Thanks for letting me into the community, I've heard great things! I'm an undergraduate engineer interested in bird behavior of crows and ravens
Desire: Observe the birds near the cliffs of UCSD (about 1 mile off campus), which is where I think the local crows/ravens nest. I want to have my copter perch in a nearby tree or observe the birds in their natural habitat with a live-video feed or just video. I want it to be able to be controlled or programmed on a flight path: "walk" it over to the nest and have it remember the path so that it does not need me to be near it is absolutely ideal.
I want it to be as cheap as possible, obviously. Preferably less than 200 dollars if possible.
A camera with a zoom option only makes sense, because I will probably have to be perched about 10-30 meters away.
Speed is not as important as "fuel economy", how far the drone can fly and how long it can record. I have been looking into Zano. Is that worth waiting for? The size of the drone doesn't matter. I want to maximize camera quality and "fuel economy".
Thank you so much for your time, everyone.
Replies
I really do not think you can accomplish this for $200. A realistic budget is about $800-1000. You can probably buy a used quad from RCGroups classified for $200 but you will need an RC controller and probably a receiver and a camera and FPV gear and batteries. Realistically you will be using an APM 2.6 or clone thereof (much cheaper than a pixhawk or clone thereof) if you need a pre-programmed flight path. Also being realistic here you will need to spend some time learning how to put this together and fly it well enough to accomplish this.
Also bear in mind you will only have maybe 10-15 minutes on station hovering before your batteries give out.
My advice - find a bird enthusiast with a quadcopter!! Maybe some richer kids on campus who are bird enthusiasts would help fund this or pitch in if you advertised. Even better if one had some experience with flying quads. There may be some considerations about not disturbing nests and keeping an appropriate distance but I am sure you know that. Where are you located?
Thank you for the quick reply. It seems that my desire can't be met, but you are right about perhaps finding someone else with one. I have nesting ideas for the drone so that it doesn't need to hover, of course this would be difficult. Regardless, it is too expensive. Do you think that perhaps it would be within 500 dollars within a couple of years?
I'm located in San Diego. I'm living within a mile of the beach cliffs.
Yes it will be within $500 quite soon. But these 'selfie' drones will not work for you. For what you want you will actually need a custom, more expensive solution. Going cheap you will need a Sony block camera with zoom and in a gimbal so you can be far enough away to not disturb the birds. Ideally you will want your camera tracking a GPS coordinate you supply it so it can lock on the nest. And you would want maybe 30 minutes of hovering. All of this stuff is around now but not off-the-shelf.
It sounds like it would be potentially interesting to do. Basically a rig optimized for hovering in situ (large props, low kv motors) that can hover for 35-40 minutes with a camera and gimbal. There is a gimbal controller that is getting close to doing things like locking on to fixed GPS coordinates (Storm32) that costs $30. You will get much better results with a good DLSR camera of course but a block camera with zoom is light and you can even get it on a gimbal. Keeping a serious camera airborne (1kg with gimbal) will be dramatically more expensive. There are DIY designs that have hovered for 50 minutes with a gopro and gimbal -- RCGroups is where to look.
Realistically you may be able to do this for 2k and a boatload of time and ingenuity in putting it all together. I have no idea if it is really practical, as in getting good results, but I am sure with enough time I could build something that would hover in a GPS locked position and point a zoomed camera at a fixed point for 45 minutes before coming back to land and get a fresh battery.
As you are an engineering student it should be possible to get others that would be interested in doing this. Maybe you can even get funding. But first you have to discover if it is practical. That could maybe be tested by using someone with a Phantom to try it. There have to be dozens of those on your campus all set for FPV.
If you decide to do this you should post here and you will likely get a lot of input and advice.
Marc
Thank you for the in-depth replay Marc! Hovering would definitely be a challenge to overcome, and I didn't think what you said could be done (with a boatload of time) would be possible.
Perhaps it isn't realistic, but I think it's quite fun to imagine how to create a "perching" drone. It could sit in a tree or on the cliff and obviously it would require much less power to sit there than to fly. Sticky-adhesives, a rigid platform that "catches" onto trees sort of like a parachuter falling into a forest, claws to grab and lock onto branches, an upside-down U-shaped rope that looks like a handle on top of the drone which allows it to hang from branches (this seems best), etc. Like I said, it's kind of fun to think about :P
It very well might be possible to find other students, or more likely faculty, which would be interested in this. Thank you for bringing that up. Perhaps I can reach out to animal behavior researchers and see if they would be potentially interested.
Do you think that if there was a way to "perch" the drone that it would be much more practical?
Thank you all again for the input and advice.
"Only the foolish learn from experience — the wise learn from the experience of others."
-Romanian Proverb
Will
My little experience with birds is that they are very afraid from cuads and fly inmediately away or prefer to stay on the floor, they prefer like sailplanes that's looks like another bird, a Bixler 2 with FPV looks a good cheap choice, looks at Hobby king, a big zoom is a problem on a drone
Thank you for sharing your experience with us. There was actually a research paper recently published which looked into how birds respond to different approach angles and approach speeds.
When you say, "a big zoom" is a problem on a drone, could you put that a bit more quantitatively? What constitutes big? How about seeing a basketball-size object from 10-30 meters away such that the basketball is entirely taking up the picture?