This popped up on my radar recently.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/17/wars...-spy-on-police/



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vOor1xmVDs

Enjoy.

I misread the subtitle on the topic as "Do it for the Hooters" and was like now that's a plan I can get behind

Do it for both! And trust the slothead.

Well, I wouldn't be so sure, Human Nation can put their drones in the air too. You never know when some hotheaded ork cop whacks the wrong guy over the head with a baton, right?

I'm impressed how high and far this chopper could go. Where can I buy one of these?

You can check around online. They're a few thousand. The planes are even more impressive, and watching those videos are INCREDIBLE, although they're a little less handy for tactical data, since you can't just hover.

The other alternative is to build your own. I keep wanting to do it, but I know almost 0 electronics. My current hacking project is making a radio receiver. Maybe in a few more years

There's a number of RC Helicopters that can hover if you trail well enough with it. They'd also have enough lift to have a SmartPhone with a HD Camera mounted on the bottom or something. Or a battery and a Webcam running off a SmartPhone (Little heavier, but better HD Camera.).

...

OK, I just scared myself.

Honestly I'm just glad other people think about this.

a quadcopter with a bit of electronics should be able to self-stabiliz, no? Hell, give it a gps and some way to send it coordinates (a IM program may work, as it could stream video back to you at the same time) and it could be flown around using google maps or similar.

Think about it? That was off the top of my bloody head with no start-up!

The real trick, then, would be to get the information out to the other protesters (or your fellow runners, as the case may be) in real time, but in a secure fashion. The trouble there is you're trying to disseminate information publicly but securely. I don't know how you'd make sure that only the people you want can get on the VPN/however-you're-doing-it at that scale.

This, of course, assumes that the purpose of the drone was to provide information to the protesters. If it was simply documenting the occurrence then those aren't issues.

Forward it to a public streaming site like ustream.tv and not care who see it perhaps?

this is brilliant - huge range on it, from what I can tell. I want one!!

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Air-Hogs-Hawk-Ey...-Black/16487126

You can get them for $65 at the Wally, but it shouldn't be hard to track some down in the $50 range.

Oh $Deity, my head hurts at all the concepts... And the problems that come with them.

'Course, my head hurts just by being conscious, so...

saw this earlier. a few caveats:

1: it's hardly "spying" the drone in question is not small, and is noisy as hell (not noisier than a riot, perhaps?)

2: flight time is measured in tens of minutes, not hours.

3: a a single camera doesn't provide the coverage needed to catch any police or protestor mischief, except by luck.

you can put one of these together yourself for a few hundered (USD), the main obstacle is flight time. power density just isn't there yet for modern batteries. you can use ICEs, but that makes you even louder.

With a big enough budget, you could rotate a number around as they lose charge.

'Course, with a big enough budget, a lot is possible.

A sufficiently advanced pile of cash is indestinguishable from magic.

If you're doing a runner team, there's few enough people to set up a VPN. However if it's a riot, I don't see any reason why you'd want to make it private. The police already know what they're doing.

If your only goal is to get an 'eye in the sky', it may also be feasible to run it off a tether (perhaps even using a modified glider/kite?) Then you strap on the cameras with zoom and you have basically indefinite 'flight' time.

Actually, in a game of Star Wars D6, we proved it was more powerful than The Force.

Now i'm thinking of nipping up to the local RC model club and asking some questions.

I can't encourage people enough to take a look around DIY Drones. Drone technology has come a long way in a very few years, so a lot of what's been said in this thread is out-dated. Check out some of the rigs some of the guys in the forums have; the possibilities will blow your mind. Translate all that into Shadowrun and you've got yourself a future.

I'm currently building a six-rotor semi-autonomous drone with a 17 kilometer operational radius and forward- and down-facing HD cameras. It's controlled over the 3G cellular network, and sends the forward view back the same way. The only parts I'm missing are the rotors, their motors, the batteries, the spines, the Arduino with a cellular "shield," and the two HD cameras. Other than that, dude, I am so there.

Seems to echo what my gaming group is experiencing in the same game...

Funnily enough when we played the Star Wars Saga Edition it was a Droid that proved to be the most dangerous character of the group. Heh. I do like that DIY Drone site though! Inspiration!

So, what exactly do you have?

I think it's been posted in this forum before, but see this link for a current crowdsource DARPA project.

Knowledge and desire.

What a lot of folks are talking about here is mini-blimps for drones, believe it or not the local farmers and game wardens...

High loiter times, quiet operation, and with basic solar cells and batteries very long operation times (and can be tethered to neutralize weather/interference)

Just a little slower than most, but very versatile and stable platforms. Especially for location monitoring for crop/livestock and watching for poachers (getting a bit more common as food prices rise and jobs get scarce)

My brother and couple of guys in his unit were trying to get a few entries together for a DARPA contest on making drones to locate IED's. And while their entry never really made it to the contest, they did make a spider style drone that worked. (Just not all that great.) And all that from cheap parts they picked up online, or at local retailers.

I'm a huge fan of lighter-than-air drones, and would like to make a solar mini-blimp, but the winds in my area make it prohibitive as a free-flying vehicle; like you say, it's got to be tethered, which limits its utility somewhat. But pretty much any light drone is going to have a hard time here, for the same reasons.

wish I had the money to test a generator idea... but I can't know if it will provide enough power to weight/size to be worth it without building what amounts to a perpetual motion generator for non-blimps

Use magnetic repulsion as the 0 contact support of the camshaft within it, brushless generator on the middle. Angled magnets at ends of the shaft, electromagnetic outer shell magnets to allow on/off. Vacuum inside the casing so no air friction. I figure with a high enough rpm it can generate enough to power itself and maybe provide enough power for a drone to operate (especially if paired with solar cells/batteries for peak power)

Issues would be magnetic interference though.

Or in a possible use, fan blades in a electomagnetic shell casing. add minor charge to the rails, the repulsion spins the blades providing thrust (might actually be more power efficient than a standard electric engine on a micro/mini drone size chassis)

Sucks having a technical mind full of ideas, and a wallet that wishes it had dust in it.

Figured either would make lighter than air or propelled drones have a lot more power for fighting winds and environment vs standard electronic operation ones (the only ones that can really handle it now are fuel powered and they have far less operation times)

https://www.pcworld.com/article/244200/3dpr...save_lives.html

What kills any and all generators that come even close to perpetual motions is heat. There will always be energy lost as heat.

no contact magnetic repulsion holds the cam in position (meaning negative to negative at key points to hold it in place) so no metal on metal friction. Operating in a vacuum to cut out air friction

Only heat generation is in the wires from the electricity generation.

This is a pretty common perpetual motion design, and of course, I'm sorry, but it doesn't work. I'd be happy to talk about it in a different thread, but this probably isn't the place for it.

You still generate heat by irradiation, just like the sun's heat travels the vacuum of space.

Yeah, but tell the average person that and they'll start freaking out as soon as "Radiation" is heard. *Headdesk*

People are dumb.

I worked IT, you don't need to tell me that.

As for the radiation thing, it cropped up in one of my Advanced Science Courses. We were discussing a few items in the library as part of a group project (Thermal Radiation, to be exact), and we got stares galore from tables all around us like were were trying to make a nuclear reactor.

We were working on how to make a thermos using improvised and limited items.

Most of my players are building a jet engine in their garage. Discussing this in public is generally followed by horrified looks and "It's only a small one!"

I went to the "Tech" high school, I had hoped we'd be safe in the library at least. Apparently not.

At least we hadn't gotten into the scary technology yet.

Like the Rail Gun my physics prof built? He built it to test his hypothesis about melting iron nails with wind resistance.
Turns out that not only is that true, those nails will still go through trees.

Now I need to stat this for use against my players.

they are horrified for their hearing. pulse jets are farking LOUD.

Bah, pussies. Try living in a mining town where the main geography is ROCK.

Blasting galore! Above and below ground. *Sighs* I do miss that part.

Yeah, we're in the middle of a suburban area around a university. Parties aren't really quiet, jet engines will simply have less bass.