Aerial Surveillance

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There are MANY options for Aerial Surveillance. And there are probably better articles on using drones than this one. However, I am writing this from a prospective of a private investigator that needs a tool to help him in investigations and isn’t willing to spend hours weekly playing with little drones. Point is, that for many of you, this article may help you decide on whether or not it’s worth buying a drone.

I started testing aerial surveillance options three years ago when I had a plane built for me that was 3 feet wide and 2 feet long. I decided to go with a plane rather than a quadcopter because of noise – a plane is much quiter in the air and can fly for about 20 minutes on a battery. It was able to fly out about 2 miles with line of sight. It had FPV (first person vision) goggles that allowed me to go as far as I wanted. The plane worked fairly well, however I quickly learned that this is a hobby. It requires a lot of time and patience to learn to fly a plane out several miles and get a good shot. Maneuvering a plane turned out to be fairly difficult and landing the plane – well I still haven’t learned how to land it without breaking something. So after a few thousand dollars, I scrapped the plane idea…

I researched quadcopter’s for a while but it seamed that any quadcopter that can actually get some decent distance, have fairly easy controls, and have a battery that lasted more than 6-8 minutes cost over 6K. And that was a fairly large investment for a testing project as I wasn’t sure how good it would work for surveillance purposes.

Then DJI came out with their Phantom 2 Vision +. I am not going to go into what they advertise, I will just give you real specs since this is what I am using now:

–     The battery lasts approximately 10 minutes for TRUE flight times. This means that I can actually keep my chopper in the air for 10 minutes and get it down on the ground with 20% battery remaining.

–     The chopper can get to approximately 1000 feet and maintain at that elevation. However I find that 300 feet is the perfect height for most scenarios.

–     The chopper can go out about 800 feet in a suburban neighborhood and 1000+ in a rural environment at about 350 feet elevation without losing vision (will explain later). It can go an addition 200 – 400 feet with the datalink (will explain later).

–     Noise. The Phantom is not loud at all. If it is approximately 300 feet in the air, you cannot hear it unless it is directly above you. As you do not need the chopper to be directly above your subject (you can shoot video from an angle), the noise is not an issue.

–     Information and articles. The DJI is the most popular chopper, so there are a million Youtube videos and articles on the chopper.

–     The chopper is unbelievably easy to fly! This thing basically flies itself. The stabilizers on this chopper make it so you don’t need any practice or experience to fly. Below is a video of my first flight with the DJI. I had no practice flying any quadcopters prior to this. This will also show the chopper at a height of 900 feet.



The chopper lands itself…. literally!!! When you are ready to bring her down, all you need to do is turn off the controller and the chopper will “fly home.” In the setting of the app you need to check “dynamic home” and the chopper will land within 5 feet of the last place the controller was. See video below. You will see the chopper landing from 200 feet down to the ground and you will see me standing there and not pressing anything on the controller.



Basically, by now you should have been sold on the fact that this chopper can fly itself, so learning how to control the DJI Phantom 2 Version + is not an issue. Next, we need to discuss practical use for surveillance purposes. Most people use drones for surveying land or for aerial photography, and they are perfect those tasks. However, drones for surveillance are not practical. In reality, unless your spying from government satellites, drones aren’t as practical as they appear in the movies.

My need for a drone is simple, I need to conduct flyby’s to determine if a vehicle is present if I cannot see that vehicle from surveillance position. In a very rare instance, I may use a drone to obtain video of a subject, but in reality your not going to be getting usable surveillance footage of your subject without exposing your drone as you need to fly close to your subject to get a decent shot.

What you really will not be able to use a drone for is to follow a vehicle through city streets or to obtain video of a subject in his backyard (in CA).

So, now that we know why I need a drone, the video below will be a prime example of what you can expect with the drone using only the drone and cell phone app. You will see the drone fly past the width of two blocks to obtain video of a house and driveway.



Below is a photo that will show the distance the chopper flew (800 feet) to get to the target house and to see that the subject vehicle is not present.

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So now that I have showed off and explained the use of the chopper and the reasoning behind buying the DJI Phantom 2 Vision +. Now I will go into the tech aspect of the chopper.

When buying the “DJI Phantom 2,” you get several options. You need the Phantom 2 (not Phantom 1) as the battery is longer on the 2. However you get the options of choosing the DJI gimbal and camera or the Go Pro setup.

The DJI Phantom 2 Vision + is the option with the DJI camera and wifi extender. This option is approximately $1100 – $1200. This is the easiest setup for a not tech person. Once you buy this kit, you can basically download the software on your computer, connect the chopper to your PC for updates, and fly within 10 minutes of  opening up the box. You will also need to install the DJI app to use your cell phone as a first person view camera.

If you go with the Go Pro camera version, you will pay approximately the same after you buy the chopper and the GoPro camera. This is not a plug and play version. You will need to setup the GoPro and deal with additional wiring. You will also want to (most likely) upgrade your FPV range with a FatShark setup which will give you an addition 200 – 400 feet of FPV video over the DJI camera option. If you are tech savvy, this is the better option, if you are not Tech Savvy, you may regret buying this setup.

Other than the chopper, you may want to buy carbon fiber props ($30), a nice carrying case ($200). So your total overall investment will be around $1500 and you will be ready to fly in 10 minutes after upgrading the software and installing the DJI app on your cell phone.

Lastly, I purchased the DJI ground station for $200. This is not mandatory, but with the ground station, you can plug in your subject address into your computer and your chopper will take off, fly to your subject residence, obtain several minutes of video, and return to you without you having to use the remote control. This is a must for me sometimes because the cell phone FPV sometimes doesn’t allow me to get to the needed distance and recognize the subject’s residence. The ground station takes away the chance of user error, but it takes about 1-2 hours to learn how to use.

Below is a video that I found on Youtube that best explains the ground station.



Distance – If you are really tech savvy, and can afford to invest another 1-2K into the DJI chopper, you can actually get it to fly out up to 3 miles. However, that most likely isn’t necessary for most of us.

On a final note, I wanted to mention one more thing to consider. When using these drones, the time it takes you to get out of the car and get this drone in the air is about 3 minutes. You can honestly launch the drone on a public street from the roof of your car. If you fly up 350 feet and fly out 800 feet, it will take about 2-3 minutes for the drone to return back to your position and an addition minute to pack up the drone. So if your subject takes off on you while your drone is in the air, your most likely going to lose your subject or your drone.

Legalities – I’m not going to touch this subject as this is changing everyday. Do your research and focus on new laws published by the FAA and the FCC.


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