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United States24799 Posts
I have an idea to combine several different technologies to enable a type of spying rarely, if ever seen.
#1) Miniature Helicopter![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/9dVxA.jpg)
My idea would probably require a larger and more expensive one than what is pictured above.
#2) GPS![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/zACeN.jpg)
A small gps receiver would be used to help the helicopter navigate (pre-programmed autopilot).
#3) Wireless radio control/software with video streaming or recording
You can buy/build a hardware/software system that will control a toy vehicle remotely via radio. This would require modifications to the contents of the helicopter (the same can be done with planes). An on-board camera would record what it is supposed to be looking at, or transmit it wirelessly to the control computer.
#4) Antenna array for accurately locating a sensor
I am least familiar with this 'technology' but a computer can track very accurately the position of a transmitter using a scaled-down system akin to GPS.
#5) Wireless charging pad![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/oU7wP.jpg)
Placing a custom adapter with metal leads on the bottom of the helicopter feet will allow it to land directly on to a charging station.
So my idea involves modifying several small/toy helicopters to fly pre-programmed scheduled flights over a point of interest. They would hover over the point of interest, recording video, and fly back when they are running low on battery power (or whatever type of fuel they use). For example, at 7am chopper #1 takes off, flies automatically to an intersection in a road, and hovers over it at a fixed position, recording video. When it's starting to run low on battery power, chopper 2 automatically takes off en route to the same location. Once chopper 2 is in position near chopper 1 (and hopefully without hitting it), chopper 1 returns to 'base'.
Chopper 1 navigates back to base using it's on board GPS. When it's within a few yards of the landing area, the secondary navigation system meant for much more precise tracking takes over. Using a small network of strategically positioned antennas, the helicopter is routed down on to a wireless charging pad. Thus, it lands and begins recharging automatically.
Chopper 3 takes over when chopper 2 is running low on batteries. This continues until chopper 1 is charged and ready to relieve chopper 4, or however many are needed to allow for continuous flight. When the computer software controlling all this flags that the mission is scheduled to end, the final chopper returns. All of this happened because the user (me) programmed in the mission well in advance. No attention or action was required on my part during the mission. The end result is a continuous video recording of everything that happened at this particular intersection.
Here are some problems/weaknesses I've already identified with this plan:
1) It will be difficult to ensure that the choppers won't get caught up on power lines or other obstructions. One way to avoid this is to have them fly up higher than any obstructions in the area, travel horizontally as needed, and then drop straight down to their point of observation. They would return the same way. The weather also needs to be considered (possibly by an automated online weather search). If it's raining or too windy the mission should probably be aborted.
2) I have no idea how to set up that 'secondary navigation system'. It would be akin to how movie studios place sensors on various parts of a martial artist's body and have them perform cool moves to capture on computer exactly how each part of a martial artists body moves, except there would only be one, or a few sensors needed on the chopper.
3) The battery life on small choppers is pretty low usually so a large number of choppers would be needed to allow for continuous viewing of a target location.
4) These types of choppers have very short range. A similar system using planes instead of choppers would increase the range of potential operations but would require them to circle around instead of hover. They also need help taking off and a bit of room to land, unlike a helicopter. This makes automatic charging much more difficult. A fancy custom harrier-type vehicle may get around some of these problems but requires much more custom work in order to use since as far as I know they don't really exist at this scale and are otherwise exorbitantly expensive.
5) Even if you are handy and do most of this yourself it's still an expensive undertaking to get set up. Once you have the operation up and running the cost of uptime probably isn't too bad since charging a few toys isn't that expensive.
6) The legality of this type of operation is very questionable, depending on where you live. Generally you aren't supposed to fly vehicles around your neighborhood, especially if you are losing line of sight with them (or in my case, you could just be asleep while this is all happening!).
In case it's not clear, I'm not actually planning to do something like this right now. I just find the idea fascinating and have been reading up a bit on what it would take to do something like this. What are your thoughts? Have you had experience in any of these areas? Do you want to try to develop this right now!?
This could be used both for positive (capturing footage of events where more serious aircraft are discouraged from flying overhead due to security issues) and negative (spying on people you shouldn't be spying on) reasons.
 
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would it not be much easier to go to said road you wanted to monitor and 'fire' a webcam with built in wireless attenna and battery on to a wall. cover it in some kind of super adhesive so it sticks to the wall on contact.
or get on the roof or a nearby building and simply attach it?
im curious why we need helicoptors.
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On May 04 2012 05:40 turdburgler wrote:
would it not be much easier to go to said road you wanted to monitor and 'fire' a webcam with built in wireless attenna and battery on to a wall. cover it in some kind of super adhesive so it sticks to the wall on contact.
or get on the roof or a nearby building and simply attach it?
im curious why we need helicoptors.
because...because...its cool
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United States24799 Posts
On May 04 2012 05:40 turdburgler wrote:
would it not be much easier to go to said road you wanted to monitor and 'fire' a webcam with built in wireless attenna and battery on to a wall. cover it in some kind of super adhesive so it sticks to the wall on contact.
or get on the roof or a nearby building and simply attach it?
im curious why we need helicoptors.
Your idea has pros/cons like mine. You can choose to monitor a location without every going there yourself when using helicopters. You can get a view from above without there needing to be any high walls or dangerous climbs to mount a camera. Trying to fire the webcam and have it stick to a wall while pointing in the correct direction seems difficult to arrange. Furthermore, once the webcam runs out of battery life (which would be pretty soon I assume) you would need to either recover it or discard it (both sound bad to me).
For some applications your idea would be way more logical than mine... but for what I've envisioned, a more mobile system would be needed.
And like the poster above me... yeah it's cool!
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i think the biggest problem you are gonna face is the range on a standard RC helicopter. you would need to invest in some kind of reciever nearby that could boost the signal. i dont imagine a program to tell the copter to follow a preset gps route would be very difficult.
how far away from the site do you intend to be while everything is going on?
you also need to paint them all black because everything looks more badass in black
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United States24799 Posts
On May 04 2012 05:52 turdburgler wrote:
i think the biggest problem you are gonna face is the range on a standard RC helicopter. you would need to invest in some kind of reciever nearby that could boost the signal. i dont imagine a program to tell the copter to follow a preset gps route would be very difficult.
you also need to paint them all black because everything looks more badass in black
Painting the planes black is surely no problem. My friend suggested instead of using a separate GPS style system for landing that I program the plane to land on a colored landing strip (whatever color the wireless charging pad is). He said he did something similar having an RC car follow a red cup XD
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Chopper 1 navigates back to base using it's on board GPS. When it's within a few yards of the landing area, the secondary navigation system meant for much more precise tracking takes over. Using a small network of strategically positioned antennas, the helicopter is routed down on to a wireless charging pad. Thus, it lands and begins recharging automatically.
I think this would be extremely difficult. The problems here are pretty numerous; any changes in wind direction, wind speed, or potentially even temperature would be a huge problem for any remote flying vehical. For it to be able to fly the route itself it would need some pretty advanced AI; a whole set of sensors including altitude, air speed, orientation; as well as the ability to respond to certain conditions. For example, it there was a strong 20mph headwind coming out of the north, such a light vehical flying directly into it would likely encounter some huge problems. You would also need some type of backup instructions, in case it lost GPS signal or had some kind of memory fault. Not to mention that to have the kind of precision your talking about, a fairly large GPS antenna would be needed.
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United States24799 Posts
On May 04 2012 05:59 TheToast wrote:Show nested quote +Chopper 1 navigates back to base using it's on board GPS. When it's within a few yards of the landing area, the secondary navigation system meant for much more precise tracking takes over. Using a small network of strategically positioned antennas, the helicopter is routed down on to a wireless charging pad. Thus, it lands and begins recharging automatically. I think this would be extremely difficult. The problems here are pretty numerous; any changes in wind direction, wind speed, or potentially even temperature would be a huge problem for any remote flying vehical. For it to be able to fly the route itself it would need some pretty advanced AI; a whole set of sensors including altitude, air speed, orientation; as well as the ability to respond to certain conditions. For example, it there was a strong 20mph headwind coming out of the north, such a light vehical flying directly into it would likely encounter some huge problems. You would also need some type of backup instructions, in case it lost GPS signal or had some kind of memory fault. Not to mention that to have the kind of precision your talking about, a fairly large GPS antenna would be needed.
Most of those things to sense/control flying already exist and are used in automated systems hobbyists make. I wouldn't need to design them myself. A large antenna would not be needed since GPS would not be used for the close-in stuff. It would only be used for the large-scale navigation.
Although my friend's suggestion (see my previous post) is better (probably) than what I originally proposed for a guided landing.
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United States24799 Posts
That would be really funny if someone was wearing the same color shirt as the landing pad... and the chopper was chasing after them trying to land on them XD
I think that problem could be avoided fairly easily, though. There could also be a sign by the landing pads: "Warning: No red shirts allowed!!"
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^Lol.
Well, you could design it so that it would only track that color once it was within a certain distance of the landing area. But again, we're talking about some pretty advanced custom firmware programming here. I just don't see how it would be feasible (unless you're a firmware engineer micro, or know someone who is)
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United States24799 Posts
On May 04 2012 06:07 TheToast wrote:
^Lol.
Well, you could design it so that it would only track that color once it was within a certain distance of the landing area. But again, we're talking about some pretty advanced custom firmware programming here. I just don't see how it would be feasible (unless you're a firmware engineer micro, or know someone who is)
Rather than advanced firmware it could be controlled by software packages (already exist) on a computer that is in communication with it via radio (of course a loss of connection is possible).
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On May 04 2012 06:12 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On May 04 2012 06:07 TheToast wrote:
^Lol.
Well, you could design it so that it would only track that color once it was within a certain distance of the landing area. But again, we're talking about some pretty advanced custom firmware programming here. I just don't see how it would be feasible (unless you're a firmware engineer micro, or know someone who is) Rather than advanced firmware it could be controlled by software packages (already exist) on a computer that is in communication with it via radio (of course a loss of connection is possible).
Hmm, well I'd be interested to see what you come up with. What kind of RC copter are you looking at using for this?
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United States24799 Posts
On May 04 2012 06:30 TheToast wrote:Show nested quote +On May 04 2012 06:12 micronesia wrote:On May 04 2012 06:07 TheToast wrote:
^Lol.
Well, you could design it so that it would only track that color once it was within a certain distance of the landing area. But again, we're talking about some pretty advanced custom firmware programming here. I just don't see how it would be feasible (unless you're a firmware engineer micro, or know someone who is) Rather than advanced firmware it could be controlled by software packages (already exist) on a computer that is in communication with it via radio (of course a loss of connection is possible). Hmm, well I'd be interested to see what you come up with. What kind of RC copter are you looking at using for this?
Nah I haven't got the stage of actually planning to do this.... I'm mostly just figuring out how viable it is and where the biggest challenges lie.
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could you replace the RC toys with trained pigeons?
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Well, compensating for weather is going to involve either INCREDIBLY complex software, or a further bit of hardware and a slightly less incredibly complex bit of software. A sudden wind will knock it out of the sky if it doesn't react very quickly to the change in attitude.
No matter whether you try to do pure software, or hardware+software, determining relative down and reacting appropriately to stay under control is going to be tricky.
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United States24799 Posts
On May 04 2012 06:44 turdburgler wrote:
could you replace the RC toys with trained pigeons?
With a team of experts, $300,000,000, and a set of low expectations you could probably arrange something similar using pigeons.
On May 04 2012 06:44 JingleHell wrote:
Well, compensating for weather is going to involve either INCREDIBLY complex software, or a further bit of hardware and a slightly less incredibly complex bit of software. A sudden wind will knock it out of the sky if it doesn't react very quickly to the change in attitude.
No matter whether you try to do pure software, or hardware+software, determining relative down and reacting appropriately to stay under control is going to be tricky.
Yeah it's not a trivial concern. Avoiding severe weather seems like the most logical first step towards making this viable. I need to investigate how much progress has been made on this problem for hobbyists to learn how big of a problem this really is.
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i think you are over estimating the cost of pigeons. racing pigeons are trained to go back to 'home' you simply attach a small camera to their underside and get them to try and fly home. getting any decent exposure time of the area might be tricky but i think you could have a small army of pigeons for like £20k? idk
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'Over a point of interest' - what exactly are you planning in spying on? The road was just an example, do you live near a secret military base or something?
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On May 04 2012 07:30 Deleuze wrote:
'Over a point of interest' - what exactly are you planning in spying on? The road was just an example, do you live near a secret military base or something?
Clearly some hot chick's swimming pool/hot tub. I can't imagine another valid use.
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On May 04 2012 06:46 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On May 04 2012 06:44 turdburgler wrote:
could you replace the RC toys with trained pigeons? With a team of experts, $300,000,000, and a set of low expectations you could probably arrange something similar using pigeons.
I'll bring the low expectations if you bring the expertise.
Now we just need a millionaire and we pretty much have an A-team, or at least a good set-up for a comedy movie that will be forgotten in 4-5 years.
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The title of this blog made me "wat." I half expected it to be about something completely different than advertised. Still a cute read though. Lot of free time lately, micronesia? :D
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Hehe, not sure i want to know what you would use it for. but wouldn't this basically be building your own spy drones, minus the built in missiles?
Anyhow this would be neat to pull of, though the legality might be questioned in some places.
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On May 04 2012 07:36 JingleHell wrote:Show nested quote +On May 04 2012 07:30 Deleuze wrote:
'Over a point of interest' - what exactly are you planning in spying on? The road was just an example, do you live near a secret military base or something? Clearly some hot chick's swimming pool/hot tub. I can't imagine another valid use.
What is not being called into question, is the ability to override the pre-programmed route; because what if that hot chick's swimming pool is right next to the neat picture of the grass growing you are currently watching?
Need's ad hoc ability.
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United States24799 Posts
There are a surprising number of possible applications for this, but currently most of them don't 'apply' to me. The one example I mentioned earlier in the thread is if you want to capture some type of footage over a crowd where actual helicopters are not allowed. Another would be if you want to create a time laps video of something being built, or traffic through a certain area, or something like that.
Of course there are tons of dubious ways to use it as well.
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You could always use it to look for parking spots at the mall at christmas.
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A TL Banling dreaming up an IRL RC helicopter spy network.
Nazgul really is planning on world domination, isn't he?
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ziw5S.jpg)
