WILDLABS logo

WILDLABS logo

Group

Drones / Feed

Used to pick up signals from tracking gear on the ground, collect images of wildlife and habitats from the air, gather acoustic data with specialized hydrophones, or even collect snot samples from whales' blowholes, drones are capable of collecting high-resolution data quickly, noninvasively, and at relatively low cost.

discussion

Collecting Your Opinions about Drones

Sean Anderson

11 April 2016 6:52pm

We are entering the final week or so of our 2nd annual opinion polling effort centered around better understanding the public's general experience with and opinons about UAVs...

1 0
Stephanie O'Donnell

12 April 2016 9:26am

Hi Sean, 

Thanks for sharing your survey - is there a specific date you'll be closing the survey? 

It'd be great if you could share the results of the survey here, as I (for one) will be quite interested to see what comes back. 

Cheers, 

Steph

See full post
discussion

Solar powered drone for conservation

Gregg_Walker

16 March 2016 4:17pm

Hello everyone I'm excited to have joined this community interested in trying to enhance conservation efforts with modern technology. I've been working on...

2 0
Daniel Demmel

26 March 2016 12:03pm

Hey Gregg,

The project looks cool!

Just wondering how much you envisage the load carrying capacity of the drone to be? So being able to carry cameras, GPS, etc.

Also, do you see the price coming down later? $5000 sounds quite steep...

And finally, have you thought about creating it as an open source project? Since all the perks at this points are mostly symbolic, this way people would be more compelled to contribute.

 

Have a nice day,

Daniel

Gregg_Walker

28 March 2016 12:27pm

Hi Daniel

Thanks for the interest in the project.

The load carrying capacity will be a few kgs. The battery I've sized at this stage is around 2kgs and should allow it to fly over night, but if this storage is increased in future it will impact the other loads. It is a tricky trade-off between flight time and capability.

I'm hoping to include both visual and thermal cameras on a gimbal but they will need to be miniature versions (adds to cost). The drone will definitely include GPS/autopilot and I'm also hoping to include onboard image processing in future so the drone can send an alarm when it notices something out of place. The video feed will also need to be encrypted so that poachers cannot use the drone as their own scouting vehicle.

The price tag of $5000 is for the first few prototypes and will come down with mass production and buying in bulk. I don't see it dropping much below $3000-4000 at current equipment prices though. For instance, the solar PV cells and charge circuit alone will cost around $1000 and the cost of even the cheap uncooled microbolometer therml imagers is over $1000. This isn't an average consumer drone but I've tried to keep the costs down as much as possible so it's feasible. I've also considered offering a stripped down drone of just the charging circuit and airframe so that people can add their own equipment and autopilot etc.

In terms of the perks, I tried to model this campaign after other campaigns that had a product already, which has been a mistake. The build diary included in some of the perks was my attempt at making it open source. I am considering reworking all the perks as it is unlikely to get any funding at this stage. 

Thanks for the valuable feedback. Please let me know if you have any other questions or comments.

Cheers,

Gregg

See full post
article

Bringing Conservation Technology to Life

Shah Selbe

17 February 2016 12:00am

We are living in the midst of a pretty exciting era. Never before has humanity been more educated, more connected, more enabled, or more empowered than we are today. There are many reasons to be optimistic about the...

0
See full post
article

Cheap Space, DIY Imaging and Big Data

WILDLABS Admin

21 December 2015 12:00am

John Amos, President of SkyTruth, explores how remote sensing is being used in conservation today and the importance of sky-truthing. He examines the role that citizen scientists can play in increasing transparency in...

0
See full post
discussion

Drones as elephant deterrent (herding device)

Dave Cortright

24 November 2015 6:32pm

One of the most novel and promising uses for a drone I've seen is to herd elephants away from crops and villages. Resolve has done some trials and initial results are...

2 0
John Probert

17 December 2015 6:39pm

Hi Dave,

I believe with any DJI drones you can plot out the course of a drone and let it fly along the route with you controling the speed and height of the drone. The limitation is that it has to eb within a mile of the pilot.

 

Regards,

John

Dave Cortright

17 December 2015 6:43pm

True, but ideal the navigation system would need to be more interactive to be able to respond to the elephant movements in real-time.

See full post