talkies with a 30+ mile range so that she could keep track of me and know if I'd done something exceedingly stupid like fall off a cliff or argue territory with a bull.

So if you did fall off a cliff, the plan was to grab the handset and scream into it on your way down? What a wonderful way to part with your wife!

Re:DIY VS. Time

[TheLink]

And the other handset is for her to say "I told you so".

Re:DIY VS. Time

[Chris Mattern]

Off the top of my head maybe model aircraft with telepresence would be the best mix.

Top of your head didn't read very carefully. OP specifically said autonomy was a requirement, no remote control, not only because he can't devote the time/skill to driving the thing but also because he won't have line-of-sight to it much of the time.

Re:DIY VS. Time

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Beware of the communist gorillas.

Re:DIY VS. Time

[CrimsonAvenger]

The good news is that after going on a couple of 3-4 hour hikes with me my wife realized that I really was smarter than the average bear, and no one else would want to go with me on a >700 meter climb, so now I can go alone.

If you do that sort of thing alone, you're NOT smarter than the average bear.

Re:DIY VS. Time

[cusco]

The Sendero Luminoso? They pretty much wiped themselves out back in the '90s. President Alan Garcia (against all the advice of his military) armed the peasants in Ayacucho, where Sendero was based, shortly before leaving office. They drove the bastards out of their area, who retreated to Lima. When Fujimori and Montesinos captured their entire leadership the resulting internecine fighting killed more Senderistas than the military had manged to capture in the previous several years, and the surviving losers were happy to inform on the winners in exchange for being sent anywhere but Lurigancho prison. The last remnants just provide protection for the cocaine processors in the Huayallaga Valley. BTW, the typical US press described them as 'Maoists', but they never were. Guzman was actually an admirer of Pol Pot.

Re:DIY VS. Time

[cusco]

I'm not climbing rock walls or anything, mostly following horse trails and cow paths, and she knows pretty much where I'm going. Google Earth has some nice images of the area that I've printed out and I mark my estimated route for her. Check out Paruro, Peru, on Google Earth and you'll get some idea of the kind of terrain I'm walking through. Stunningly beautiful. If you turn on the photos there are some from near Pukapuka, and you can follow the Panaramio link back to some of my other pictures of the area.

She still thinks I'm nuts, but she's known that for a long time.

Basic Stamp with GPS.

[Kenja]

Dont see why it wouldn't be possible using Parallax Basic Stamp or another embedded controller that supports a serial GPS receiver. The platform itself may take a little fiddling as you would want something more stable then your standard RC helicopter. Something with coaxial counter rotating blade system or multiple sets of blades.

Re:Basic Stamp with GPS.

[Kenja]

Something like this... http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/705844:BlogPost:12672

Re:Basic Stamp with GPS.

[guises]

I don't think there are any quadrotors that have the kind of range he's asking for.

Re:Basic Stamp with GPS.

[entropi]

Quadcopters and the like are generally fairly limited on flight time..10-20 min generally from what I've read. For your range, you might want to go with a air wing/rc plane..but diydrones would still be a good place to get up to speed on the capabilities.

Re:Basic Stamp with GPS.

[Daniel Phillips]

Right, it would have to be a fixed wing, quite heavy to carry enough fuel, long range radio with regulatory problems, just for starters. My advice would be, stick to the playground just for now.

Re:Basic Stamp with GPS.

[justforgetme]

Radio should only be required if he wants live views/interaction. The whole thing could be engineered to be
autonomous. Ditching policy will be a problem if it is going to fly in a populated area.

I guess mountains will have high airflow so anything lighter than air or rotating wing is invalid.
A large size (1m wingspan) RC airplane could be a starting point. Autonomous flight will mean that initially fuel will become an
issue because engine management is quite complex to do (while keeping the thing flying under all conditions). I remember a
talk about an autonomous drone in that size range about a couple of years ago, I think there also was a company behind it.
Landing isn't that much of a problem, you can equip a parachute or make a short range radio override for manual
landing, but as said before the price will probably be over 5k for such a thing, possibly even higher since you will need liquid
fuel engines.

Just my 2c

Re:Basic Stamp with GPS.

[Daniel Phillips]

The problem with large RC aircraft is that they are large enough to cause serious injury. Letting a small autonomous flying bomb fly off by itself into the great unknown... maybe if you could find a completely unpopulated area with no danger of forest fire, otherwise think liability.

Re:Basic Stamp with GPS.

[scdeimos]

The problem with coaxial rotor helis in the hobbyist market is that they're all fixed-pitch blade - so are completely useless for outdoor operation in even a light breeze. Although they're still fixed-pitch, quadcopters are much better at doing this. e.g.:

Horizon Hobby Blade mQX Micro Quad-Copter with AS3X RTF & BNF Review
http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1579977

Re:Basic Stamp with GPS.

[Jane Q. Public]

I was rather encouraged to see other people following my own earlier train of thought. 20km puts a quadrotor out of the running, even if wind velocity did not.

Also, for mountainous terrain, you would not want a glider-style wing plan. A flatter, more slippery design such as used for "slope soarers" would seem to fit the bill most appropriately. For the kind of fuel capacity needed, I will make a rough guess and say you would probably want something in the 1.5 meter wingspan range. X-country flight competitions in the 2-meter range have been around for years.

The big obstacle here is the control of flight dynamics. There is plenty of open-source software out there for quadrotors, but I don't know about fixed-wings. I have seen some very expensive navigation implementations in the industry rags, but I suspect that if DIYers can do a quadrotor, they can do a fixed-wing as well. I suspect the main issue is that you need to make your craft steer toward the programmed flightline, more aggressively the larger the deviation, with buffering and without exceeding the design requirements of the craft. That last part is probably the trickiest.

If this is really mountainous country then you probably need very accurate, 3-axis GPS (for altitude), or some kind of ground-sensing scheme to keep from running into a hillside. I suspect the more sophisticated GPS is probably the way to go. But that also requires carefully planned routes. You will want to stay away from hillsides, preferably routing it straight along the valleys between mountains or mountain ridges.

The equipment is out there. Modern liquid fuel model engines are definitely available in any size you may want. They even make radial
And finally: autonomous navigation via GPS is already out in small drones that are on the market, but they probably aren't in your price range. Not that they could not be... I think the current commercial builders are taking advantage of the topic's fledgeling status to gouge people.

So what that all leads me to is, I would:

(1) consider a fixed-wing plane in the 1.5m to 2m wingspan range.

(2) Make sure it's a style and plan that can accommodate an engine large enough to make the range you are talking about. Keep in mind that you are working against the law of diminishing returns to a certain degree: the larger the engine you put on, the more fuel you will need for it, which requires a larger engine, which requires more fuel. In practice, there are solutions to such things, but I suggest always getting an engine that is at least a little more powerful than you think you'll need. Not a lot, but some. Otherwise you will end up with a sudden gust of wind slamming it against a hillside.

Also, what I call the "Land Cruiser" effect can occur: if it is underpowered, the engine will struggle too hard to perform the way you want and thus use more fuel than an engine designed with that torque and rpm in the center of its range. (I hereby officially christen this effect after the old-school Toyota Land Cruiser, which had a huge 6-cylinder engine that struggled to do things that were well within the design parameters of the rest of the vehicle. But with a 3rd-party kit, the stock 6-cylinder could be replaced with a V-8 of close to the same displacement, which was not only physically smaller than the original, but actually had quite a bit more horsepower and ALSO got significantly better gas mileage. It was a win-win. The original Toyota engine was designed such that common U.S. off-road scenarios were at the fringes of its performance curve, rather than the middle where it was most efficient.)

(3) You don't want realtime telemetry at a 20km range. That would be (a) way too heavy, and (b) too expensive. Instead, you will want your on-board cameras to record the video to storage for retrieval and viewing later. And there are ways to overlay not just the clock on the video, but on-board sensor readouts, as well.

So y

Re:Basic Stamp with GPS.

[Jane Q. Public]

That was supposed to say:

"They even make radial 4-stroke piston engines, which did not exist during the days of radial engines for real planes."

Re:Basic Stamp with GPS.

[justforgetme]

Yep, that is why I mention Ditching policy as a problem for flights over populated areas...

Re:Basic Stamp with GPS.

[drerwk]

Radial 4 strokes were quite common; and still are for real planes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radial_engine
My favorite - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_R-4360_Wasp_Major

Re:Basic Stamp with GPS.

[geekoid]

Flying bomb? DO you also believe minor car accidents create huge explosions?

I have never seen an RC plane crash and explode.

Re:Basic Stamp with GPS.

[Daniel Phillips]

Legal bomb. Try crashing your 50 pound plane into a house, person or car and see what happens.

Re:Basic Stamp with GPS.

[Jane Q. Public]

I should have been more specific. I was referring to the older style radial that had all the cylinders arranged in a circle. Some of the earlier ones even had a fixed crankshaft and the cylinders themselves spun with the prop for cooling.

rc airplane and legos

[jimmyfrank]

Pretty cool: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/03/geekdads-2nd-3rd-anniversary-why-i-started-geekdad-by-chris-anderson/

Re:Define

[niftydude]

agree - this request is too light on content to engineer a solution.

What are the typical and maximum wind speeds in the valleys you are looking at?
How high above sea level are you, and what is the highest point you want the drone to get to?
Are there constraints on noise (ie will a loud engine cause avalanches?

More info please.

ArduPilot

[Mindscrew]

Have you heard of this? http://www.sparkfun.com/products/8785

diydrones

[Anonymous Coward]

http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/wiki/ArduCopter

or for other options

http://diydrones.com

Nothing ready to fly will be cheap

[Dr Max]

Your not going to get anything pre-built ready to fly cheap (thousands of dollars), but if you build your own with arduino from a site like http://diydrones.com/, it becomes a lot more feasible (just choose an rc vehicle and follow the guide).

Re:Nothing ready to fly will be cheap

[serviscope_minor]

Kind of.

You can buy a ready made cheap R/C plane and a ready made Ardupilot.

You have to mount the ardupilot somewhere inside the fuselage, plug in the GPS unit, then plug in the servo receiver and motors.

It's not 100% completely ready made but it will resquire basically not tooling to assemble.

I believe that they even have a list of suitable planes somewhere.

I don't think thats legal...

[Anonymous Coward]

But here is the FAA's take on it...

http://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/uas/

Re:I don't think thats legal...

[gnapster]

A fair point: it's one thing to get the legislature of California to entertain self-driving cars. Getting the FAA to bless self-flying planes will be a harder nut to crack.

Do It Right The First Time!!

[Bananatree3]

It sounds like a straight-up cash purchase of a "turn-key drone" is your ticket. Otherwise, I'd recommend some kind of "DIY framework" - a drone platform that's taken care of the aerodynamics, controls and fuel tank and radio controls for you. Then you just tweak it to match your exact need.

My advice: whether, you DIY it or buy it outright.... don't skimp. Walk into this knowing you're probably going to spend twice as much as your initial estimate, if you can budget it. A semi-autonomous LONG RANGE drone is NOT cheap. A 20km bare minimum range puts this project into a semi-professional to professional level. Most "hobbiest" drone projects or commercial products couldn't even spit at the kind of quality and scale needed to perform such a task.

If you decide to buy something... look at commercial surveying drones. They have the range, the quality and the sophisticated integration already taken care of for you.

Do your homework upfront, buy it right the first time, take care of it and maintain it properly and it will give you YEARS of little or no issue service.

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[phantomfive]

Do your homework upfront, buy it right the first time, take care of it and maintain it properly and it will give you YEARS of little or no issue service.

Oh, these must be the words of someone who is currently maintaining someone else's piece of crap.

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[Kozz]

I noticed that the person asking the question did not include any information to suggest what country (or even continent) they reside in. But let's assume he's in the continental US so we've got something to talk about (and just to piss off the whiners who complain every time this is assumed).

What kinds of US laws are applicable for a "drone"? I thought the laws were basically the same as radio-controlled plans: under 1000ft, line of sight. Anything beyond that, and wouldn't you have to get some kind of commercial license, submit flight plans, or anything else?

I don't actually know anything about this stuff, but I did listen to a podcast recently. That makes me an expert on the internet, right?

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much yea, 1000 ft, line of sight.... which is going to be impossible for this purpose.

There are ways around those rules... you can get exceptions from the FAA for stuff like this, but its not going to be cheap & you'd better have a reason more substantial than "i think it would be fun to do".

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You’re not going to find anything professional or turn-key for under $5000 which defiantly isn't cheap. DIY on the other hand, although it would require some technical skills is possible for under a grand. My advice is spend your money on a nice petrol rc plane, go with a cmos camera (better with changing light), and ardupilot hardware and software. It'll do everything he wants (maybe not crash avoidance) and he will save a fortune.

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[martin-boundary]

But let's assume he's in the continental US so we've got something to talk about (and just to piss off the whiners who complain every time this is assumed).

Agreed. Let's also assume he lives in Minnesota, because he mentioned the alpine countryside, which suggests he's got Norwegian ancestry from the great mountains of Central Europe.

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[dargaud]

Well, I'm in France and have no idea of the legality of unmanned flying here. Anyway, a discussion centererd on the US is fine as once I know what the pitholes are, I can transpose to a different country with some research.

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[phayes]

There was a discussion that came up on /. about a year ago when a guy from Switzerland took his flying wing that sent back a "pilot's eye view" back. He had some very impressive videos that showed his wing flying nap of the earth around the Alps & even a trip to NYC buzzing around the Statue of Liberty (& NOT getting hassled for it which surprised many).

One thing that came up is that there are indeed limitations on Line of Sight just about everywhere & France even outlaws piloting using pilot's eye view without a pilot's license (no surprise there - In France, you pretty much need a license to do anything).

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[hairyfish]

I noticed that the person asking the question did not include any information to suggest what country (or even continent) they reside in. But let's assume he's in the continental US so we've got something to talk about

What if he's in Afghanistan, and the remote valleys he wishes to climb are to smuggle heroin and guns across the border? Or maybe to spy on foreign troop movements? Surely this would give us even more to talk about :)

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[Anonymous Coward]

you can get exceptions from the FAA for stuff like this, but its not going to be cheap & you'd better have a reason more substantial than "i think it would be fun to do".

Perhaps he should submit his exception request with "in order to make money". That seems to be the key phrase.

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[cusco]

If the poster is in an 'alpine area' it's unlikely that the local authorities are going to have either the capability to track down where the plane came from, or the interest in enforcing a law they'd have to research to even know whether it existed. They don't become cops because they're bored of being rocket scientists. Alpine areas are generally out of the flight path of commercial and light aviation, so the FAA probably won't even know that the plane exists.

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[3dr]

Do a search for "Crazy Horst" on vimeo. I think this is the person you are mentioning.

For instance, watch his "Catch me if you can" video.

Yeah, the link above is from youtube, but search on vimeo where most of his videos are.

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[tophermeyer]

I think he's got a great model here for developing a cheap method of monitoring and reporting on remote climbing/hiking areas. If he works in a way to publish is data in a manner that is useful to other people, he's got a shot.

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[tophermeyer]

Why would you assume cops in remote alpine areas are idiots? In a lot of (US) states remote areas like this are monitored by parks services, which are often subsets of State Police.

Plus, any local pilot who sees this thing is probably going to roughly what it is and if they don't like it, will raise hell with any authority they can reach.

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[phayes]

Not the guy I was referring to. Horst is not using a flying wing & is not piloting his plane using real-time video sent back over a radio link to a head-mounted display like the guy I was referring to. There was some problem with the Head mounted display as he won them in a competition but the guy giving out prizes refused to give him his prize for some time

The guy I was referring to had flight times over 40 min, speeds approaching 100km & could pilot somewhat out of line of sight.using the radiop video link. His videos were closer to those done by basejumpers that what I saw of Horst's.

I bookmarked a page way back & IIRC the guy doing all this was Trappy from Austria, not Switzerland. http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1279141&page=11

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[phayes]

Heh, the riteweave flying wings approach 200Km/h not the measly 100 I said...

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[hackula]

Actually, "in order to make jobs"

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[cusco]

So when you see an unmanned aircraft you automatically assume that it's a drone? That's odd, I assume that it's an R/C plane and the pilot is somewhere near.

Seriously, how many cops and Forest Service agents are conversant with FAA regulations? **IF** they figure out that it's not being controlled they now have to find out if that's legal or not. I'm not a pilot, the only reason that I know that drones are prohibited is because I see it mentioned occasionally on SlashDot. Now if they're going to do something about it they need to figure out where it came from. Who has that kind of time? None of the cops that I work with do, if they're not busy doing something specific they set up a speed trap or watch for red light violators. Plus, there's nothing in it for either them or their department, so why bother? And is a pilot going to circle for a half hour or more just to see where this little tiny dot 'way below him eventually lands? Not likely.

Re:Do It Right The First Time!!

[tophermeyer]

I think we're getting down in the weeds on this.

I think that local law enforcement, or pilots, would look at this thing and say "gee, that looks pretty suspicious" (who would head out to a remote, windy, alpine area to fly recreational R/C aircraft?). Law enforcement might not be able to quote FAA regulations by heart, but they're sure going to report something that out of place when they get back to the office.

And as far as the capability to track it down, you're probably right that they're not going to trace it's signal back to the source. But in a remote area like this, it's pretty likely that local LEO's will have a short list of the locals that are capable of putting this kind of thing together.

More information required

[Anonymous Coward]

There's plenty of projects around that will do what you're after. An ArduPilot in a plane should do all that, although you'll likely have to land and take off under manual control. A hobby helicopter/quadcopter drone will have trouble with the range (20km is a fair way to travel, and i assume it's not a straight path). Sensors can deal with things like terrain avoidance and calculation of true altitude versus barometer altitude (to help prevent controlled flight into terrain).

But you need to clarify. Just how cheap is "cheap enough"? $500? $10000? Some values are required.

Re:Call me an ahole or a hippie

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds to me like he wants to photograph valley walls for safety purposes, so that he'll know in advance whether some faces will be safe to climb or not before putting anyone in danger.

This sounds like a perfectly valid use of his money, and I think you should get off your high horse.

(I speak as someone who both spends considerable money on my hobbies _and_ regularly donates to charities

here you go

[way2trivial]

http://www.avinc.com/uas/small_uas/raven/
10km range

only 50k

(this should tell you are way outta budget line)

Re:here you go

[SeTyR]

... or you can go for the greenest and safest (imho) .. a remotely guided paramotor Video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdAfrOF4wjs Website : Opale-Paramodels.com

Re:here you go

[dargaud]

Sounds interesting. What's the range of those ? And is it possible to have them run autonomously following a GPS track ?

Re:here you go

[geekoid]

That's a horrible link for anyone who doesn't know what it is. It's just the view of a camera. From the contexts of this discussion I initially thought it was some sort of view from an unmanned craft.

And it is not greener or safer then a UAV.

But don't let that stop you from forcing your favorite topic into conversation that have nothing to do with it.

Re:here you go

[bill_mcgonigle]

A powered slope glider would probably be best but the problem is that currently only humans are capable of flying such planes with enough accuracy to prevent a crash.

If he could get enough bandwidth, he could uplink the video realtime as an Internet game and people could make flight decisions. Use a vote-tallying algorithm with crash-avoidance to pick the best inputs among many.

</priorart>

Re:here you go

[SeTyR]

greener in the sense that it uses 1 motor, and you can glide for log time periods without it.. thus energy efficiency .. thus greener.

Re:here you go

[SeTyR]

and it is unmanned, lawl, didn't get sleep today?

Civil UAVs are currently prohibited by the FAA

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/uas/uas_faq/index.cfm?print=go#Qn2

You can only fly them as if they were R/C aircraft, which means line-of-sight only and you must have a link to the ground. There are also ceilings and rules about keeping them away from buildings, people, and especially aircraft.

The quadrotors that you see people putting cameras on are not UAVs, they are just remote controlled and someone on the ground is flying them in real-time. The FAA is moving very slowly on approving any sort of UAV flights (public or civil) although they are being forced by Congress to finally issue rules about how they might go about approving civil UAVs. Otherwise, right now UAVs can only be flown by the government, government contractors, universities, or in military airspace.

There are no commercial options that a private citizen can buy, and the DIY options will require lots of work. This is an area of active research in the robotics community, and implementing any one of the features you mentioned would probably be sufficient to get you a Ph.D. right now.

Re:Civil UAVs are currently prohibited by the FAA

[cusco]

He's in a rural area, flying into the mountains. Unless he's stupid and takes his hobby into commercial air space the FAA isn't even going to know that he's there.

Re:Civil UAVs are currently prohibited by the FAA

[Anonymous Coward]

-Line of sight is a non-binding FAA advisory.
-20km implies NitroMethane.
-If you don't have cell reception then you're going to have to install communications infrastructure or it will need to have autonomous operation as a backup
-ArduPilot Mega 2 is the most maintainable autopilot for fixed wings with the largest development community.
-parachute recovery hasn't been done much so you're going to have to cover fairly un-documented territory to get there.
-HobbyKing is going to be your cheapest source of airframes.

Read up on the sea sheapards drone. http://www.seashepherd.org/
It's CoTs and I would expect that would have had to have been a pretty turn key solution.

I would recommend you abandon the 20km requirement and install wireless cameras at the extreme ends of your mission profile. Otherwise, expect to spend serious money fidgeting to get a high reliability nitromethane engine in a scale plane or you have to go deep in to experimental balloon launch glider territory.

Looking expensive

[MichaelSmith]

The 20 km range excludes cheap electric model aircraft. Also your location requires something with a lot of excess power, due to the disturbed air over mountains.

Re:Looking expensive

[dargaud]

In winter usually the air is pretty calm. Anyway the requirement wouldn't be to fly in _any_ conditions, just when it's best to do a recon. Anyway, I see plenty of good suggestions so far. Thanks all.

Re:Looking expensive

[MichaelSmith]

In winter usually the air is pretty calm.

Not calm enough. Air which feels still to you can be moving at ten knots. When that ten knot flow goes over the top of a mountain it generates ten knots of sink. Good light aircraft climb at ten knots and regularly crash in the mountains. Normal model aircraft might climb at two knots, and that is without cameras and communications gear. Good luck!

Re:Looking expensive

[scdeimos]

Normal model aircraft might climb at two knots, and that is without cameras and communications gear.

Normal model aircraft, maybe, but not all. Electric hotliners such as the Espada RL are cruising when they climb at 100ft/sec (60kts) and can go much faster.

Re:Looking expensive

[Simon Brooke]

The 20 km range excludes cheap electric model aircraft. Also your location requires something with a lot of excess power, due to the disturbed air over mountains.

Small off-the-shelf quadropters depend on electric motors to control the speed of the rotors, so it's not trivial to drive the rotors directly off an infernal combustion engine. But you could have a small infernal combustion engine driving an alternator or dynamo, generating electricity for the rotors and control system. This would give extended range. Of course, you'd need to build it extremely light if an off-the-shelf quadroptor is going to be able to carry it, but using a model aircraft engine and a bicycle dynamo (and some sort of reduction gear!) it should be feasible. A larger, custom quadroptor designed to carry a lawnmower engine or small petrol generator would be possible but would take much more work and expense to get working. Also, extremely lightweight drones are likely to be tolerated by the authorities even if they're not technically legal, because they won't do too much damage if they crash, but I'd expect people to get much more concerned about a drone weighing 25Kg or more.

Alternatively a blimp has more lifting capacity and lower power requirements at the expense of less manoeuvrability. It could either carry more battery or an infernal combustion engine.

Re:Looking expensive

[Fri13]

Does not..... As you do not need lots of electricity at all to fly over 100km ranges.

Example of JÄMI model what is just about 50 euros have done records (what I know) of 115km range and it has just 107cm wing span.

There are lots bigger ones like OH 2000 what has 178cm wing span and is capable to carry few hundred grams easily.
So you can actually get a GPS, 3G, few cameras, auto control module, batteries and servos to that weight. And if neede, you can adjust the model to have even wider wing span if needed.

The mountains have great wings, what can be exactly benefit as those fly using warmer winds. The problem is just that if you want direct control for that 20km range, it will add a one second lag if wanted to use 2G/3G data connection (if available). Adding a electronic motor to that would give benefit in starting and some possible sudden problems where you need to make corrections without wind, but more weight and so on.

The bonus using just wind is weight and low size demand for battery.

Today a cheap 70 euros Android smartphone has almost everything what is needed, a camera, data connections, CPU, RAM, open source Linux operating system etc. So rip off all non-needed plastic, remove battery and join it to bigger battery. Add servos trough USB port and it is manageable. After all, only 2-3 servos are needed, depending what wings you want to control.

This video was linked in Youtube about year ago. it is about RC flight near New York.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9cSxEqKQ78

Re:Looking expensive

[MichaelSmith]

Yeah but its not going to go out 10km and then back, battling sink and rotors all the way, lugging camera gear along. This is a job for a motorglider.

Re:Looking expensive

[Fri13]

And of course there are this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgUoR_7gzzM what fits better to topic.

And it has max range 18.5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G__WvTWeAGw

So no, it doesn't mean you are out of "cheap RC models" league.
No, it isn't cheap (50-100 euros) but it isn't expensive (10 000+ euros).

But I would ask, who would like to do that as autonomyous because it is fun to flight those things? :D

Re:Looking expensive

[Fri13]

You are so correct http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G__WvTWeAGw or not!

Re:Looking expensive

[drinkypoo]

The problem with the idea of using a series hybrid is the weight of the generator which is essentially wasted. If it could be built directly into the motor then you might have something, but I haven't seen anyone do that yet. Would be nice to have a microturbine that would do it. Then you could vector the microturbine for additional thrust with some servos and still generate electricity to run props to do the steering and so on.

Re:Looking expensive

[gbr]

http://micropilot.com/products-mp2028-uavs.htm

$10K to $15K

Re:Looking expensive

[Sepodati]

"inTernal" combustion engine. "infernal" had me chuckling at this as I was reading.

Re:Looking expensive

[Gravitron 5000]

Small off-the-shelf quadropters depend on electric motors to control the speed of the rotors, so it's not trivial to drive the rotors directly off an infernal combustion engine.

I've heard that they are a hell of a lot of trouble to get working, but they operate like a demon once you've got them tuned. As they say, the devil is in the details.

Re:Looking expensive

[qbast]

Is 'infernal combustion engine' powered by hellfire?

IAAHAVE, ALPINE = BONED

[Anonymous Coward]

Helicopter avionics is my trade. I also fly stunt rc heli's for fun.

Just of the top of my head, Your Alpine conditions are pretty much the most unfavorable to your expectations of cheap/simple/all in 1
- I expect the winds could knock you out. Only powerful collective pitch heli can handle winds, ie not quadrotors (fixed pitch)
- Heli's do not like high altitudes
- Li ion batteries do not like cold
- If you crash, im guessing its gone for good in the snow. im not aware of any consumer drones have tracking yet.
- Most consumer drones have 1 camera and low to mid level avionics/autopilot. I expect a fair bit of tweaking would be needed to reach your spec

Even still Good Luck !
-k

Re:Define

[Xeno man]

He's not looking for a solution just yet. He wants a starting point. You making things too complex too fast. The question is, can you do those things for cheap? Is it possible? If you have a question, the answer is "Ideal conditions"

What are the typical and maximum wind speeds in the valleys you are looking at? - No wind
How high above sea level are you, and what is the highest point you want the drone to get to? Sea level to 10 feet
Are there constraints on noise (ie will a loud engine cause avalanches? - Doesn't matter

Now build a simple solution. Lets see, GPS, cameras, autonomy, collision detection, 20km range. The cheapest is about $9,000. But it might not meet your needs.

Now the poster sees that and think 1 of two things.
1. Oh damn, I was hoping for something between $1,000 - $2,000 so I'm not going to find something that will work in my price range. I'll give up searching for now. Or
2. Sweet, That is well below what I'm willing to spend. Lets do some more research and ask more questions about what I really need now I know that this is feasible.

DIYDrone Blimpduino?

[gizmo_mathboy]

An interesting part of the DIY Drones stuff.

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blog/show?id=705844%3ABlogPost%3A44817

Winds might be sort of a problem.

I wonder how easy it would be to make a DIY drone using a powered paraglider.

Well, it does look like it has been asked:

http://diydrones.com/forum/topics/uav-paraglider?xg_source=activity

Cool.

Re:Call me an ahole or a hippie

[viperidaenz]

So tramping all over the country side in the hope of finding something is much better than flying a small (electric?) plane to check it out before hand is better for the environment being tramped on? I suppose I have never known of a smart hippy before... I still have hope though.

2 cameras? GPS driven? Parachutes? Lightweight?

[gavron]

This post belonged on 2012-04-01.

There's nothing on Earth that can do what you want.
Your requirements are self-defeating.

I'm a helicopter pilot.
I own 10 R/C helis.
I've flown UAVs.
I only own two R/C fixed-wing aircraft.
One has one camera on it.

Weight is everything. You want a 20Km range and
2 high-def cameras. Those things fly at 160Km/H max.
You're talking 15 minutes "there" and back. Not going to happen today.

*puff the magic dragon*

E

Not legal to fly a drone without line-of sight

[Anonymous Coward]

see http://diydrones.com/profiles/blog/show?id=705844%3ABlogPost%3A28583

Q) What are those restrictions for non-commercial UAVs flying without a COA?

A: You MUST do the following: 1) Stay below 400ft. 2) Maintain a "pilot in control", which is to say that you must always be able to take manual control and fly the aircraft out of danger (in general, that means maintaining line-of-sight contact with the aircraft). 3) Stay away from built-up areas. More detail is here.

Re:Not legal to fly a drone without line-of sight

[Fri13]

But when you have a RC with realtime video feed from its direction, you are all the time in control of it and clear understanding where it is heading.

So no line-of-sight is needed at all.

If you loose remote control of the plain, then there is nothing you can do even if you have line-of-sight to it.

Of course it's feasible!

[Black Parrot]

Just program your household robot to control your flying car.

Re:Of course it's feasible!

[geekoid]

Except my robot returns it, it smells like cigars and cheap floozies.

Short Answer: No

[introcept]

I'm in the middle of writing my EE thesis is on embedded control systems for UAVs and this is as good a distraction as any, so here goes:
The kind of specs you're talking about you'd be lucky to get for high-end military and commercial (mini) drones. You'll either be spending tens(hundreds?) of thousands on an off the shelf model or a lot of time developing, testing, crashing and fixing your DIY solution. There are hundreds of DIY drones on the net but I doubt any of them have the kind of reliable autonomy you're talking about.

Autonomy is especially difficult, you'll need to learn a lot of control theory, kinematics, Navigation/AI and possibly computer vision. Then rememeber that you need to fuse sensor data from gyroscopes, acceleromters, GPS, compass, altitude and airspeed sensors, and that all of these sensors are unreliable/error prone. You need to be able to deal with loss of GPS link which means you need to have an alternate means of localisation(which is very difficult). Also, every commercial system I've seen requires an always on downlink and manned base-station for control, even if this isn't technically necessary, it's pretty much mandatory for safety.

Making an autonomous UAV only makes sense as a learning exercise or for R&D but it's not a good way to get any work done. If your goal is to get aerial photos, stick a camera on an RC plane, get some video goggles, a long range radio and some flying lessons.

Re:Short Answer: No

[hyades1]

If I'm not mistaken, your basic iPhone has most of this built in. It's aware of its orientation and location, and it has a camera. Speed could be dealt with in a variety of simple ways, and avoidance problems minimized. He's talking about a pre-planned route, after all. And given a smart phone's "self-awareness" I wonder whether some kind of very primitive intertial guidance would work.

It wouldn't be foolproof, but it seems to me that cheap and "expendible with regret" trumps building a poor man's cruise missile from the circuit board up.

Re:Short Answer: No

[jamesh]

You need to be able to deal with loss of GPS link which means you need to have an alternate means of localisation(which is very difficult).

But very important unless you want to end up with it captured by Iran and have them claim you were spying on them.

Re:Short Answer: No

[koehn]

The MEMS gyros in an iPhone are worthless for this kind of application. Various people have tried to use them for emergency attitude indicators etc in small planes and they simply don't have the stability required. The GPS is nowhere near accurate enough for altitude: you need WAAS (which isn't available in all parts of the world) or LAAS (which you'd need to build yourself). The accelerometers are also not up to any kind of inertial guidance task: it's not what they're built for. iPhones have an amazing array of sensors, but they're intended for handheld operation.

The only way I could see this working would be a fairly large (6-20' wingspan) airplane or perhaps helicopter with a piston engine (you need the size and power to overcome inevitable mountain turbulence: mountains make their own wind, especially when they have snow/ice on them) and a whole pile of advanced avionics and software. Which wouldn't be cheap, or all that safe, really. I'd hate to be in the air with it unless it had some kind of see and avoid technology, and I'd hate to have it crash on me.

Also in the US as many others pointed out it wouldn't be legal.

Re:Short Answer: No

[grumpy_technologist]

Greetings from the CS side of autonomous systems R&D.

Drop the video goggles and you are right on.

Re:Short Answer: No

[Fri13]

And thinking that as Android use Linux operating system, you have great amount of hackers to pay a little to help.
And when thinking about Open Source projects like FlightGear and its community, there should be even few hackers what has skills to make a some kind program(s) what would read I/O from Android phone sensors and do calculations and then turn them to simple timed commands for one axis motors what you need at least two (Y and X)

It is sad that most people only see world trough commercial companies making money. And do not trust what a community can do together when willing just to work together and share the knowledge what they together gain and gather.

With open source, you can make awesome things cheaply, what wold otherwise take millions if not billions of dollars by private corporation.

Re:Short Answer: No

[TerranFury]

If I'm not mistaken, your basic iPhone has most of this built in. It's aware of its orientation and location, and it has a camera. Speed could be dealt with in a variety of simple ways, and avoidance problems minimized.

One of my labmates did exactly this, on Android, for a project involving (IIRC) the Air Force (He flew the resulting drone at a nearby airbase, at least). The thing worked; he controlled it by sending text messages.

Re:Short Answer: No

[introcept]

Fantastic! Where can I buy one?
Needs to have a 20km range and be able to autonomously navigate a 40km round trip through alpine terrain (say) ten times without crashing.....

Re:Short Answer: No

[hyades1]

By text messages? Thank you for that! You made my day.

Video Piloting (FPV/RPV)

[guantamanera]

I recommend you FPV and I find it more fun than the drone. There are many ready to fly solutions for cheap. Here is the link to the proper forums RcGroups http://youtu.be/b7e2IQ_Ft3c

Cheap and easy - but not what you're asking for

[mpoulton]

For around $1500, you could have a radio controlled aircraft with one or more video links that can fly reliably over that kind of range. The price goes down to under $1000 if you can deal with shorter range. Basic autopilot functions (wing leveling and heading-hold) can be integrated for not much additional cost. All of this has been done before by many RC aircraft hobbyists, and flying by video is easier than flying by line of sight. However, you still have to fly the aircraft and it is not autonomous. Aircraft autonomy of the type you are requesting is very challenging and not available off-the-shelf. The cost and complexity required to achieve it will probably not be worthwhile for your application.

I was thinking this as a possible project later...

[Lohrno]

Use a weather balloon, make a rig for it with some fans controlled by servos. (Either that or get a ready made R/C zeppelin) If you're using the weather balloon setup, you obviously want to do some experiments with how much helium you put in so it is mostly neutrally buoyant. Get an Arduino and you can get the GPS and camera parts that are ready made for it. Hook up your Arduino to the servos and battery as well obviously. Bonus points if you can rig a solar panel to the top to charge it up a little in flight.

I think it could be done for under $500 and some time building/programming.

But then again I've never touched any of this stuff. :D

OpenPilot: "The Next Generation Open Source UAV"

[Btrot69]

I'm surprised that no one mentioned this project yet: http://www.openpilot.org/ It seems to be a mature project with a strong community. I learned about it listening to my favorite podcast ~ a year ago: FLOSS Weekly, Episode 148 ;-)

Re:Define

[ozmanjusri]

He's not looking for a solution just yet. He wants a starting point.

Then DIY Drones would be a better starting point than Slashdot. http://diydrones.com/

"Convert any RC airplane into a fully-autonomous UAV! Just add the APM 2 autopilot to any RC aircraft and it becomes a fully-programmable flying robot with a powerful ground station and Mission Planner. APM 2 is an open source, Arduino-compatible, pro-quality autopilot. It is the most advanced IMU-based open source autopilot available today, and provides an entire UAV control system with scriptable missions with 3D waypoints, in-flight uploading of commands and powerful ground station software. "

Features include:
Return to Launch with a flick of your RC toggle switch or a mouse click in the graphical Ground Station
Unlimited 3D GPS waypoints
Built-in camera control
Fully-scriptable missions
One-click software load, and easy point-and-click configuration in the powerful Mission Planner. NO programming required!
Replay recorded missions and analyze all the data with a graphing interface
Supports two-way telemetry with Xbee wireless modules.
Point-and-click waypoint entry or real-time mission commands while the UAV is in the air
Fly with a joystick or gamepad via your PC--no need for RC control!
Built-in failsafe will bring your aircraft home in the case of radio loss

"Technically" feasable, or "legally" feasible?

[element-o.p.]

DISCLAIMER: IANAL, so this is not legal advice.

Having said that, I am rather interested in DIY drones, and therefore, I have been following technical and legal aspects of amateur drones/UAVs/UAS' for a couple of years. I don't see any *technical* reason why what you want to do isn't possible. However, if you live in the USA, I don't believe what you want to do is legal. As I understand, the FAA requires amateur operated drones to be under line-of-site control at all times. Here are some links to help you figure out the legal restrictions for what you want to do:

DIY Drones Regulatory FAQ
FAA Advisory Circular 91-57
Electronic Code of Federal Regulations

HTH!

Re:"Technically" feasable, or "legally" feasible?

[Lando]

I'll second this. Autonomous aircraft need a license from the FAA I believe and I don't believe they had them out to civilians. So the legal requirements are going to be harder to meet than the engineering requirements. Start by researching those requirements first I would say. The earlier post for diydrones.com is probably the place to start.

Re:"Technically" feasable, or "legally" feasible?

[Overzeetop]

What is your legal liability when you shoot a rifle and your bullet crashes into a human being, injuring or killing said human?

What is your legal liability when you throw a hammer and it crashes into a human being, injuring or killing said human?

What is your legal liability when you fall asleep at the wheel of your car and it crashes into a human being, injuring or killing said human?

I suspect it's going to be involuntary manslaughter in the case of a death, regardless of what you used.

Re:"Technically" feasable, or "legally" feasible?

[element-o.p.]

Dang it. Yep, I foobarred that one.

Re:2 cameras? GPS driven? Parachutes? Lightweight?

[Anonymous Coward]

This post belonged on 2012-04-01.

There's nothing on Earth that can do what you want.
Your requirements are self-defeating.

I'm a helicopter pilot.
I own 10 R/C helis.
I've flown UAVs.
I only own two R/C fixed-wing aircraft.
One has one camera on it.

Weight is everything. You want a 20Km range and
2 high-def cameras. Those things fly at 160Km/H max.
You're talking 15 minutes "there" and back. Not going to happen today.

*puff the magic dragon*

E

http://vimeo.com/16080459
I'll just leave this here

Not legal to fly

[erice]

The lack of line of sight is the killer. From one of many articles on the subject: FAA regulations developed in the 1970s to cover the amateur use of radio-controlled planes, which also apply to today's DIY drones. Those rules include restricting their altitude to 400 feet (120 meter), requiring them to always be in view of their controller on the ground and prohibiting them from being flown over built-up areas.

You could ask for a specific waiver. That is how researchers have been able to fly their drones. I am skeptical though that the FAA would be willing to issue a waiver for something is just a hobby.

Re:Call me an ahole or a hippie

[lymond01]

That reply was like a horse femur for that troll. He won't need to eat for a week!

University?

[Tweezak]

This sounds similar to senior design projects that were being done when I was studying EE. Contact the nearest university with mechanical and electrical engineering programs and find out what's required to sponsor a senior design team.

DIY

[mailuefterl]

DIY: Try this website: http://diydrones.com/

here you go

[SeTyR]

google Arducopter (opensource), Gaui (closed source), Dji innovation (closed source), KKmulticopter (half open source lawl) and there are many more but these are the main ones. And for the best video examples of what is possible today under 1500$ and how real it is, and beautifull landscapes like snow mountains, google "team blacksheep" or "Trappy fpv" .. enjoy

Re:Call me an ahole or a hippie

[EvanED]

My read is he wants to scout for good climbing locations before trekking there. Safety is almost certainly better-assessed on-location.

I'm not an ice climber, but I have some knowledge of the sport and have done a bit of outdoor rock climbing.

I want one of these!

[phreakincool]

http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/usa/

Re:I want one of these!

[SeTyR]

thats a toy, and some spam :p

Re:Define

[niftydude]

He's not looking for a solution just yet. He wants a starting point. You making things too complex too fast. The question is, can you do those things for cheap? Is it possible? If you have a question, the answer is "Ideal conditions"

Silly me. I thought that the poster was seeking to draw on the combined IT and engineering expertise of slashdot, not get information he could easily google for.

I guess I stand corrected.

Re:2 cameras? GPS driven? Parachutes? Lightweight?

[gavron]

Yes leave it there. No two cameras. No self-maneuvering. No GPS. No valley winds. The problem with the specs is you can meet one or more of them... but to meet ALL OF THEM at a low cost? Never.

E

It needs at least a tiny missile

[kawabago]

It has to have a small missile for avalanche control at least, if not alien invasion counter insurgency!

Re:Define

[symbolset]

Or maybe you could just "wing it" - for fun.

Re:Define

[dargaud]

You are right about the constraints, ideal conditions first and then we'll see. Anyway the altitude isn't very high. As for the noise, something quiet would be better: it's not a national park but still, animals in winter waste energy if they get scared and have to move; and people get away from the city in order not to hear moped noises coming from the sky.

As for the price, yes 1~2k$ would be ideal. Technically this looks interesting, but they appear to sell only to spy^H^H^Hlaw enforcement agencies.

Re:2 cameras? GPS driven? Parachutes? Lightweight?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that is Trappy's world record run, so:

It had 2 cameras (A GoPro and a low res security cam).
It has a GPS, return to home (self maneuvering), and a transmitter to send a live video signal back to someone on the ground
He flys in a valley between two mountains. And can handle moderate wind.

Total cost is less than $2000 on the plane, maybe $3000 counting ground equip.
Of course, that is a world record... not an easy thing to duplicate. But the main difficulty is in the "live video signal back to the ground". If you remove that requirement, things get a lot easier. And scarier, since you won't have feedback on what your flying mass of money is currently doing.

What it does not have, and what you will not find on ANY light plane right now is ground avoidance. Most of the rest is easy, even the preset route. (My $800 glider can do that). Even 20km total ground covered isn't too absurd... although 20km out and back with meandering is getting into "you'll have to work REALLY hard" territory.

Hmm, also, auto-landing is something that is not fully matured. Some systems have it, but usually mean for it to be a failsafe.

Finally, and this is really the only nail in his coffin, is that it sounds like he wants to do this with minimal work (Easy launch, easy landing, no control, etc makes me suspect this). And right now, while this can all be done, it requires a LOT of work and manual interaction with the plane.

Frankly,

[symbolset]

This might not be a bookmark.

Re:Define

[BitZtream]

$200 over the cost of the model you want to fly it in, which you could probably safely get buy at $400 total for aircraft and one of the prebuilt IMUs.

You'd need other support equipment, probably $600 total for a model capable of flying itself.

These aren't new anyway.

http://code.google.com/p/arducopter/

Re:Define

[Anonymous Coward]

See? You can be annoying and helpful at the same time

Another resource

[mherrb]

You may also want to check project Paparazzi home page. They make a great autopilot that has been used on a wide range of UAVs from small cheap ones to more expensive research projects. http://paparazzi.enac.fr/wiki/Main_Page

Stationary Cameras

[sdk4777]

I'm not sure, but wouldn't it be feasible to install some cameras on top of the mountains that look to the valleys you want to observe? Is there any GSM coverage there? Then you have an internet connection to them. If this could suit your needs, it seems a lot cheaper.

Re:2 cameras? GPS driven? Parachutes? Lightweight?

[dargaud]

Thanks. Since I don't have an RC background, at least it gives me an idea of what I'm up against, and if not doable now, what needs to improve before it is.

Looks like ground avoidance would be the harder to match, so let's drop it and just have it fly higher. Then the autonomy, OK, let's do something closer. As for the remote control, I was thinking of leaving that out entirely for several reasons: lack of line of sight, no need to learn to fly, no need for $$$ ground equipment, saves weight on the plane (no antenna, less power). But it means that it must land by itself; or at least crash with minimal damage! High video quality is not a requirement, two decent webcams would do (or maybe one split with a mirror). As for the legality of it all...

As for the minimal work, well, yes... C;-) I'm a software guy who deals with hardware daily at work. But I want to _use_ it, not spend months putting it together !

Re:Yeah...right, "de Bleauchamp".

[gmhowell]

We had all the time in the world.

Re:Define

[Joce640k]

agree - this request is too light on content to engineer a solution.

How is that different from any other "ask slashdot"?

swinglet cam

[Anonymous Coward]

close to what you are after...

http://www.sensefly.com/products/swinglet-cam

priced about 7000 euros

Options

[docilespelunker]

While you could dive in at the deep end and purchase a drone, they’re more expensive than a house. Some are more expensive than a full road of houses! (my new currency is houses, does anyone have change for one?)

Back to the point. Sounds like you have a cool hobby. Freely climbing in a range of local mountains and valleys! Awesome!

If this project is to be a hobby rather than just a tool, then perhaps starting small and working up would be a good way to progress.

For filming in caves I’ve purchased a small helicopter with a camera. It was not expensive and can’t deal with wind at all. Fine for caves though. Image quality is at the fun end of the spectrum rather than good

Rather like a drone, I’m not flying it while viewing the footage. I have to download it after. It has completely changed my direction from wanting a drone to wanting immediate feedback of the footage. Perhaps later, if I get really enthusiastic (kids are on the way so this won’t happen) drone like modes would be good. There’s no way to control anything once it’s gone round a couple of corners in a cave as the rock eats radio waves you see.

In conclusion I present 2 directions for you. Firstly a hobby, progressing and building up to whatever it is that you really want, testing the water along the way. Or secondly, to become an evil mastermind, live inside one of your local mountains with lots of minions to do you bidding and use a giant parabolic space mirror to see around your local area.

Re:Define

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the last point: except for military use, autonomous drones are illegal in most countries.

Most things called "drones" that are accessible to the average consumer are nothing more than remote controlled aircraft and can only be operated legally when in line-of-sight and below a certain height limit (400ft is common, particularly near airfields).

As a GA pilot

[Alioth]

As a general aviation pilot, who has had occasion to do mountain flying, please for the love of dog don't do it unless it has "sense and avoid" mechanisms you're positive work well. You can't rely on GA aircraft having transponders, either, in remote areas often they don't. It's all about see-and-avoid. So your drone needs to see-and-avoid too.

I've almost had a mid-air collision with an RC aircraft flying where it shouldn't have been. Small RC size aircraft are hard to see from a full size aircraft, even a slow one like mine (115 mph on a good day). In the case of the RC aircraft, I think the aircraft was deliberately flown at us (we were a formation of 2 aircraft, so perfectly visible - it actually flew between us going the opposite direction).

If you want to check out stuff from the air, then learn to fly and do it as pilot in command of an actual aircraft. Yes, it's expensive, but a PPL will probably cost the same to do as building a drone with the capabilities you need, and it opens up a whole lot of other fun, too.

I also fly RC helicopters and fixed wing, so it's not like I'm some grumpy GA pilot who hates RC.

Re:As a GA pilot

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Don't even need a private pilot license (which unfortunately requires one to be in very good health).

You can get a Sport Pilot license (unless you went for a 3rd class medical for a private pilot or above license and got denied) for half the cost and time of a PPL and only need a driver's license for medical certification.

Or you can fly an ultralight and have very little regulation and no license needed (training is strongly advised).

Ultralights (powered) have to weigh under 254 pounds, full speed horizontal flight maximum speed 55 knots, stall speed maximum 24 knots and 5 gallons fuel maximum, and can't fly over areas that are more than sparsely populated or in class A, B, C, or D airspace or in/above class E airspace for an airport. See 14 CFR 103 for details. (Unpowered is under 155 pounds.)

And if you find something interesting, you are right there already.

Re:Define

[grim-one]

Ah, but Slashdot was his starting point and you just led him to http://diydrones.com/ which he may not have known existed.

I hope so

[FudRucker]

I own a few acres of wooded land and if i could buy a mini helicopter with a downward & forward facing camera (45 degrees) to keep an eye on my land from inside my home at my computer would be great! i would be willing to pay a few hundred for a system like that

Been there, done that

[Chubbles]

But in a forest setting. Last I heard, he'd already set up a stream, but if I recall correctly it was only for a few days so he could see how the system worked. Nothing too high-tech, just a gps and internet attatched to a toy robot with a camera in it, but for that cheap it's good enough I suppose. I think for doing something up in the Alps you'd need something a little hardier and better at climbing things, but it certainly is a start. I am all for attatching a spycam and GPS to the FreeSki monster, though. Just plant it on some poor sap and check his location every five minutes to see where it takes the body.

Weather balloon?

[PiMuNu]

Sounds difficult so maybe a different solution might work - say a tethered weather balloon to get high enough and some reasonably high spec cameras. Could probably at least get a good idea of conditions, even if there are a few line of sight type issues. Quick google indicates you can get ~ 1kg payload for $100 or so.

Re:Call me an ahole or a hippie

[tehcyder]

Sounds to me like he wants to photograph valley walls for safety purposes, so that he'll know in advance whether some faces will be safe to climb or not before putting anyone in danger.

This sounds like a perfectly valid use of his money, and I think you should get off your high horse.

He wants a flash tech toy to make his hobby more interesting and cooler. It is no better or worse than building a tubocharged race car to race around a track as fast as possible. Neither of them are exactly necessary for the good of society, any more than stamp collecting or playing WoW are.

If he wanted to do something socially useful, he could always share his time, money and technical expertise with the local mountain rescue team or something.

Re:Define

[azalin]

Silly me. I thought that the poster was seeking to draw on the combined IT and engineering expertise of slashdot, not get information he could easily google for. I guess I stand corrected.

I do have a hard time to recall the last time anything really helpful was posted in reply to "ask slashdot" that couldn't have been found by researching google for a few hours. It might be my foulty impression, but usually the "IT and engineering expertise of slashdot" boils down to:
1)" Use Linux you idiot"
2)"Apple is better"
3)"Apple sucks, Android is way better"
4)"Google is evil"
5)"Why would you want Software that needs Windows"
6)"There is a cool new open source project" (Link to unusable pre alpha software that never matures and only remotely fits to topic)
7)"You might want to heck these out "(Links to several actually useful sites that might have been found by Google)
8)Offtopic rantings (see this post)
Most times the "IT and engineering expertise of slashdot" only helps by recommending better places to look for answers. But maybe I'm just bitter because of the lousy weather around here.

Re:Define

[Aceticon]

If the wind conditions are "No Wind" then a lighter than air platform (blimp) would probably be the best choice - certainly it would solve the problem of finding something that has a 20km minimum range and can carry 2 hi-def cameras: it would be very slow but have great staying power if there is no wind.

Somehow I think "No Wind" might be a simplification too far.

epic project idea

[Goraek]

sounds like a fun project!

I'd advise you to hang around with some pilots/take some flying lessons/study the Basic Aeronautical Knowledge coursework. Mountain flying is a lot of fun but fraught with peril. Being remotely linked to the drone, it will be much harder to control and VERY challenging for it to be autonomous. Turbulence, mountain waves, wind shear... The wind behaves ~VERY~ differently when mountains are involved. I'm certified for low-level flying in a fixed-wing including mountainous terrain (in Western Australia... not that we have real mountains...) and can't stress the flying skills that you will need.
This is assuming you're already up to speed on how day-to-day weather would impact your drone's safety and performance.

There's a lot of posts on the technical issues of telemetry and autonomy, I won't go into that.

This sounds like an AWESOME project and I'm envious that you have the time investigate it and possibly start work on it. I wish you all the best.

But seriously, talk to someone at the local flying club/search&rescue/police pilot/military pilot.
Ideally, find someone who's flown through the area in a fixed-wing in weather that is similar to when you would want to use this drone.
Maybe leave out that you're planning on building a drone until you get the idea that they would be interested. You're simply a dude who wants to learn to fly around the mountains where you live. At least you'll get an honest answer of how hard it will be to keep it from cruising into a mountain side IF you were inside of it.

I really hope to read about this on HackADay.com in a few months time.

in the mean time, maybe some solar-charged cameras + transmitters with a good view of the areas would be easier?

S
Pilot, E.Eng

A home drone? Sure it's feasible

[lolococo]

Look at me and mine for a proof

Re:2 cameras? GPS driven? Parachutes? Lightweight?

[Fri13]

And you think it is impossible to do?
There are few posts here what links to circuitboards with open source software for automatic flight control.

Just look those videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G__WvTWeAGw and think how much you can do with a cheap RC planes (I call it cheap when it is not over 10 000 euros).

A normal glider with wingspan about a meter can do a over 115km flight alone. Of course it is totally random flight but capable flight very long distances. Then add such plane a two servos, GPS and battery and expand the wing span littlebit to carry extra weight and you have it.

BUT, if you want a true autopilot system, what meas it should have lasers range finders or at least a optical detection system like fighter jets have, you are not talking about small hand held devices anymore but full blown UAV's.

But with GPS and heightmap it could be possible to do a somekind, with safety height of 100-200 meters.

Re:Define

[Ihmhi]

You forgot the last point: except for military use, autonomous drones are illegal in most countries.

And you've missed an important point: he lives in an alpine setting. That's not the kind of place where the local sheriff will give a fuck about anything short of someone getting shot.

Re:Define

[grumpy_technologist]

This is correct, in that this is the best option. Unfortunately, none of these options will be perfect. OP should be prepared to lose drones because of momentary GPS loss, and should not assume that radio connectivity can be maintained . I can't stress that enough. Even these well-proven options typically required a human-failsafe. In an alpine setting it is easy to imagine that radio connectivity will be lost.

Disclaimer: Not an expert, but have 2 years experience with autonomous vehicles for similar tasks over short time scales (1 day max).

Re:Short Answer: Rockets?

[Overzeetop]

I would tend to agree - the iPhone (and most good android phones) have cool gadgets, but I would not rely on them for something like this. Altitude is much easier to accomplish with a static pressure sensor. HP Rocket folks have several sensors that might be useful. Featherweight Altimeters carries a model that is only a couple dozen grams that has a two axis accelerometer and barometer altimeter that's good to a couple of feet. It has temporary and latched relay outputs (good for about 30W and 10W respectively, I think) for firing pyro charges (parachute, for example) and turning on tracking beacons.

Actually, the whole set of electronics that rocket guys use would be good for the cheap and "expendible with regret" philosophy. For a few hundred dollars, he could build in a fairly lightweight recovery system. Can he recover it in the kind of terrain he's flying over? That's a question only he can answer, but $1000 in recovery gear could save tens of thousands of dollars in autonomous gear for the outlying conditions, and still let him recover a substantial investment with (hopefully) minimal damage.

Some advice

[grumpy_technologist]

Hey OP,

I've worked on autonomous robots for environmental monitoring for two years now. That doesn't make me an expert by any means, but it does provide me some insight which I'd like to pass along.

• Don't assume radio connectivity. Ever. If a platform requires you to maintain connectivity or it will (bad) crash, (ok) return home, or (best) continue on, choose based on the worst case, and know that you are responsible for what it does while you can't control it.
• Don't assume GPS will work everywhere all the time. Even a valley can have terrible GPS simply because of high mountain walls. Most autonomous systems are completely reliant on GPS and will slam into the nearest obstacle like magic if GPS error starts to increase. This is often well before GPS is completely "lost"
• Don't even try real-time telepresence, video-streaming, or remote control unless you are at 1) at short range all the time and 2) have a reliable connection at all times. This means 3/4G or Wifi for video streaming or a high-powered hobby remote for line-of-sight control. Some radios can transmit text data (ZigBee being the first that comes to mind) but most require line-of-sight. This will probably limit your deployment range to 1km to 5km. Claims to the contrary are difficult for me to believe, but you may have better luck than I have.
• Don't build your own control software. Controlling a platform like a UAV is difficult. Trust an expert. Pay $ for this, as much as possible. Look to academia or defense for this component. DIYDrones I believe, started this way.

a completely different solution

[rapiddescent]

the requirement in the FA solutionised into some sort of airborn system. The actual requirement seems to be to get up to date pictures of various conditions up in the mountains from multiple locations without the need to travel there. My solution would be to setup a load of automated cameras at key locations and get them to send you a picture at intervals.

I use cheapo chinese imported eBay "Little Acorn" cameras on my mountain bike trails. They are attached to trees and some of them have a SIM card in them so they can text/email me a photo either when their sensors trigger movement or if I program a schedule into them. I think the poster mentioned he was in France, so there should be mobile data coverage in the hills. They are reasonably high res (most are 12MP) and they run on AA batteries that last for 3 months or so. You can get battery extension packs that could last until "next summer" and then hike around and change the batteries twice a year. My cameras survived a couple of bad storms last winter and apart from a few strange pictures when ice froze onto the lens; all went well. I use bike chain locks on mine to lock them to trees etc.

they are cheap, at GBP £100 (E130ish) or so each - you could get 20 of them for the cheapest RC airplane solution and you don't need to worry about crashing an autonomous drone into a schoolbus etc.

Re:Define

[khakipuce]

20km says most of what you need. How much fuel do you need to carry with reserves to go 20km into even a light (5-10 knot) head wind - answer, a lot. A lot of fuel means a big drone, I guess in most countries flying things over a certain size may be regulated...

Re:Define

[TheCarp]

appear? Appearances mean little. You can always contact them. You can make appearances too, without even being deceptive.

Look at it this way... the information could be useful to others. You sound to me like a small startup investigating the viability of an idea that involves using unmanned aircraft to track seasonally changing terrain features in inaccessible areas.

As far as I can tell, thats an accurate description. The main difference between being "a early stage startup" and a guy with an idea is nil, or at most acknowledging that you might, at some point, offer some sort of service to someone else based on this activity. Hell you could even be doing it just to be established as the guy doing it so someone else buys you out.

I say send them an email, hell, I wouldn't even tell them the whole plan unless they agree to a standard NDA. Of course, while the local sherrif or whoever may not care and you may never come to the notice of anyone who cares if you did it.... they might want to make sure you had all the proper permits before they sold you one, if they did agree to it (it may even be that they can't due to some licensing issue, who knows)

Though, unless they love your idea so much that they want to donate a drone and use your project for marketing purposes.... then they sell to military and law enforcement. I bet they are more expensive than anything with the word "Bridal" attached.

You know what they say.... government contractors and prostitutes are the only two groups that can charge over $100 a screw.

Re:Define

[ArsenneLupin]

And you've missed an important point: he lives in an alpine setting. That's not the kind of place where the local sheriff will give a fuck about anything short of someone getting shot.

But it kinda brings a stop to the hypothesis Sea level to 10 feet doesn't it...

Re:Define

[ArsenneLupin]

And yet, even though all of these might fit this topic, only the last 2 have happened in this story. Hmmm...

Just was thinking

[jones_supa]

Do you guys still remember the "ask Slashdot with a sponsor" idea introduced some months ago? For one time there was a SourceForge dude commenting as a sidekick, but after that it seems to be ditched. Well, whatever.

Re:Define

[ThreeDeeNut]

Making an affordable drone is not too tough. If you go to hobby king, there is a drone plan that I helped a friend build for less than 500$. The airframe was like twenty bucks. The motors batteries and speed controller you can adjust based on need but will cost around $200 and the "brain" is another 300 for the ardupilot mega. You can do the brain for less if you dont mind wiring and a little programming. It is fairly large (about 20-30 inches prop to prop) and has pretty strong motors which will move it very fast and can combat the wind well. You would still need rf cameras that can either store locally for playback after words (as cheaply as 20$) or a camera and an rf sending unit (costly but obviously more capable). There are larger and smaller kits and since the ardupilot can manage a plane, standard heli, quad copter, hexacopters and others you are really only need decide what type of flying unit would be best. Quad copters are great in my opinion and a quick you tube search will show how capable they can really be. A really good one is one where a swarm of quads play the theme song of mission impossible. Your challenges will be in battery life (how long you can fly for) vs power (how much wind you can fight) im guessing. But if you make a small powerful one you should be in god shape. I think the one at hobby king is a really good choice of frame. Its balsa construction and goes together in short order. Its strong, light and holds good sized motors. I think it would probably do very well for your needs.

Seriously?

[dmmiller2k]

The answers to those questions would give YOU enough information to answer his?

Re:Define

[jellomizer]

I want to simulate a multi-billion dollar project by the military for under $1000.

My best advice is to strap a smartphone to a balloon with a para-shoot launch it up into the air. when it comes down use Find my phone or simular feature to find it. Download the data and you got your data.

My non-drone RC Aircraft rig cost me about $300

[capedgirardeau]

I have a regular RC Aircraft that I use to take aerial videos and they work out pretty well.

Here is an example:
http://vimeo.com/4400759

(turn down your sound, I am not video editor so the sound track is still in there and loud)

Drones are cool, but really not as safe regularly controlled RC Aircraft and even if you do get into drones you should really have regular RC aircraft experience so a set up like mine would be a very reasonable first step. The air frame I use is often used for diy drones so your investment will not be wasted if you start with a more traditional set up.

Re:Call me an ahole or a hippie

[cusco]

Certainly on-location is better, but in mountains the weather can vary dramatically in just a few kilometers. I've driven in the Cascades where I'm experiencing a beautiful 25 degree spring day with flowers blooming and birds chirping, and when you go around the corner of the mountain you find a valley full of snow. If I'd been walking I would have been extremely disappointed to have hiked all that way to find out that I had to turn back.

Re:Define

[mhajicek]

I find the weather on Slashdot to be quite satisfactory.

Re:Define

[samazon]

Tragically enough, that would imply that he can use slashdot but not google, considering I found diydrones.com after a simple search for "arduino" and "drone" and arguably would have found it with "diy" and "drone" as well.

Re:Define

[Iskender]

Most times the "IT and engineering expertise of slashdot" only helps by recommending better places to look for answers.

Nothing "only" about that. Giving pointers to other places is providing new questions.

The tough part usually isn't finding the answers (on the net at least). It's much tougher finding a question. If you ask a general question you'll get general answers, and those won't be sufficient to engineer a plane.

This of course means Slashdot often will be just the first step. But there's nothing wrong about that.

WiFi telescope

[Max_W]

WiFi telescope on a mountain top http://hackaday.com/2008/06/10/wifi-telescope/ ?

open source solution

[jcgam69]

The Open Pilot project makes great hardware/software and it's open source. Although the current generation does not meet your need for autonomous flight, the next version will have that capability: http://www.openpilot.org/products/openpilot-revolution-platform/

Re:Define

[tophermeyer]

The Sheriff might not. But local pilots might.

It's hard to say without knowing more about the location. But if this is an alpine environment with climbing/hiking trails, and possibly ski slopes, there are probably also regular helicopter flights to check out the very same information this guy wants to collect. Those guys might have a problem with an autonomous drone that they know nothing about.

Re:Define

[tophermeyer]

You sound to me like a small startup investigating the viability of an idea that involves using unmanned aircraft to track seasonally changing terrain features in inaccessible areas.

That idea has some merit. Plenty of services exist, for example, to report on surfing conditions on beaches. Deployment there is easier because you only need to report on the conditions in a small fixed area. But the idea is transferable.

This drone reporting would be useful for reporting on remote climbing/hiking trails, off roading trails, and even a third party verification conditions at ski slopes. AFAIK most of that is done right now by helicopter. Which is expensive, and thus limited in scope. Drones could expand that.

Use fixed monitors

[wmorrow]

Probably less expensive and more reliable to install a collection of fixed monitoring stations, watching your favourite ~10 locations. Game cameras, zigbee pro mesh and a concentrator or two to get it back to your alpine cabin.

Re:Define

[tophermeyer]

Or anchor a camera equipped weather balloon upwind of the area you want to monitor. Run it up, let it spin around for a while gathering data, and pull it right back down.

Re:Define

[nospam007]

"remote controlled aircraft and can only be operated legally when in line-of-sight ..."

I live relatively near such an 'airport' and RC planes seem to 'escape' from the line of sight all the time when they land in my trees. Each and everyone of those had phone-numbers and addresses of the owner on them.
If it's out of reach it's not 'operated' per se as a remote controlled aircraft since it operates itself either by an arduino or by pure chance.
I don't know anything about this hobby, but if it's that cheap to realize, why don't 'normal' non-drone planes have a return to start-point feature when they get lost?
Or an automatic 'stay where you are, I got to pee' - modus etc?

Re:Define

[theshowmecanuck]

Mod +1 Self Righteous.

Re:Define

[geekoid]

Some do.

Re:Define

[geekoid]

So? he chose to go to Slashdot. I would argue that it's better to go to a varied group instead of to one site that is likely to be biased. Talk to a varied group is how you minimize echo chamber effect.

Re:Define

[geekoid]

Now that the military spent the billion dollars, the basic RnD is done, and created a market, it can e done for about 1000 dollars.

Something people don't seem to get.

Re:Call me an ahole or a hippie

[geekoid]

Yes, but if you can get some data before you go, you can eliminate trips which would obviously not succeed.

Re:2 cameras? GPS driven? Parachutes? Lightweight?

[geekoid]

Yes you can. Jeez.

You could do it for 2-3 grand with effort.

strap a solar powered camera onto a vulture

[circletimessquare]

results are random but pretty much eternal

come to think of it, that might make a great military program: camouflage. no one will guess the vultures are coopted spies

although, when the enemy gets paranoid about where the good intel against them is coming from and see something gleam off of a vulture's wing, they'll shoot down every vulture they see

not good for vultures. then again, war in general is good for vultures, so i guess it's wash from the vulture's POV

Fixed the subject for ya...

[Cute Fuzzy Bunny]

"I live in a remote alpine setting and would like to remotely monitor my pot plants to make sure nobody steals them, and I'd like to see how many there are and how they're armed before we hop in the truck and go ask them to leave the property."

Re:Define

[quarmar]

Just launch your own satellite! :)

Dear Ask Slashdot

[WillgasM]

I would like a jetpack...with laser cannons...made of gold...powered by a zero-point energy module...piloted by a velociraptor...on cocaine. Is this feasible?

Avalanches

[SummitCO]

Loud noises do not cause avalanches. That is an urban myth. Source: I am an avalanche safety instructor and an avalanche rescue team leader.

Re:Avalanches

[niftydude]

Loud noises do not cause avalanches. That is an urban myth. Source: I am an avalanche safety instructor and an avalanche rescue team leader.

Well I have two things to say to that:

1) If loud noises don't cause avalanches, then how come avalanches cause loud noises?
and

2) What if a loud noise spooked a herd of alpine goats which then charged over a particularly unstable snow pack, thus triggering an avalanche. Then the loud noise was the cause...

Apologies if joking about avalanches is insensitive given your workplace environment.

Hans Reiser is that you?

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Looks like Hans Reiser got Internet access!

Wonder when reiserfs 5 will be released?

Re:Define

[Glock27]

The Wasp UAV that you linked has another problem besides probably being DoD sales only. According to Wikipedia:

Unit cost: $49,000

Ouch.

Re:Define

[JWSmythe]

    He was probably looking for some insight, from a huge group of nerds, many of whom may have researched it or done it themselves already.

    I'm in the "researching it" group.. I'm still hung up on long range telemetry, and airframe simulations. I don't want an average high wing single engine prop clone. I also don't want to spend a year building something that either won't fly, or will do tremendously except it'll keep going for 1000 miles before it runs out of fuel over an ocean. Ideally, mine would be a very high altitude, high speed model. It makes for nice sketches right now.

    I have no further advice for him though, which is why I just stayed quiet. He has a tough order. "Fly by itself, out of line of sight, at a low altitude in valleys, without hitting the valley wall or trees." I'd recommend staying above the valley, with better cameras.

Re:Call me an ahole or a hippie

[eldorel]

Bad example.
Taking a shit can be a method of non-violent protest.
It just depends on where you're shitting.

Re:Define

[deapbluesea]

Give it a day....

Re:Define

[kraut]

Also, you have to bear in mind that if the military buys something, it usually pays at least 10 times what it's worth.

Re:Define

[proverbialcow]

Somehow I think "No Wind" might be a simplification too far.

But the OP didn't specify *which* Alpine conditions - he could be living on the Moon Alps.

Humans and animals

[coldsalmon]

If there are roads to these locations, pay a neighborhood kid to ride his bike out and take a picture. Alternatively, put a camera on a carrier pigeon or some other type of capable bird. I'm sure you could also train a dog to walk to a certain location with a view.

returnable projectile

[pitchingchris]

I'm sure it won't be legal, but maybe a mini powered glider that can unfold in flight (or from like a flare gun or something). Mounting cameras would be tricky, but basically thinking it can launch and then unfold at the peak and then use some minimal sensors and evasion while tracking a base point (you). So it can glide and take footage, but it maneuvers towards a fixed point. Won't cover the distance you want. The only way to get your distance is to somehow boost the RC signal and use a larger fuel tank than normal, but where you can still handle the weight, All this is neigh impossible to do without a lot of expense and testing, and will be on the edge of legal.

Re:Define

[samazon]

Not saying that I don't ask my fair share of obvious questions (oh, I do) - I just expect better. Rather than "Is a home drone feasible, this is my problem" - why not a "I've been researching building a home drone to take aerial photographs of (whatever) and have decided on a carbon-fiber body with a Micropilot MP1028g autopilot system. I feel like this is a reliable start, but does anyone know of any cheaper alternatives."

Radio Dorks

[tsm1mt]

http://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/uas/uas_faq/index.cfm?print=go#Qn2 Doesn't address any Line-of-Sight issues. Aside from the autonomous part, I just wanted to note that with an Amateur Radio license you can setup a remote control capable of beyond LOS, along with a video link. Amateur TV transmitters in the 70cm or higher range are available and you can watch them on your old NTSC TV. You could use 6m/50mhz for the control link which has capability beyond LOS, or through the use of a repeater station you could expand that range further (heck, use a balloon mounted repeater over your operation position to increase your LOS distance and you could use all sorts of LOS frequencies and equipment) Or, I guess you could go the other way, and build some high end optics and get them aboard the next AMSAT bird and send the photos back via SSTV or ATV. :D

Re:Define

[ozmanjusri]

I'm looking at one of these http://www.nitroplanes.com/projet-drone-2500mm-kit.html. If I can fit it with a petrol engine, it should have a great range.

I'd prefer something that looks a bit more civilian, but most of the larger kits are scale models of real aircraft, not well suited to photography.

Re:Short Answer: Rockets?

[hyades1]

Thanks for that information. My next question would concern whether the actual electronics in an iPhone (or something similar) are being used to the maximum. There's a lot of chips operating at less-than-capacity in bottom-end graphics cards, PC's and the like. The manufacturer puts the same chip in everything, and disables part of its capacity in the firmware. Wouldn't it be neat if somebody a lot more educated than me took a very close look at a smart phone and found out that was the case? It would certainly help fill in any gaps left by the devices you mention...if that was necessary .

Again, thanks for understanding exactly what I meant and giving me a really good answer. I'm not about to build something like that myself, but I'm very interested in what's actually possible instead of the usual, breathless, "gee-whiz" stuff we're subjected to in the popular press.