What is drone surveillance?
Drone surveillance is the use of camera drones by police, event organisers, rangers, business and home owners to check for intruders, illegal activity, enforce social controls or public safety.
China’s use of drones for surveillance during the epidemic has been widely publicized. China uses surveillance drones fitted with speakers and cameras to communicate to people who are not following social distancing or mask mandates without having to put their staff at risk.
In this article I’ll go through the different types of drones used for surveillance including indoor, outdoor, autonomous and surveillance drones used by Police.
What type of drones are used for surveillance?
1. Indoor Surveillance Drone
Indoor surveillance drones are designed for use when you’re not home to automatically fly to rooms within a house where motion has been detected.
Ring Always Home Cam is one of the first indoor drones released. Ring started with front door security cameras (the doorbell cam) that activate when the door bell is pressed.
Ring Security Drone
This indoor drone is programmed by carrying it to locations in the house to program the rooms and positions it will need to check when launched.
The Ring drone flies directly to rooms where motion has been detected by sensors throughout the house. This surveillance drone is also handy for simple checks like making sure the stove top has been turned off or balcony doors have been closed after you’ve left the house.
Privacy is front of mind for most people; I don’t want my conversations or personal footage streamed back to Amazon either! Ring have designed the docking station to enclose the camera on the drone so it’s concealed when not in use. The drone also gives off a humming sound when in use so if someone is home when the drone launches, they can hear that it’s active.
PROS
- Small
- Fully enclosed blades for safety
- Camera is concealed when not in use
- Locations can be programmed through out the house to be checked remotely from the app.
- Quality camera: 1440x1440px
- Affordable: retails at $249US
CONS
- Only 5 minutes flight time
- Restricted to a single level so if you have a two story house you’ll need to buy two drones.
- Not available in all countries
2. Outdoor Autonomous Surveillance Drone
Outdoor drones designed for home use are effective but expensive! Sunflower Labs has designed a home surveillance drone that can be automatically deployed when a human is detected on your property.
Sunflower Labs Autonomous Security Drone
The Beehive System is a surveillance drone that can be autonomously deployed when vibration is detected by motion sensors inserted into the ground around the property, these are the Sunflowers.
Most drone pilots will be familiar with the regulations around keeping a drone in your line of sight so you may want to check local laws around this before investing in this surveillance system.
However, to address the concerns of your neighbors privacy, this surveillance drone is designed to only face inwards toward your property meaning that it’s not going to take any illegal drone footage over your neighbor’s private property.
As peace of mind for those worried about being snuck up on by a surveillance drone, the Beehive System drone is unlikely to go unnoticed as it gives off a whirring sound which would be easily heard by people within the field of view.
How the Sunflower Surveylance Drone Works
1. Drone deployed when a human is sensed :
The sensors pick up the vibrations from footprints from humans to alert the home owner through the app. This clever system is able to effectively tell the difference in motion between animals and humans.
The drone lives in an enclosed docking station (Beehive) which it’s deployed from to fly to the area where footsteps are sensed. After the footage is captured, the drone returns home back to the docking station and charges via the connections at the bottom of each motor. The footage can be streamed to the app on a phone and is also saved in cloud storage.
2. Drone deployed for a programmed route :
A regular route can be programmed and routinely do completely autonomous inspections. This surveillance drone has anti collision sensors to avoid coliding with any objects that have moved into it’s flight plan.
3. Drone manually deployed
Using the app, the surveillance drone can be deployed manually from your phone. If your home and hear a bang from the trash cans in the middle of the night and want to check it’s raccoons rather than intruders, this mode deploys the drone manually to do a surveillance check.
3. Adapting a Drone for Home Surveillance
Why not just use a normal hobby drone for home surveillance? It may not have a fancy outdoor docking station that it can be automatically deployed from but can a normal drone be used for home surveillance?
Above: Surveillance flight path in Drone Link
How to use a normal drone for home security and surveillance
Most drones, like the DJI Mini can be automated to fly a surveillance route around a property by setting way points.
However, I’m discussing this idea with a disclaimer for two reasons… The laws set by the FAA state that any when a drone is flown for any reason other than ‘for fun’, you need to have the part 107 certification.
The second reason is that when you fly a drone it should always be kept within your visual line of site (this means you can physically see the drone to make sure your not getting in the way of anything else in the airspace).
Disclaimer aside, here is how a person could theoretically go about using a normal drone for surveillance;
- Set the maximum altitude above the building height and the height of trees near the ‘return home’ position. This will need to be less than 400ft by law because above 500ft is used for commercial aircraft.
- Install an app that is compatible with your drone for setting way points. If using the DJI mini, an app like Drone Link will work.
- Create the mission. In the Drone Link app there are a list of commands that are used to design a flight path for the drone.
A few examples are:
- Point of Interest: Select an object to rotate around and take footage of ie your house
- Command: Camera specific controls like look down 90 degrees
- Path: Follow set way points
4. Police Surveillance Drones
What drones are used for surveillance by Police?
Here are 8 drone models used by police squads across the world and there purpose:
Mavic 2 Enterprise | ||
Yuneec | previously conducted by helicopter |
|
DJI Mini | ||
DJI Matrice 300 | ||
DJI Inspire | ||
Hybrix | search and rescue |
|
What do surveillance drones look like at night?
Surveillance drones by default have lights on them that are visible at night however, they can be disabled.
There are two types; navigation lights and anti collision lights. Navigation lights are usually green and red. There is no set standard but generally green lights are at the front of the drone and red lights at the back to help the drone pilot easily identify the front of the drone.
Anti-collision lights are mandatory at night as per the FAA’s part 107 license regulations. Anti-collision lights are a flashing red or white light.
For a surveillance drone to fly without anti-collision lights, the drone pilot must have a waiver approved by the FAA (waiver 107.29 a2 or 107.29 b ).
Above: What the US-1 Surveillance drone looks like at night
To put you at ease most of these drones also come with a noticeable level of noise from the propellers. Generally the larger the drone the noisier but some drone manufacturers minimize this with brush-less motors. Even the Amazon Ring Home Security camera has a noticeable humming noise when flying so people are aware the drone is nearby.
How much do surveillance drones cost?
The cheapest surveillance drones is Ring at $250, the Sunflower surveillance drone costs just under $10,000 for the drone with the sensors costing $500 each. This article on the DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise range compares the 3 models and their cost versus features.
