Looking for a little help (Search and Rescue related)
CompletedSo I'm a part 107 certified drone operator for a local search and rescue team in the US. I've been with the team for over three years and have been on numerous searches in that time. Our team uses search dogs for both live and cadaver. We also utilize boats for water operations. We are all volunteer based so funding is always limited. All the drones we used are bought by members of our team an include phantom 3 and 4, Mavic Pro's, and Mini's as well. While it would be nice to have the money to get some enteprise drones, we dont have the funding. Also on most searches we find that smaller drones that can be easily carried make a huge difference. Sometime we have to hike quite a bit to get to a suitable takeoff location and having a light drone is key.
What I'm looking for is a group that is willing to work with real scenario search and rescue and help us develop something that we can use. Right now in the field I use the DJI app. But when I need more information like GPS cordinates, I switch to Lichi. What I'm looking for is something to help make field operations smoother. While there are some paid apps out there that can so some things, all of them seem to focus on the bigger drones. We need something that will work on any DJI drone.
For reference. Here's a typical flight operation on a search.
1) Arrive to site early and visually inspect area for takeoff locations.
2) Work with Incident Commander to find out area they want drone team to look at.
3) Fire up DJI Fly and check airspace and see if we need to contact any airports (we have unlocked remotes that let us operate in North America...but we still contact airports and any airfields. Also monitor aircraft channels as well)
4) Get team ready and prebrief flight
5) Take off and start search, video recording is started on takeoff
6) If anything stands out, I typically will go lower and circle it to get a better picture. I switch to photo mode and take pictures if something is interesting. I then switch to Litchi to get a picture with the GPS cordinates on. I then go into map view and take a screenshot as well. I then email/message all these info to command. Drone is hovering at this point.
7) Proceed with search and resume video recording.
8) Land and gather all logs and videos.
At basic what I'm looking for is something in which I can do the following:
When I find something of interest, I press a button. It automatically goes to photo mode and gets a picture, adds the GPS information on the pictures as well, grabs a picture of the map view, email/messages that to a pre-determined contact, then goes back to video mode and continues.
That in itself would save me lots of time. And time is important since most flight last 20 or so minutes. So anything that saves me time is helpful.
In the past we've also used other apps like Litchi or DJI Groundstation to automate things. While in theory they are great, in real world scenarios its tough to preplan things. Any given location has different terrain and variable alittudes, so hard to create something ahead of time to automate the flight.
Livestreaming would be nice as well, but I can airplay to various devices we have and can do that. But in real world scenarios, we rarely have extra people to monitor it. I usually have one person watching an ipad and at least two others as visual observers.
One additional feature would be good is the ability for ground personell to have an app that will have a map telling them where the drone is. Likewise I could also see there location. It would be good so ground team can be sent to look at something the drone has found easier.
now I have created ios apps in the past, but they were very simple in comparison to any flight app. So if there is any developer team out there that would like to help with this, please reach out to me.
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