Drone idea

30boat

30boat

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In this drone crazed world when new ones come on the market everyday I had the brilliant idea of getting one with a camera and fly it over to the mooring from the beach to check on the boat.Provided the weather is ok it looks like a good idea to me.The problem is range and of course price.It would have to be a fairly powerful one.Any ideas?
 
As a purely practical question you're probably better off fitting a camera or two (and perhaps a bilge sensor, battery meter, etc) to some kind of device with a 3G connection and then being able to monitor it from anywhere with Internet access. But the drone might be more fun... :)

Pete
 
prv said:
As a purely practical question you're probably better off fitting a camera or two (and perhaps a bilge sensor, battery meter, etc) to some kind of device with a 3G connection and then being able to monitor it from anywhere with Internet access. But the drone might be more fun... :)

Pete
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That's a good idea but where can I find such a device?
 
30boat said:
In this drone crazed world when new ones come on the market everyday I had the brilliant idea of getting one with a camera and fly it over to the mooring from the beach to check on the boat.Provided the weather is ok it looks like a good idea to me.The problem is range and of course price.It would have to be a fairly powerful one.Any ideas?
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The basic drone flies according to its own orientation. If you take a quad, if you (accidentally) rotate the quad 90 degrees, your left input is now straight on. You might find recovery tricky over water ! Next step up is with GPS, whereby the orientation CAN be made to your orginal take off orientation- ie, your left input makes the quad still fly left. This gets a bit more expensive with the same recovery problem !
Range should be up to 300metres on a "proper" quad with camera with gimbal from Uk source, but you are looking at £700+, I think, unless you build it yourself. There are some cheap versions on Banggood.com , but can't comment on them.
You can get a toy with a very basic camera for maybe £75 but that is almost an indoor toy and it needs to be very calm and the range will be very small I think.
 
Would you see much from a drone camera that would check the mooring? If the boat's still on it that's about the same as a drone would see.
 
For a drone you would need something like the DJI Phantom quadcopter, lots of examples of these being used over boats on Youtube. Our roofer uses one for photographing his finished work for clients. You can get them from Maplins from £700+. Don't bother with anything cheaper, they are toys and will end up in the sea.
 
The only way you could do this is with a 3d Robotics Iris+ as it has computer stabilisation and can be controlled with a mobile phone or a laptop. You can pre-program your flight, it has a hover mode and a return to base switch as well. You would still need to add a gimble and GoPro camera. Total cost would be about £1100. Even then you only have about 15 minutes flying time.
http://3drobotics.com/iris/
 
Concerto said:
The only way you could do this is with a 3d Robotics Iris+ as it has computer stabilisation and can be controlled with a mobile phone or a laptop. You can pre-program your flight, it has a hover mode and a return to base switch as well. You would still need to add a gimble and GoPro camera. Total cost would be about £1100. Even then you only have about 15 minutes flying time.
http://3drobotics.com/iris/
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That would be fun if it weren't for the mortgage....
 
gjgm said:
The basic drone flies according to its own orientation. If you take a quad, if you (accidentally) rotate the quad 90 degrees, your left input is now straight on. You might find recovery tricky over water ! Next step up is with GPS, whereby the orientation CAN be made to your orginal take off orientation- ie, your left input makes the quad still fly left. This gets a bit more expensive with the same recovery problem !
Range should be up to 300metres on a "proper" quad with camera with gimbal from Uk source, but you are looking at £700+, I think, unless you build it yourself. There are some cheap versions on Banggood.com , but can't comment on them.
You can get a toy with a very basic camera for maybe £75 but that is almost an indoor toy and it needs to be very calm and the range will be very small I think.
Click to expand...

I agree with orientation although after a while you do develop a sixth sense about it.
Personally I wouldnt choose to fly a drone over water whether one costing £1000 or £50 because over land even with a gps get you home facility in the worst scenerio the drone can land somewhere!
I have a rather neat little hexacopter micro drone which despite some refering to it as a toy is both quite powerful with six motors and a flight time of about 10 minutes.A little less whilst filming with its 3 mp camera.
At your bottom price end of about £40 delivered to your door.
World Toys produce a nice one with gps ,go pro gimbal and two way wireless communication with camera for about £300 plus the camera- Banggood.
Having said this some form of wireless phone link with cameras fitted to boat would seem a more appropriate way forward.
Cameras etc are readily available the latest using cloud as an interface with a wireless router.
Just a matter of having a mobile linked router then you can run a system from anywhere as I now do at home using wifi home automation plugs.
 
Hi,
Are you really serious with this, Not sure anyone would be very happy if one of these fell on to them or one of their boats. Sounds great fun but with significant risk to anything or anyone in its path.

Steveeasy
 
steveeasy said:
Hi,
Are you really serious with this, Not sure anyone would be very happy if one of these fell on to them or one of their boats. Sounds great fun but with significant risk to anything or anyone in its path.

Steveeasy
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And the chances of that happening are??? Get a life and quit being such a, such a, Such a - help words fail me. Lets ban drones, cars (they might fall on you) all motor vehicles, aeroplanes, knives (one might cut oneself), all private boats - you might ram someone or fall off and drown or have some other mishap - too much risk in this world.
Some one wants to fly a drone, fine - no problem but they should take out good 3rd party / public liability insurance and operate within the official guidelines / regulations. If not and they have a little prang they could (will) find them selves on the wrong side of the law as some idiot did recently flying his drone (safely) along a river and over a bridge - idiot posted the video on You Tube and got nicked by SSGB - £700 fine plus costs IIRC
 
Concerto said:
The only way you could do this is with a 3d Robotics Iris+ as it has computer stabilisation and can be controlled with a mobile phone or a laptop. You can pre-program your flight, it has a hover mode and a return to base switch as well. You would still need to add a gimble and GoPro camera. Total cost would be about £1100. Even then you only have about 15 minutes flying time.
http://3drobotics.com/iris/
Click to expand...
Not quite correct.
http://www.dji.com/product/phantom-2-vision-plus
Also available in the UK and with a few "add-ons" range 800m and 25min flying time/charge. Flight stabilisation and can be controlled with a mobile phone or a laptop. You can pre-program your flight, it has a hover mode and a return to base (auto if out of range or low battery power)
 
Hi,
Quite high I would suspect. Yes you are quite right, I knew when I made my comment, that was not rude or offensive I would get a response like this one, its becoming frequent on a lot of forums. I can only apologise for my negative but opinionated comment. See what response you get if you fly some toy over other peoples property and potentially injure someone or something for absolutely no justified reason other than fun.

Happy New Year.

Steveeasy
 
Funnily enough just last night in the pub an acquaintance was gleefully recounting how his 13 year old son's home built quadrocopter had gone out of control in a local park and damaged two cars! He was so proud of the fact that the kid had built it himself he didn't seem to be concerned about the damage.
 
Hi,
my comment was aimed at someone using a drone over say a marina or other peoples property. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a person using a drone in a safe environment over open spaces to do whatever they wish. I also did not take in to account how easy and safe they are to fly now, and good fun. When I did not have a life I used to fly remote helicopters a lot. They could and would frequently fall from the sky and it was accepted by all they should only be used in suitable places.

I just happen to think I owe a duty of care to other people or their property, so do most people hopefully. That's why we sail with consideration to others, drive carefully, don't waive knives about, and do all we can to avoid injuring others. I wonder if the owners of the two cars will be compensated for any damage. Given that I probably do need to get a life.

Steveeay
 
cliff said:
Not quite correct.
http://www.dji.com/product/phantom-2-vision-plus
Also available in the UK and with a few "add-ons" range 800m and 25min flying time/charge. Flight stabilisation and can be controlled with a mobile phone or a laptop. You can pre-program your flight, it has a hover mode and a return to base (auto if out of range or low battery power)
Click to expand...

The phantom does not look quite as advanced as it does not include the Follow Me technology and automatic hover when the controls are left. With the 3D Robotics Iris+ you can set it to follow you sailing, either from a set position or to circle the yacht to get alround video - with no more user input.

The big worry will all drones is they cannot take automatic avoiding action against objects like trees and masts.
 
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