I have been running a group for a year now but only religiously in the last 3 months. I have had a new player in the group for the last month. He are playing a rigger/hacker. It has come up that the rigger/hacker assumes that all drones have cameras, not just stationary fixed point either but rotating sweeping cameras that capture sound. I cannot find any mention in the core rule book that every drone has a camera like this. I just picked up the Rigger 5.0 book and haven't had time to look yet but I wanted to see what the general thought is among players and other gms. Any comments/thoughts are appreciated.

IMO there's nothing in the rules (4a) that I've read and recall, that suggests that all drones have cameras, let alone non-fixed direction cameras. As I recall, the only thing the rules talk about, are sensors. And sensors can be pretty much anything or combination thereof, which allow the drone to orient itself and navigate around in its surroundings.

I seem to recall some rules about being able to select the sensor suite based on the drone's device rating, leading to drones of varying sensor arrays (e.g. one could have cameras, another could have ultrasound, yet another could have only audio). It's entirely possible this is the fevered dream of an addled mind, so take it with a grain of salt. However, it stands to reason drones have some way of perceiving the world - what that is would likely be up to the player and the GM. I think having the sensor suite limited by device rating makes sense as a way to limit their sensors (as opposed to saying "all of them").

Best,
-DrZ

EDIT: This specific issues seems to be addressed on the officials: Here.

Thanks. Great information. It will definitely help in future sessions.

Arsenal for SR4A (pg 105) actually lists just what sensors come with a standard vehicle sensor array. You could extrapolate from that to figure out what you think should be standard on a drone of a given size.