personal use drones

[mojo]

As the cost of personal drones keep coming down, more and more uses will be found for them, but probably more laws as well. Could see a great use in the medical field or in search and rescue but also for UFO skywatching. This video shows one of the latest versions with a more powerful and compact look plus it will also provide a first person view (FPV).

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[aranuk]

Yes, I'm sure those things have some good uses.

Stan

[Cjay]

I am considering using remote control/programmable multi-copters to do an aerial survey of an entire country, in the near future, to document (before, during and after) some huge environmental repair and housing projects for hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people.

This octocopter in the first video is a bit pricey (7,000 USD and up, depending on options) but it can carry a DLSR and/or a video camera and fly for about half an hour on one battery.

The camera(s) can be controlled remotely if you have all the right parts.

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The quadcopter used to film the next video is in the $1,000 to $2,000 price range. It uses a GoPro 3 instead of DSLR but the results are still quite impressive.

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The multi-copters can be programmed to take off, fly and land themselves, via an app on a laptop, iPad or smartphone, simply by entering altitude and GPS "waypoints" for the flight path by touching an onscreen map (see third video). The operator can take control at any time and manually fly the aircraft, then revert to the programmed flight control, if desired.

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Then there are First Person View (FPV) systems that allow you to see, in real-time, what the camera sees. Some of them are incredibly sophisticated yet designed for the consumer market.

[mojo]

great additional info ty Cjay, are you going to do the build as well?