8 ms·

Why do I not see more drones in the protest videos? You'd think that would be a safe way to film things, plus it's a little harder to confiscate than your phone

Why do I not see more drones in the protest videos? You'd think that would be a safe way to film things, plus it's a little harder to confiscate than your phone.

notahacker 6y ago
I assume consumer drones are not particularly difficult to shoot down, with rubber bullets or otherwise
- snovv_crash 6y ago
  Racing drones are much sturdier and harder to hit, lots of videos of people on YouTube with paintball guns trying to shoot drones.
- tonyarkles 6y ago
  In Canada, at least, a drone (even a consumer drone) is considered an aircraft. Shooting at an aircraft is not, legally, a very good idea. We're admittedly talking about a group of cops that don't seem to hold the law in very high regard, but intentionally shooting at an aircraft is likely to get some investigation from people a little higher up into the food chain. Airspace is federally regulated and the regulatory agencies (Transport Canada, FAA) don't generally like other agencies on their turf, shooting at things :)
PeterStuer 6y ago
Flying over groups of people is not allowed.
- tonyarkles 6y ago
  There's nuance to that, at least in Canada. First, you can fly over people if you have an Advanced license and are using a unit with an appropriate Safety Assurance declaration (https://www.tc.gc.ca/en/services/aviation/drone-safety/choosing-right-drone.html https://www.tc.gc.ca/en/services/aviation/drone-safety/choos...), you can fly over people. Second, if your drone is under 250 grams, the rules are pretty much "don't put people in harms way" and "don't put aircraft in harm's way". The DJI Mavic Mini was designed pretty much to squeeze under that limit, coming in at 249g. I don't know if the FAA has a similar rule (a quick Google search suggested the answer is "maybe").
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  You should go to a protest, this is a great time to reset your priors about what is 'allowed.'
- belorn 6y ago
  If you are recording during curfew it seems a much better in term of risks, both legal and physically.
kenneth 6y ago
I was wondering the same thing myself today. It'd be interesting to come up with a drone that's ideal for this purpose… that can quickly fly and relocate somewhere, but can land on any flat surface and record remotely. You could perch it on nearby buildings or even things like traffic lights
- samizdis 6y ago
  Defence companies have been touting "perch and stare" capabilities for quite a while. This is from 2017, but gives the gist of the idea: https://defensesystems.com/articles/2017/09/cw/army-research-lab-drone.aspx https://defensesystems.com/articles/2017/09/cw/army-research... Edited to add: this is the sort of thing: https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2017/05/22/aerovironments-cell-phone-size-drone-is-helping-us-military-forces/ https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2017/05/22/aerovironments-c...
- tonyarkles 6y ago
  As a warning for people who might try to do this with existing off-the-shelf drones, be warned that trying to do this is likely going to result in you losing your drone. Not that you'll have a crash, but my experience with a wide range of drones (from little $30 whoops to $40k commercial cinematography units) is that they often do not like to takeoff again after landing and sitting for any length of time. Best I can tell, accelerometer/gyro/compass errors start to accumulate while the aircraft isn't moving, and it puts the flight controllers in a bad state. I actually had a client ask me about just such an application yesterday. It's a really great concept and definitely worth exploring.
  - gruez 6y ago
    That doesn't make any sense. How is the drone supposed to take off during normal operation?
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      GP is saying the sensors get into a bad state if the drone is powered on but not flying for a while. "normal operation" is powering on the drone and taking off almost immediately, then landing after 15-20 minutes. it's not inconceivable that most testing would follow this "happy path". the battery life of an idling drone might exceed the length of most test cases.
watwut 6y ago
If you flight drone over protest and something hit the drone or you crash the drone, the drone will fall on people under it.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  Useful drones can be very light, and much less dangerous to people than, e.g., a tear-gas canister.
  - watwut 6y ago
    I don't recommend throwing tear-gas canister either.
- chillax 6y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano
  - watwut 6y ago
    The "why do I not see more $40,000 nano drones in the protest videos" question would be fundamentally dumb one. It is charitable to assume that parent asked about affordable visible drones.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  Pro drones have lights and people can react in time, it's totally cool as long as you're not a cop. If you're a cop, you're not getting your drone back.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
anigbrowl 6y ago
Money, a good one is $500 and it requires skill to deploy. I saw someone doing it yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to talk to them.
- prawn 6y ago
  They're trivial to deploy - a child could do it if you showed them once. If you can afford to lose one being knocked out of the sky, you still draw attention by returning to ground every 20-30 minutes to swap batteries. Batteries are $100-200 each, at least for the drones I have, so not really something that a casual protester would be carrying around. Battery packs that can recharge drone batteries are heavy, expensive and uncommon. If police/NG are firing projectiles at journalists, grocery shoppers and people in their front yard, I can imagine they'd be delighted to play target practice with a drone. You could be high enough that no one would notice, but then you're not going to get especially useful video. Low light situations wouldn't help. A racing drone would be more difficult to control (AFAIK, no hover or GPS-based positioning) in trying to film specific things for 20 minutes at a time. If you wanted to film with a touch of elevation over a crowd, you'd carry a GoPro on a stick. Cheaper, cheaper batteries, can charge via USB with any battery pack.
ape4 6y ago
They can't fly for very long. I just looked it up. Longest time is an Autel Robotics EVO Drone with 30 minutes. https://filmora.wondershare.com/drones/drones-with-longest-flight-time.html https://filmora.wondershare.com/drones/drones-with-longest-f...
leetcrew 6y ago
for one thing, it's almost certainly illegal to fly a drone in this circumstance. it's over a large crowd of people and could also be construed as "interfering with emergency services". knowing what can happen to people who are making legal recordings, I'd hate to be the odd one out who's actually recording illegally.
- anigbrowl 6y ago
  This answer baffles me. The illegality is moot in a political confrontation like this. And how are they going to know who's flying it? You do so from cover and give the footage to a journalist you trust. Your main problem is the risk of losing the drone.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    most people at a protest (in the US) are not actually doing anything illegal. by attending you are certainly risking arrest and/or getting roughed up, but the police can't put any real charges on you unless they're willing to completely make them up. you're more likely to get harassed as a person with a smartphone camera, but the consequences could be a lot worse if you get caught operating the drone. also, I think you are underestimating the odds of getting caught flying a drone in a city. an off-the-shelf consumer drone is probably only going to have about 15-20 minutes of fly time, but you need to give yourself a good buffer to fly to/from the location. if you just want to record a single ten minute video and call it a day, you'll probably get away with it. but if you want to record a meaningful amount of footage, you need to keep recovering the drone, swapping out batteries, and relaunching. this creates a lot of opportunities for someone to see you with the drone. if you crash the drone and the police recover it, there could be enough metadata on it to identify the operator.

Why do I not see more drones in the protest videos? You'd think that would be a safe way to film things, plus it's a little harder to confiscate than your phone.

notahacker 6y ago

I assume consumer drones are not particularly difficult to shoot down, with rubber bullets or otherwise

snovv_crash 6y ago
Racing drones are much sturdier and harder to hit, lots of videos of people on YouTube with paintball guns trying to shoot drones.
tonyarkles 6y ago
In Canada, at least, a drone (even a consumer drone) is considered an aircraft. Shooting at an aircraft is not, legally, a very good idea. We're admittedly talking about a group of cops that don't seem to hold the law in very high regard, but intentionally shooting at an aircraft is likely to get some investigation from people a little higher up into the food chain. Airspace is federally regulated and the regulatory agencies (Transport Canada, FAA) don't generally like other agencies on their turf, shooting at things :)

PeterStuer 6y ago

Flying over groups of people is not allowed.

tonyarkles 6y ago
There's nuance to that, at least in Canada. First, you can fly over people if you have an Advanced license and are using a unit with an appropriate Safety Assurance declaration (https://www.tc.gc.ca/en/services/aviation/drone-safety/choosing-right-drone.html https://www.tc.gc.ca/en/services/aviation/drone-safety/choos...), you can fly over people. Second, if your drone is under 250 grams, the rules are pretty much "don't put people in harms way" and "don't put aircraft in harm's way". The DJI Mavic Mini was designed pretty much to squeeze under that limit, coming in at 249g. I don't know if the FAA has a similar rule (a quick Google search suggested the answer is "maybe").
anigbrowl 6y ago
You should go to a protest, this is a great time to reset your priors about what is 'allowed.'
belorn 6y ago
If you are recording during curfew it seems a much better in term of risks, both legal and physically.

kenneth 6y ago

I was wondering the same thing myself today. It'd be interesting to come up with a drone that's ideal for this purpose… that can quickly fly and relocate somewhere, but can land on any flat surface and record remotely. You could perch it on nearby buildings or even things like traffic lights

samizdis 6y ago
Defence companies have been touting "perch and stare" capabilities for quite a while. This is from 2017, but gives the gist of the idea: https://defensesystems.com/articles/2017/09/cw/army-research-lab-drone.aspx https://defensesystems.com/articles/2017/09/cw/army-research... Edited to add: this is the sort of thing: https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2017/05/22/aerovironments-cell-phone-size-drone-is-helping-us-military-forces/ https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/2017/05/22/aerovironments-c...
tonyarkles 6y ago
As a warning for people who might try to do this with existing off-the-shelf drones, be warned that trying to do this is likely going to result in you losing your drone. Not that you'll have a crash, but my experience with a wide range of drones (from little $30 whoops to $40k commercial cinematography units) is that they often do not like to takeoff again after landing and sitting for any length of time. Best I can tell, accelerometer/gyro/compass errors start to accumulate while the aircraft isn't moving, and it puts the flight controllers in a bad state. I actually had a client ask me about just such an application yesterday. It's a really great concept and definitely worth exploring.
- gruez 6y ago
  That doesn't make any sense. How is the drone supposed to take off during normal operation?
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    GP is saying the sensors get into a bad state if the drone is powered on but not flying for a while. "normal operation" is powering on the drone and taking off almost immediately, then landing after 15-20 minutes. it's not inconceivable that most testing would follow this "happy path". the battery life of an idling drone might exceed the length of most test cases.

watwut 6y ago

If you flight drone over protest and something hit the drone or you crash the drone, the drone will fall on people under it.

ncmncm 6y ago
Useful drones can be very light, and much less dangerous to people than, e.g., a tear-gas canister.
- watwut 6y ago
  I don't recommend throwing tear-gas canister either.
chillax 6y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano
- watwut 6y ago
  The "why do I not see more $40,000 nano drones in the protest videos" question would be fundamentally dumb one. It is charitable to assume that parent asked about affordable visible drones.
anigbrowl 6y ago
Pro drones have lights and people can react in time, it's totally cool as long as you're not a cop. If you're a cop, you're not getting your drone back.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

anigbrowl 6y ago

Money, a good one is $500 and it requires skill to deploy. I saw someone doing it yesterday, but I didn't get a chance to talk to them.

prawn 6y ago
They're trivial to deploy - a child could do it if you showed them once. If you can afford to lose one being knocked out of the sky, you still draw attention by returning to ground every 20-30 minutes to swap batteries. Batteries are $100-200 each, at least for the drones I have, so not really something that a casual protester would be carrying around. Battery packs that can recharge drone batteries are heavy, expensive and uncommon. If police/NG are firing projectiles at journalists, grocery shoppers and people in their front yard, I can imagine they'd be delighted to play target practice with a drone. You could be high enough that no one would notice, but then you're not going to get especially useful video. Low light situations wouldn't help. A racing drone would be more difficult to control (AFAIK, no hover or GPS-based positioning) in trying to film specific things for 20 minutes at a time. If you wanted to film with a touch of elevation over a crowd, you'd carry a GoPro on a stick. Cheaper, cheaper batteries, can charge via USB with any battery pack.

ape4 6y ago

They can't fly for very long. I just looked it up. Longest time is an Autel Robotics EVO Drone with 30 minutes. https://filmora.wondershare.com/drones/drones-with-longest-flight-time.html https://filmora.wondershare.com/drones/drones-with-longest-f...

leetcrew 6y ago

for one thing, it's almost certainly illegal to fly a drone in this circumstance. it's over a large crowd of people and could also be construed as "interfering with emergency services". knowing what can happen to people who are making legal recordings, I'd hate to be the odd one out who's actually recording illegally.

anigbrowl 6y ago
This answer baffles me. The illegality is moot in a political confrontation like this. And how are they going to know who's flying it? You do so from cover and give the footage to a journalist you trust. Your main problem is the risk of losing the drone.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  most people at a protest (in the US) are not actually doing anything illegal. by attending you are certainly risking arrest and/or getting roughed up, but the police can't put any real charges on you unless they're willing to completely make them up. you're more likely to get harassed as a person with a smartphone camera, but the consequences could be a lot worse if you get caught operating the drone. also, I think you are underestimating the odds of getting caught flying a drone in a city. an off-the-shelf consumer drone is probably only going to have about 15-20 minutes of fly time, but you need to give yourself a good buffer to fly to/from the location. if you just want to record a single ten minute video and call it a day, you'll probably get away with it. but if you want to record a meaningful amount of footage, you need to keep recovering the drone, swapping out batteries, and relaunching. this creates a lot of opportunities for someone to see you with the drone. if you crash the drone and the police recover it, there could be enough metadata on it to identify the operator.