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Drones - cutting through the crap

I'm about to organise some seminars and demonstrations of "drone" technology for farmers in the South Waikato district.

We've all read about the way these devices will simplify a farmer's job and (if you believe the Field Days hype), check their pastures from the kitchen table while enjoying toast and coffee for breakfast of a morning. The reality, of course, will be somewhat different.

However, there are a lot of farmers out there who'd love to take advantage of this technology yet find themselves at the mercy of the growing number of "drone sellers" who will spin a great yarn whilst emptying farmers pockets with incredible promises.

I figure it might make sense to deliver a dose of reality and objective appraisal of exactly how much or little these things cost, along with their true capabilities and limitations.

So what can you do with a "drone"?

Well in its simplest form, most drones consist of a camera (or cameras) attached to some type of flying craft which can be remotely controlled and piloted from the ground.

This obviously provides a great way to get a bird's eye view of a farm in a way that allows you to see where stock is located and if there are any obvious problems such as flooding, landslips, breached fences, etc.

What the drone sellers will seldom tell you is that the "live" video feed from these craft is hardly "hi definition" and, due to the combined limitations of cameras, video links and display devices, isn't even as good as the old fashioned (pre-HD) TV broadcasts we lived with for so many years. Unless you get very close (and we're talking just a metre or two away), you're not going to be able to see that the top wire is broken on your 5-wire fence.

What the drone sellers also won't tell you is that although there are HD video links available, they are very expensive and only work "line of sight" -- so no flying around behind a hill or even behind a row of leafy trees or your picture will just vanish.

Then there are the regulatory aspects of these craft...

Although there are some frequencies available for radio control and video links that fall under the "license-free" part of the spectrum, they are generally low power, short range and high frequency. This means that you'll be rather limited in what you can do with your drone -- unless you decide to get a HAM radio license or pay money for use of some other part of the spectrum. Failure to do this could see you pounced on by the Radio Spectrum Management folk, who take a very dim view of people using the wrong frequencies without the right paperwork and/or payment of monies.

CAA also have a say in what you can/can't do with these craft. Right now, the rules are in a state of flux because they're in the middle of cooking up some new regulations but suffice to say they will not allow you to "pre-program" your drone to navigate a set of waypoints that might take it on an automated trip around the farm to record HD video for replay later. Their rules say you must always fly "within line of sight" and that if any form of automated flight control is used, there must be the ability to restore control to "manual" at any time.

So right now -- the promise offered by these drones is huge -- but legal and practical limitations are strangling the realisation of that potential.

What's more, many of the "drone sellers" are pitching huge, expensive, carbon-fibre hex or octo copters that cost many, many thousands of dollars -- yet are more often than not equipped with the least suitable forms of RC equipment and will never be able to deliver the functionality promised.

Thanks to my long experience in the fields from which these drones have appeared and the significant amount of product I've reviewed, I'm hoping to bring a little commonsense to the over-hyped drone market -- at least within the farming sector around here.

I do wonder though, how many South Waikato farmers will be really pissed off to learn that they can't fly a drone on their own property because it's within 4Km of the barely-used Tokoroa Airfield and that's against CAA regulations.

If there's enough demand, I'll probably do a bit of traveling and bring some objectivity to the drone market further afield so if *you*, or someone you know, is interested in getting a group of folk together for some first-hand experience and presentation on this technology then let me know.

Of course there will be no charge for this -- because if I charged a single red-cent, I'd be deemed to be acting in a commercial capacity and that CAA would dump on me like a tonne of bricks -- so it's 100% free. Note also that I do not sell or act as an agent for any drone products, services or equipment. I just want to make sure that those who are thinking of adopting this technology are fully armed with the knowledge and information they'll need to make sensible decisions.

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