Youtube Video titled FPV/UAV in Brazil - Best of 2010

Comments seen on Redit (grain of salt taken) suggest prices on putting together such a home brew setup anywhere from $500 - $1000 - $3000 - $10000+

I would love to hear your take on the reality of drones, especially how easy it would be to get into doing home aerial surveillance or perhaps even your own fun experiences using such devices

Implications for applications in Shadowrun, perhaps?

you're a bit behind man. we've had about 5 threads on this, and the home-brew electronics guys have been working on it successfully for years.

shoestring setups start at about 400 USD, btw.

Sorry about that then, is there a prescribed method to deleting what is apparently a duplicate thread? I usually catch all the RL threads I can, some really fun stories to be found these but somehow I missed those threads. Oh well, at the very least I hope you enjoyed the youtube video ... again?

You can pick up a Parrot.ar for $300. The front-facing integrated camera is half-decent (640x480), but the frame rate is atrocious (12fps? Something like that); The down-facing camera has a terrible resolution (176x144) but shoots at 60fps. If you have two of them, you can play an augmented reality video game where the two "shoot" at each other in AR. You aim and fire with an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch).

They're flying WiFi hubs, which is how they communicate. If this style of device becomes popular, it's only a matter of time before you get hacking and spoofing utilities for these things.

I'm considering picking one up for christmas, they look like a lot of fun.

Heh. For about $50 you can get an AirHog Hawkeye rotor drone with a built in camera. You can see it and some footage here.

It's not a wireless camera, meaning you have to download images later, but you can send it past windows, over fences, etc.
If I don't see this on Burn Notice next season I'm going to be horribly disappointed.

I've got a couple of airhogs choppers and planes. They are cheap in both senses of the word but they are enjoyably disposable. If it breaks, I sigh and pull another one out of the closet. With prices between $20-$50 it's no big deal.

Especially compared to the $200 RC plane I destroyed on it's first flight when I was 13. Sigh. There went Christmas.

what's really missing from any sr-level setup is software. most cutting edge homebrew setups can run a series of pre-loaded GPS waypoints, but advanced navigation and obstacle avoidance is not yet achieved. cheaper LIDAR sensors will help with this, as will better low-power processors. Stanley, the car that won the DARPA grand challenge in '05, needed 6 computers to nav across a desert course. not very practical.

Software. Not really a problem.

diy drones

diy Google search

There's a lot of work being done with Arduino boards on sensor systems, control systems, etc.

These days, almost anyone can build a uav with a little building experience.

i think someone was working on using the xbox360 kinetic kit as a lidar system for UAVs.

Hell, one guy have already been able to use two of them to get a pretty convincing (tho low resolution) live 3D image of a room.

btw, i could have sworn i have read about a camera+hmd kit that could react to head movement and show flight data.

Here is the link to the Kinect hacked to do 3D image captures. I would be surprised if he intends to link up the data received from 3 of them around a target area for a full 3D image.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/14/hack-tu...o-capture-tool/