Aerial Drone Survey Device Assembly

It all started when I participated in a multi-vendor survey where Ferney, Mark, Christian and I used four different tools to survey a middle school and a football stadium. During the stadium survey, we all thought about how a drone would make the job easier and wondered whether it was possible. Of course we had all thought it a few times before and mentioned how cool that would be, but to have an actual scenario in which it would apply made us think about actually doing it.

I have always been a drone enthusiast. I love aerial photography and I love flying drones around. Having years of experience in flying them, I figured I could be a good pilot for this project. I have a Sidos, why not strap it to a drone and see what happens?

Weight was a major problem to solve. We needed to shave off any gram we could. We started by looking at the Sidos Wave's internals to see if we could take out or replace parts. The two heaviest pieces were the battery and the heat sync. The battery seemed like a harder problem to solve, so we started with the heat sync.

The rated maximum payload of the DJI Mavic Air 2 was 500 grams. The Sidos wave weighing at 450 grams was cutting it close and I was definitely going to have issues trying to lift it reliably. It was able to take off, but maneuvering it was tricky and it seemed unreliable.

I needed an upgrade! Luckily I had a second drone that had double the payload capacity and was much more powerful.

With the new drone and lots of Velcro, I was ready to do more testing.

After an initial flight with the DJI FPV I noticed it performed much better and could lift and fly around with more stability and confidence. That said, I still had a learning curve with the added weight and new flying dynamics. Here's how the first flight went with the new drone.

Okay! We have a drone that can lift the Sidos, now how do we survey? Initially I thought this would be the hardest part because normally you have to be attached physically to the surveying device, so unless I had a 500 foot USB cable and a desire to crash my drone, I don't know how I could be attached to it..

I wondered if there was a way to remotely control the phone.. then I had the genius thought... to ask Google, and I found that with iOS 18 you can now control another device over FaceTime. Perfect! I just need two iPhones and I can make this work! Luckily I have my own personal phone and a work phone that I can use to test this with. There is a catch however.. now I have to somehow attach a phone to the drone which is even more weight. But hey, with my improved drone I knew I had just enough capacity to carry the phone as well as the Sidos but again, I was nearing the upper limit of its payload capacity. But I wouldn't know until I tried.

Here is my setup: a modified Sidos (changed the heat sync to save weight) and a phone on top connected to it. Now with just a phone call I can remotely do surveys.

The first flight with everything almost ended in a disaster, crashing into Ferney's desk with lots of equipment on it..

With some short test flights done, it was time to move outside and try to do an actual survey. Some things to consider though, are that with this setup you need a constant connection to the phone tethered to the drone (for FaceTime remote control to work). Also need to consider how high you're flying. Most of the time when you fly a drone, you're going hundreds if not a thousand feet up from where you started, but there's no use in checking for Wi-Fi 1200 feet up unless you're trying to do a quick packet capture of a plane flying overhead! (no FAA rules were broken in the making of this device.)

Lets go outside and fly this thing around! Mark and Ferney helped out in all of this from building to helping me document each step of the way.

There's more to figure out here that will be tested in the coming weeks, such as battery life and walking vs drone survey to compare the data. I want to try other surveying tools such as the Nomad or Sidekick.

In the next few weeks I will be doing more testing with Mark and Ferney and will explore different tools, including testing out a Raspberry Pi Drone that Mark has been working on and determining whether it could be suitable for doing surveys. The people at Sidos have also been helpful in giving me ideas for gathering survey data remotely. I definitely appreciate this community and can't wait to share what I have learned!