Video Of The Week: Using Drones To Track Construction Projects

One of the most popular use cases for our portfolio company Dronebase is tracking construction job sites.

This video from their YouTube page gives you a sense of why that is valuable to construction managers and their clients.

We will return to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow 🙂

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Comments (Archived):

  1. JLM

    .An obvious use case that makes perfect sense. Can I pay a little more and get rid of the elevator music?JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    1. LE

      Agree a voice over would actually be much better

      1. Darijan Sabor Le Treuit

        It’s easy if you try.. Ideal for students and stay at home moms.. Quick access, easy platform, best online support..Make anywhere between $5k and $20k a month depending on how much effort you put into itWeb Addresson profile page75

  2. gregorylent

    loving those new laser drone shooters boeing just announced .. when the consumer models come out, i want stock in that company ..

    1. creative group

      Boeing stock isn’t that attractive even with the drone segment. The lost of contracts from the Ex-Im Bank not being reauthorized has been major with revising future forecasts. The stock is at $133 down from 52 week high of $152.Definitely would be a great entry point at $100 or lower. Unlikely to happen.

      1. Richard

        Why does Boeing need the help of the export import bank? In many ways we are no different than China.

        1. creative group

          RW:why make the attempt to kill the messenger. The report of Boeing threatening to move overseas if the Export Import Bank isn’t reauthorized is reported via marketwatch not our imagination. You didn’t get that report? We will assist you. A simple Google would have accomplished that.http://www.marketwatch.com/

          1. Richard

            I was a material scientist for these guys. They are notorious for crying wolf.

          2. creative group

            RW:thanks for occupational background that provides better perspective. You then know corporations are in business to make money especially when stakeholders are public.

  3. William Mougayar

    Makes sense they are marketing the solutions & benefits, not the drones. Curious, do the local drone pilots own their drones or Dronebase does?

    1. JamesHRH

      Totally agree.

    2. fredwilson

      the pilots own their drones

    1. creative group

      Twain Twain:you are so intellectually gifted why in the world does that statement of can’t wait to see Apple’s New complex appear more like a fan girl. Just never would envision this smart person as an evangelical Apple fan. Still can see through the lost of the visionary Steve Jobs and the outpouring of affection for a leader as told by his closest executives as a tough (asshole) person to deal with.The rock star effect. Rock Stars become more popular in death than alive and people buy into their music, products. (Elvis, Michael Jackson, etc. The products are overpriced and behind competitors in most segments.The Apple watch requires the Apple phone to use. Not a functional watch and the sales numbers bear it out. Not a Apple basher but a realist not understanding the evangelical following.

      1. Richard

        Love how people minimize apple, Apple is the most important company, the most important brand, the greatest wealth creator, over the last 15 years.

        1. Twain Twain

          Rich — see the slide above ‘Successful companies like Apple start from the why’.Love them or hate them, Apple does hardware and software and talent integration like few other companies.If we look at that Pyramid of Technology, Apple’s products tend to fall into the Levels 5-7 because of their user design and engineering knowhow.

          1. Richard

            Salmon Steak

          2. Twain Twain

            Cheers! Funnily enough, I didn’t chance upon Sinek’s work until 2014.Years ago, my curiosity was sparked re. understanding, “WHY we buy.” At university I learnt economics for the first time — before that, my subjects were mostly sciences, Comp Sci, languages, art and geography.What I noticed was that not a single economics model explained WHY something happens with the clarity, precision, comprehensiveness and coherence I like.Sure, the economists and the marketers have plenty of models. Everything from Smith’s consumer rent model to the Porter-BCG matrix on cash cow-star-problemchild-dog to Nassim Taleb’s black+white swans.The psychologists have plenty of models applied in measuring human behavior too. Everything from Rensis Likert which underpins 1-5 star market research surveys through to Positive-Negative Affect Schedules used by Facebook’s data science modeling team in that emotion study they did on News Feeds.However, without exception, ALL of them are missing a key set of input variables.The variables that go into the models are all objective and quantifiable:* Price for price elasticity and its relationships in wages, employment and spending.* Interest rates which impacts rates of return, savings and the liquidity of money.* Etc.Regardless of whether it’s the Chicago School (@pointsandfigures), the Austrian school, Nash’s game theory, the Friedman U.S. capitalist vs Maoist communist…ALL of them are missing these key variables and the system tools to process these variables.Coincidentally, these key variables and the system tools are also needed in Machine Intelligence to solve the Natural Language problem.As Da Vinci said, “Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects with everything else.”So I did and built a system for better understanding, “WHY?”

          3. Richard

            I agree. This is why I think the Chinese will again begin to innovate. For too long, the Chinese did not have its version of the American Dream. This is changing.

          4. creative group

            RW:don’t know what space you occupy but the Chinese do so much manipulation in every facet of markets, exports, duplication (not innovation) , etc it is surprising you are not aware any innovation is drowned out by the aforementioned.

          5. Richard

            Think the Americans didn’t steal technology from the Brits in 1800s? It is what the little guy does.Google Andrew Mitchell and see how he was caught by the Brits smuggling early industrial machine drawings out of UK.

          6. Twain Twain

            Actually, the Chinese are inventors and explorers before they are copiers.It’s possible Admiral Zheng He, whose fleets roamed the oceans between 1405 and 1435, discovered the Americas before Columbus:* http://www.economist.com/no…The social networks, including Facebook, all COPIED Chinese social networks revenue models (virtual goods etc):Chinas 51.com first social network in the world to open up payment API* http://techcrunch.com/2009/…* http://venturebeat.com/2009

          7. Twain Twain

            The Chinese are already innovating. Alibaba had the biggest IPO and is showing leadership on key issues before Silicon Valley companies.June 2014: Alibaba says that 33% of its partners are women. CFO, COO of logistics business, Chief Customer Officer, Head of Human Resources are all women.* http://money.cnn.com/2014/0…May 2015: Jack Ma shares “Women are Alibaba’s secret sauce” and are already 40% of their workforce.August 2015: Twitter with Jack Dorsey as interim CEO says it will increase female employees to 35% in 2016……and get criticized for this move to increase inclusion:* http://techcrunch.com/2015/…The Chinese are leading in innovation.Who’s the Head of Stanford’s AI Lab?A CHINESE WOMAN, Dr Fei-Fei Li.

        2. Michael Elling

          Apple’s founder understood how to disrupt industries. And he did it to at least 3 (computers, music, communications), but was stymied from doing it a 4th time (education) before his unfortunate and tragic demise. Who is there that knows how to disrupt markets today? That’s the important question to ask about Apple in the coming decade.

      2. Twain Twain

        Well, I don’t own an Apple Watch or an iPod so am not an evangelical Apple fan.I am, though, a fan of my Chinese heritage, Da Vinci and applying the business & tech wisdoms learnt from others.

        1. Richard

          chinese innovation had been dormant since the invention of paper. It is awakening.

          1. Twain Twain

            The most interesting Machine Intelligence is being undertaken by Chinese researchers:(1.) Baidu Breakthrough In Speech Recognition, Claiming To Top Google And Apple* http://www.forbes.com/sites…(2.) Chinese Machine Intelligence beats humans in IQ test language reasoning:* http://www.technologyreview…The Natural Language problem is the hardest problem to solve in Machine Intelligence.It’s likely it will be bilingual English-Chinese person(s) who make the breakthrough.

          2. Richard

            Chinese have made lots of contributions in the sciences, If you don’t know the population genetics work of Ci Ci Li check it out

          3. Dave W Baldwin

            Thanks for the Baidu update. Did a presentation showing an example of Accelerating Returns using Ng’s work in improving the accuracy and price point in doing “Feature Recognition” back in Jan., 2014 along with telling them the importance of what is to come with parallel. Nuance has a big pie to go after.

          4. JLM

            .They had a good run with gunpowder, no?Seems to have caught on.The Donald also seems to have become a little fixated on that wall thingy they built.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          5. Twain Twain

            How the drones, Tom Toms and we navigate = Chinese compass.Someone Chinese may yet invent the compass for data…”May we live in interesting times,” say modern-day Chinese inventors.Haha (哈哈)。

          6. JLM

            .There are at least five Chinas and two umbrellas:1. The capitalist China within 100 miles of the coast and Hong Kong;2. The China of Beijing — run by the old guys — which still lusts after Taiwan and remembers Mao, the Korean War, the Great Wall and the Hong Kong lease;3. The hinterlands still, in many instances, inaccessible by road but accessible by water and air. The land of the big scale civil engineering projects like hydro and dams and lakes. Where people work to exist and where food is still a problem.4. The 200+ cities of more than a million citizens each who are tryng to figure out how to get an agrarian society to live in cities; and,5. The cultural deserts and oasis-es, such as the Uyghurs, who are openly at war with Beijing and who Beijing thinks nothing of literally slaughtering.This is covered by the Communist Party, a useless ideology which cannot bring in the crops, and its military regime; and, technology which is moving in a constantly different direction.China is going to be very interesting. There is no real “China.”JLMwwww.themusingsofthebigredc…

          7. Twain Twain

            Well, “real” China is 55+ minorities just as “real” America is.

          8. JLM

            .China is a magical country and its rich culture and ancient history is much richer than the US.Plus they invented gunpowder.We are a very young nation and while we may preach a bit of diversity, we are really quite similar.Not so China. China is magic. Nothing wrong with that and much right with it.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          9. awaldstein

            Easy to say unless you are a Tibetan national.Should let you play that out against my friend Dhugal who fled as a teenager and whose parents have been persecuted for 30 years because of it.Magic with a real ugly underbelly.

          10. JLM

            .There is good magic and there is Black Magic.You will get no argument from me on the Chinese being practitioners of Black Magic.The Beijing leadership is ruthless and still enmired in the shadow of Mao. They still remember the Japanese in WWII, Nanking, the Long March, Korea, the leasing of Hong Kong and violence.Tiannamen Square was only a problem because of the PR — China is still a country that believes “tanks in the streets” and “gutters flowing with blood” are on the menu.The true China is also the relentless industrial espionage and constant hacking and the plans to knock down our satellites in the first hour of the next war — which has, arguably, already begun.Tell your friend, he will get no argument from me. Bit of realpolitik but no disagreement as to the nature of the Beijing crowd.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          11. awaldstein

            Nicely said.

          12. LE

            Once again you are the history guy but I think “China” is similar in a way to what our country was at the founding simplistically. That is the cream of the crop ended up being able to take advantage of what Nixon finally brought while the rest of the country is still stuck and very well might never get to the promised land. Just like in this country we have the haves and the have nots and some of those have nots are never going to be aspiring to move to Brooklyn or Austin. They will just stay where they are and drink beer or moonshine or smoke weed “Island Time”. Perphaps have more babies. And after all it wasn’t even just Nixon but the fact that the cream of the Chinese crop was motivated enough to come to this country and attend Harvard or UT and then go back and do the nasty (just like the guy running the place now did). Just like other people have done with the US for many years since our founding. People who stayed put had it good, people who left Europe had both shitty conditions and were motivated to actually get on a boat and come here. Why I think so highly of Asians I only see the ones that made it here not the ones back home. (Ditto for people from India all Doctors and engineers where I live..)So this idea that China, the entire country, will be transformed is far fetched. The chance of selling to China is great but it’s not the entire country or near it. It’s the normal bell curve of intelligence and motivation. (Which given a billion on the input is still pretty large obviously.)Lastly, the communist thing might be good actually. Keeps people in line just like with Russia in this generation the people simply aren’t able to be us because they haven’t been us and it’s not built into their being. They need a strong corrupt leader! Economically the suffering with so many people might actually be, gasp, a necessary evil!

          13. JLM

            >I agree more with you than you do with yourself in regard to the general nature of people.The lazy nature of people is one of the phenomenon of The Donald — the people truly do want a powerful leader who knows what he is doing to be a beneficent leader.One area I would highlight is this — once you’ve been to Paris, it’s pretty hard to get people to be content on the farm.One of my favorite sayings is: “Once you become a pickle, you can never go back to being a cucumber.”In that regard, a little freedom is quite addictive.While our country is theoretically “free” we are, in fact, constrained by our own self-imposed bindings. I used to get offered jobs as CEO of public real estate companies all the time when I got out of the real estate business. They were all HQed in NYC. I wan’t going to leave Austin. So, I was really a prisoner of my own making.China is like a country with different parts of it living in different centuries. They won’t all catch up — some won’t want to catch up — at the same time but there is going to be massive movement.If we play it right, the Chinese could become one of our strongest allies. We would have to be much, much smarter than we have been recently.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          14. LE

            I wan’t going to leave Austin. So, I was really a prisoner of my own making..So much truth to that. What many young people don’t understand. Particularly how if things are “good enough” or even “pretty nice” you have less of a motivation to make a change. Had you been located in a less attractive city than Austin, you very well might have jumped to NYC. Also possible that like me you were biased against NYC simply because you were exposed to the NYC of the “Ford to City: Drop Dead” days like I was. All this is analog stuff. Which is why you always have to take someone’s history with a grain of salt. There are so many factors that go into someone’s decision to do anything that a story can be spun any way someone wants to their purpose.My niece is a freshman at University of Colorado. She was deciding between that and Drexel. I said to her and her mother “for what you are doing go to University of Colorado simply a nicer place to be”. She didn’t ask my opinion but I forced it on both of them. She is thrilled now according to the first letter we just got. Impossible to believe she would be raving about West Philadelphia (Penn is nice but Drexel is the red headed pimply thing in University City not to mention some other factors going against it). So if my niece ever gets anywhere no doubt she won’t remember why she went where she went. Will be left out of any story.With respect to Donald the media is always playing the “star” card as far as his reason for drawing crowds and being ahead in the polls. That for sure got him into the game. But doesn’t explain the legs (for now at least) All you have to do is listen to one of his speeches or even his press conferences to know why people want to hear what he says. He is an interesting engaging speaker unlike Bush, Hillary and Carly. They all seem boring. Same reason people want to hear Louis CK or any number of people who have charisma and draw people in. It’s crystal clear to me the appeal (and I called it first I will add). Same reason certain actors are cast in roles. It’s not the words really. It’s the delivery of the words. Take Chris Matthews. An interesting delivery and voice words less important. Good cadence and all of those other vocal descriptors.I mean shit I watched a Hillary rally. She was reading from notes why couldn’t even get an acting job playing a politician.Lastly the additional problem that the other politicians have is that they sound a great deal more boring and like a politician since Donald came along with his entertaining spiel. That is really what is going on here. The contrast principle. Perhaps if the red headed pimply was the only girl you might settle and find her attractive. But once she is placed next to [insert your favorite girl here] all the sudden you find a great deal more fault and have much more discontent.

          15. Michael Elling

            Your analysis doesn’t account for how a developing market/country is impacted by advanced wireless/fiber networks and low-cost smartphones/tablets for all; aka universal broadband. After all we’re less than a decade into the smartphone revolution. We have not had even close to competitive markets in the US for 15 years and have no centralized planning to roll-out low-cost networks in today’s duopoly marketplace. As a result, the cost of bandwidth in the US is 100x higher than it should be. The Chinese are committed to making broadband universally cheap and accessible. This will go a long way for 2-way HD video collaboration, societal mobility, and internet of things (aka automation and sensors). Investment in ubiquitous broadband can provide a very, very low-cost digital bridge to many of the divides to which you and JLM refer. It’s certainly not the only solution, but neither is its potential fully understood or appreciated in most forecasts.

        2. creative group

          Twain Twain:thanks for the clarification.Don’t hate or dislike Apple just don’t understand the reason smart people over pay for products not the best in various segments. Apple optical technology is the best and that is a fact. But saying altogether Apple products are innovative and not improvements of products that have already been on the market is evangelical verses based upon facts. Fact if Apple didn’t acquire Next Apple’s core product OS X wouldn’t exist in the same form. We can highlight the facts of existing products only made better and repackaged with a different name but people who are evangelical will dismiss facts with emotion. We don’t dislike success which is what Apple’s has become. We just want the facts Ma’am. (Dragnet)

      3. JamesHRH

        Apple understands that customers matter more than products.Being right but unadopted = fail.Being better but unadopted = fail.Being adopted = success.

    2. Michael Elling

      Best indicator of the top for a company’s or civilization’s influence is when they build monuments to themselves.

  4. awaldstein

    My niece is getting married and considering getting her a drone video as a present. If I do I guess I’ll be one of the people in it.

    1. JamesHRH

      You are getting her someone to shoot the wedding with a drone, not a video of a drone, right A?

  5. PeterisP

    I’m probably too far from the construction industry to understand this – no, it’s not entirely obvious why it’s valuable to construction managers; what is it?The video is pretty and might be used to pacify clients as in “see, some progress is happening”, but does that video give some some neccessary information to a construction manager that they are unable to see on site from the ground? Or it is much cheaper than an on-site visit in cases where the details are not important and a “birds eye” overview is enough?

    1. JLM

      .If you are building a high rise office building — $100MM undertaking — in Austin by God Texas and your partners are in London and your investors are in Hong Kong and you are in the South of France — you might like to do this every week or so.You could also use it to update prospective tenants as to the state of affairs. It would be a great marketing hook.It might have be a useful tool to discuss things with the architect, structural engineer, contractor, building officials.I would have done it weekly back in the day when I was building high rise office buildings.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

      1. Richard

        Bragging Rights

        1. JamesHRH

          JLM is like Larry Bird asking who was taking home the second place money at the first NBA All Star Game 3 Point Contest….say it and lose, you are a blowhard a$$hole….say it and win, Larry Legend.He’s lived a life.

          1. Richard

            Not Jim! The LPs!!!

          2. JLM

            .Over stated a bit perhaps but know this — he’s not done yet.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

      2. Twain Twain

        You’re in the South of France whilst project’s underway in Austin?!!!I want this job!!! Are we talking Montpellier, Marseilles or Nice? Or Monte Carlo — haha.

        1. JLM

          .You go to Cap d’Antibe. You stay at Hotel du Cap. You stay in the same room as Jackie and John Kennedy. You eat at the Eden Roc. You swim in the sea. You sun bathe naked at the cabanas on the rocks. You play at the Casino in Cannes. You go to bed at 4. You get up at noon. You jog and then eat scrambled eggs.You thank God for being born.But not until the project is at cash flow breakeven.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          1. Twain Twain

            Note to self: when breakeven => go be JLM for a day at Hotel du Cap.

          2. JLM

            .You deserve at least a month.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

  6. pointsnfigures

    https://www.youtube.com/wat… Huge game changer in rural America. Wait until ground sensors are implanted into fields and drones are guided by them, read them, and transmit information.

    1. Dave W Baldwin

      I can tell you the mind set of a lot of sales guys working the rural market is they’re dealing with dumb rednecks and are not doing the needed service work whatsoever. An opportunity awaits the company selling/delivering drones with all of the bases covered.

  7. Matt Kruza

    I think construction / surveying is an obvious use case, but what might be the next five use cases that have economic purpose. (i don’t count joy flying or videoing a wedding as productive economic purpose. I don’t think they are “bad”, but merely entertainment). I struggle to literally think of five others that could be even 100 million segments in aggregate nationally, and usually i am pretty creative. I welcome some additional brain power help on this one!

    1. pointsnfigures

      Agriculture, see the vid I posted. Oil drilling/pipeline, remote wells and prohibitive climates. Police/Fire; those are three off the top of my head.

      1. Matt Kruza

        How so on agriculture? I agree with the others. You meaning as like crop duster replacements.. or just for visual purposes?

    2. JLM

      .Wilderness public emergencies, ranching (checking fences, coyotes, herd location, water in ponds), agriculture (crop development, soil moisture content), crowd control and recognition (riots and where the rioters are dispersing to, license recognition), military uses, runway on the ground air traffic control, traffic reporting and control, sports events, flood analysis (before, during, after), insurance damage documentation for insurance companies, live streaming of events of all types, radioactive environment intervention, fish finding at sea in coastal waters.Reporting on The Donald.Put that lazy mind to work.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

      1. Matt Kruza

        Good list, just not sure how big those markets are. Guess i should have clarified that i am mostly questioning the economic case for most of those (ie is there a big enough pain point). Like take sports events and other live streaming. I went to a high school sporting event last night (my alma mater) and yeah i guess you could live stream, but the economics are not really compelling. Basically major concerts, major sports (big d1 and pros) already have superior technology / systems to get high quality experiences which people will pay for. I don’t think drones will ever be good enough to replace (now robots / tech / ai that could direct the other existing camera infrastructure i could see etc)

        1. JLM

          .You should re-consider your views on the sports issue. While I did mention live streaming even archived sports are a huge market.The subdivision of info in sports — at the core of silo opportunities like Bleacher Report which was a silo from within ESPN which made hundreds of millions for its founder when he sold — is a huge market.The Longhorn Network is another example.Who doesn’t want to watch Slippery Rock’s big triumph?I could watch Texas v Arkansas 1977 at least 80 more times before I die.This is a huge opportunity.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          1. Salt Shaker

            Hate to correct “the Master,” but B/R was never part of ESPN. VC funded start-up acquired by Turner. They overpaid but saw the potential. Turned into a good site once they added quality journalists.

          2. JLM

            .The founders worked at ESPN and took the idea to their bosses who said, “No.”I could have explained that better.The idea behind Bleacher Report was very simple — 186 teams accounted for 80-85% of all the traffic on ESPN, so why not go big by going small?The BR approach was constant sampling — which articles are generating the most traffic? When they knew this, they got freelancers to give them more copy instantly on the trending subject.Same crew started Bustle.com which already exceeds the NYT in daily viewership in less than 2 years.It is a very informed and analytical publishing play in two different areas of publishing.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        2. JamesHRH

          Matt – now DIII can have the same video experience for their fans, @ 1/100 the cost. That’s a big market – 100’s of small college teams, third division soccer teams in Europe, High schools,……its rabbits not whales.

          1. Michael Elling

            All of this is going to require cheap bandwidth; particularly on the upstream side.

      2. Michael Elling

        So we have a motorcycle problem in Harlem, just as most inner cities in America. The police have told me there is nothing they can do, since chases don’t work and the drivers evade road blocks. Why not equip patrol cars with the capability to operate 1 or 2 drones which can fly ahead of the vehicle and be operated by the non-driving officer? The motorcyclist will have a hard time detecting that she is being followed and the patrol car can follow her until she has stopped for gas or to make a drop or go home. Obviously this can be applied to all situations with the possibility of high-speed chases.

        1. JLM

          .Perfect use case!Of course, there is also the airplane cable at neck height across the street between two trees solution? No?JLMwww.themusingofthebigredcar…

          1. Michael Elling

            Not good for (bi)cyclists like myself and SUVs or pickup trucks.

    3. JamesHRH

      Security

  8. LE

    I think the video is a step in the right marketing direction.Execution wise however it falls short in terms of really offering the type of benefits that would get someone managing a project to use dronebase or drones other than exposing them to the fact that drones are available for doing this type of thing … which they probably already know. Or the dronebase name. It isn’t showing a particular project over time and essentially the videos have little detail in them so all you have is an overview of multiple unrelated projects. Kind of like a c suite thing that ends up in a movie about construction rather than IRL. Impossible to believe that anyone in construction will see anything other than “pictures of what I am doing by air” and feel this is useful (other than for marketing or impressing someone I guess). Not enough detail really for management purposes.If you are managing a project for sure you want a record of what you are doing (and in fact there are landbased construction cameras that are employed that aren’t that expensive) and having something by air would also be great, agreed. But this video while cute doesn’t show that “over time” aspect so they probably should be shooting some things to that level of detail and keeping them in the can and releasing later on.. As far as “keeping on top of things” perhaps for the guy at the top that is jetting around as an extra step to monitor things but how many of those guys are there out there?In the case of a “JLM” type office tower I would imagine that is already covered by land based cameras which can be setup to record progress over time with the data flowing up the management chain. And no question JLM was onsite practically everyday to check the progress. Let’s face it if you are building a tower in Dubai that is 100 stories or a building in Brooklyn that is 8 stories you better have an excellent handle on what is going better than by using a video to review the progress like this.

  9. Twain Twain

    Every parent should give their 7-9 year old a simple radio-controlled helicopter, by the way. Mine got stuck up trees, mostly.

    1. LE

      I can vouch for the v911 RTF which I own several of which I fly in the outer office. I am not vouching for the vendor in the link btw. In fact 1 of these I bought off of Amazon they shipped just the heli and not the radio and batteries so you have to pay attention and kick the shipment back if they do that obviously.Like the picture you posted you need one with 1 blade at the top (not two) and also 4 channel. The ones that don’t have that are simply to easy. These take a fair amount of abuse. They are for indoor flying. Don’t go outdoors with them even the slightest wind will screw you up. And the trees that you mentioned. Work on hovering first don’t go to flying until you can do the hover. Then hover face in. Then do circles.http://www.amazon.com/Versi…Best to just search amazon for “V911 RTF” and pick a vendor (do Amazon prime or you could wait a month until the chinese boat comes in..)

  10. Rick Mason

    I like drones but I’ve seen local construction projects where a couple of well placed stationary cameras were used to produce some pretty amazing videos.

  11. gary macgregor

    a good example of how tech can help

  12. Vincent

    great building! wtih plant and animal.

  13. Emily Steed

    NPR reported this morning that the FAA is developing an app to allow drone operators to enter an address and then view the regulatory limitations / legal restrictions near the proposed address. Could be fantastic if it works.

  14. LE

    Or the opposite. Oops.

  15. Mario Cantin

    Why the opposite? Enlighten us…

  16. LE

    Quite simply because it can just as easily provide evidence and video proof that you are not in compliance or did not do something right. Just like if I had a video of Charlie’s bread factory and could use it against him if I got sick eating his bread by showing the jury that they didn’t properly clean the bread machine. Or the restaurant kitchen. A picture worth a 1000 words and all of that, right?Keep in mind that on a project there are a million people doing countless things. And all it takes is one person cutting corners (which we can assume is not an unlikely occurrence in construction) to give someone who is your adversary what they need to make a case against you. Why do you think attorney’s tell you not to say anything and/or spend countless hours pouring through company documents? It’s to find some meaningless bit of data that they can use against you. Plus they have to keep the new law graduates busy doing something.Do you know that I have tried to get video cameras placed at an office condo I own units at and the first thing out of the other board members mouths was that then we’d have to make sure to monitor 24×7 or the fact that we weren’t doing so could be used against us if something happened? [1] Of course that is BS to me but shows how people think. And it’s not far fetched. I can see a lawyer playing that one to a jury and having a leg to stand on. (My point though was “probability of a probability, worth the risk” and I actually won that argument against a lawyer who was foaming against it..)[1] And this isn’t far fetched. Years ago I used to run through a parking lot of a building and there was a sign which said “cameras not monitored constantly” or something like that. I assumed the reason was there was precedent legally such that with a visible camera (as opposed to a hidden one) that there should have been implied monitoring. Or that someone could successfully argue that at least (which is all that it takes as you know..)

  17. Mario Cantin

    It seems to me that you are saying the same thing as Charlie, not the opposite:-)

  18. LE

    Wow! And this is exactly why I don’t comment on mobile. When I read this on mobile I actually thought he said the opposite. So that’s why I wrote my reply. Now after your comment I see that he didn’t write what he said he wrote. My mistake.

  19. Mario Cantin

    All makes sense now.Anyway it’s a relevant point.It seems soon everyone is going to have a friggin camera above their front door. We’ll probably have them in our shirt buttons. We even put them out to track the wild life. And we’ll multiply the effect with drones.I like them just as much as he the next gal / guy, but I’m not sure where we’re going with this as a society beyond the use case of making our lives easier.There’s a paranoia/ litigation aspect to it that I too don’t care much for.