It’s time to face the facts…drones are here to stay, er…, fly.  At first consumer drones may have seemed like modified toys that someone strapped a camera on to be up to no good.  Their popularity has increased and the misconceptions attached to drones(and their uses!) are falling away.  The truth is drones can be useful tools for fun, photography and recently a new category…home security! This page covers the 5 Best Home Security Drones based on user experience and quality of the model.

For most of us our first experience with drones is in science class discussing bee hives.  Second was probably in nightly news about military unmanned airplane style drones.  Now the word drone takes into account the quad-copter type as well.  They are increasingly popular in hobby shops and online stores.  In fact someone in your neighborhood probably has one already.

These aren’t toys any longer.  Not even close.  The components used in the construction of high performing drones are top notch parts giving the user a rugged, well designed machine that will last for years.  The range of models and performance can vary, as can their price.  What criteria is concerning when purchasing and using a drone?

The main aspects to consider:

• Price
• Operating Range/Distance
• Flight Duration/Charge
• Camera Quality

What is a drone for home security?

The two categories for security drones are military, and consumer. It’s no surprise that there is a world of difference between the two.  They both have the ability to fly and provide video or imagery of surroundings and objects but have some distinctions too.

Military Grade Drones:

The military has an enormous budget to develop and design both airplane style and quad-copter styles. These are professional life saving tools used for wartime and civil protest situations. They have high altitude and long range travel, and long range video equipment.  If you follow the news the last decade or so you may remember how high flying drones were used to eliminate terrorists while they sat outside at a cafe for example.



The price alone is enough to place them out of reach for most consumers. Also the drones for wartime maneuvers tend to be rather large to launch without a runway. Plus the secretive nature of military equipment means they’re not for sale anyway.

Consumer Grade Drones:

The second category is consumer drones. Consumer drones are mostly based in the quad-copter design. This is mainly due to the limitations of flight area in residential settings and the needed maneuverability they offer. Camera equipped RC airplanes have been done in the past but they generally can’t fly low enough for the basic cameras to give decent clarity on far away objects.

The pricing in the consumer category varies greatly. Some are made mostly of affordable plastic with little to no flight automation components meaning you must actively control them at all times. This makes it difficult to operate camera viewing if equipped. While the high performance drones are made of light weight carbon fiber/graphite or aluminum for strength and offer autonomous control such as GPS, letting the user focus more on the surveillance rather than flight of the drone.

Brief History of RC Helicopters

Controllable RC helicopters have been available since circa 1940’s and the credit is given to Arthur M. Young, but not until the early 1970’s did real working kits start becoming available for purchase in magazines and hobby shops.  It was a very specialized sport that took a lot of dedication to get decent results from your RC creations.  Materials and components where of lesser quality than today and not much was available in the beginning.

It was also very difficult to control past RC helicopter models.  It took many hours of practice and patients to get them to fly well.   Here’s a great website for some early-days insight.  

Modern drones offer quick satisfaction for the time invested.  Complete kits come with all the bells and whistles right out of the box making them fun and entertaining without the long build times of older wooden models.  I remember my dad built his first RC airplane of balsa wood and it took a few months to put it all together with the servos and electronics.

Also the advancement of GPS control and things like “return to home” buttons make flying drones today a job you can do with one hand on the controller.  This is far easier than earlier helicopter models.  Plus the range a drone can be controlled is measured in miles today, where older RC kits had a range of a few hundred feet before reception would be lost.

What makes a good surveillance drone?

Time to cover what makes a solid UAS(Unmanned Aircraft System).  The first thing a good home security UAV(Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) like a drone must do is meet your needs.  These needs are the what, where, when and how, and they revolve around the list below.  This is the criteria to pay attention to.

Good security drones have:

• Decent Range/Travel Distance
• Battery Life
• Altitude Ability
• GPS/Autonomous Control
• High Quality Camera
• Quality Construction Components

Any drone worth having around for home security must have a good travel range.  If it needs to survey a large property you don’t want it loosing control or ending transmission of a camera feed after a short distance.  Along with that it needs the ability to climb a considerable altitude.  This is generally under the 500 ft. ceiling actual people carrying aircraft travel at.

Lithium batteries have taken over the industry and make it much more enjoyable to fly a drone with their long discharge times and power efficiency.  Li-Po batteries are a vast improvement over older NI-Cad and Alkaline battery packs.

Drones today have advanced GPS technology built-in which gives them the intelligence to travel to a specific location and stay at that point, either horizontally or vertically.    The functions of “hold altitude” and “return home” are just awesome.  This is what gives the user plenty of freedom to handle a HD camera signal and direct the drone to watch a certain target.   The term “gimbal stabilization system” comes to mind and more on that later in this article.

The latest HD cameras are tiny enough to be installed onto a drone and give amazing results as far as image quality and resolution.  The drones on this page have great cameras with zoom making them ideal for home security and surveillance of your property.

This all adds up to top notch components and high grade quality making a drone an investment into something with value.  It will last for years with proper maintenance and give hours of fun and usefulness to the owner.  You’ll be impressed I’m sure.

 

WHAT ARE THE MAIN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN 2 AXIS AND 3 AXIS GIMBALS?

What is a gimbal?

Beginning with the definition of “gimbals”. This is an adjustable support device that can pivot amazingly well.  It typically has two axis and the joints of it are concentric rings, which have controlling motors.   When the gimbal’s sensors detect motion, the motors counteract the motion to stabilize the joint. Gimbals are able to function really quick.

It’s a high tech selfie stick really.  The mount is used to connect a camera to a moving object and in our case we’re talking drones.  The gimbal give us the ability to record video high in the air, and have the stillness of a camera planted on ground.  It’s actually amazing to see the fluid motion a gimbal has to it.

Basic Movements With Gimbals

Think in terms of up and down, along with side to side.  These are the two common directions a gimbal would naturally have. Three axis means there is a rotating motion, somewhat like an airplane doing a barrel roll.  It’d be like you spinning a basketball where one hand goes up and one hand goes down at the same time.  The directions are called “yaw” and “pitch”.

 

How Else Can I Use A Drone?

If you ever wanted to take long range images or video of the surroundings drones are one way to do this.  You don’t need to schedule an expensive actual helicopter ride scheduled to do aerial photography you could you a drone.  Many are equipped with superior HD cameras that take stunning quality pictures.  Technology has afforded us the benefit of having stability hardware and software making the as still as can be while hovering hundreds of feet above the ground.

Have you ever wanted to inspect you roof for damage?  Or maybe your antenna on the top of a building isn’t working and you wanted to check it out without climb up to the rooftop.  Drones can do that for you.

O.K.  Now it’s time to look at the top 5 Best Home Security Drones for the homeowner.  Yes there are many more for sale, but these 5 tend to rise to the top with reviews and with users, and come from companies dedicated to making great products.

5. Holy Stone HS700 FPV Drone

Number 5 is a drone that still surpasses most drone kits out there.  The Holystone company has made many happy customers with their products.  This one has done just that.  Here is an extremely affordable drone with great features, but it does have it’s limits.  The HS700 offers a beginner experience the sport while having some high end features as well.

This is one of the most affordable drones on this Top 5 Best Home Security Drones list.  It has impressive stats but won’t deflate the bank if your budget is tight.

 

 

4.  Yuneec Typhoon H Pro 4k

Team mode allows for one Personal Ground Station to be bound to the copter and one Personal Ground Station to be bound to the CGO3+ camera simultaneously

 

 

Included in this Ritz Camera Bundle:
♦ 1) Typhoon H 4k Collision Avoidance Hexacopter Yuneec launch bundle
♦ 2) Polaroid 32GB Micro SD With Adapter
♦ 3) Ritz GearTM OTG USB / Micro USB Multi-Function SD / MICRO SD Card Reader / Writer For PC, Tablet and Smartphones
♦ 4) Memory Card Wallet
♦ 5) Ritz Gear Premium 8-IN-1 Cleaning Kit For Cameras, Camcorders, SLRs, Lenses & Filters

In the box, Manufacturer Accessories:
♦ 1) ST16 Personal Ground Station / 16-Channel Transmitter
♦ 2) 5400mAh 4S LiPo Flight Battery (Pack of 2)
♦ 3) AC / DC Flight Battery Charger with Car Adapter
♦ 4) USB Adapter Cord
♦ 5) Neck Strap for ST16 Ground Station
♦ 6) Sun Shade for ST16 Ground Station
♦ 7) 2 x Quick Release Propeller Sets
♦ 8) 16GB microSD Memory Card with Adapter
♦ 9) Bonus Yuneec YUNWZD Wizard Wand for Typhoon Quadcopter
♦ 10) Yuneec YUNTYHBP002 Typhoon H Soft Backpack Expandable Bags

3.  DJI Phantom 3 Professional Quadcopter 4K UHD Video Camera Drone

The next few spots in the top 5 include entries from the Brand DJI.

“SZ DJI Technology Co., Ltd. or Shenzhen DJI Sciences and Technologies Ltd. in full, more popularly known as its trade name DJI, which stands for Da-Jiang Innovations, is a Chinese technology company headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong with manufacturing facilities throughout the world.”

– Wikipedia states this…but none the less, they make some of the most durable and advanced drone on the market.  If you want to experience the full flight control of a go-anywhere drone try DJI.  Imagine controlling a dragonfly…

4k UHD video recording with fully stabilized 3-axis gimbal; Vision Positioning system allows stable flight indoors.  Lightbridge digital streaming allows live viewing of 720p video (full resolution video is simultaneously recorded on the internal microSD card).

Description

Included flight battery and rechargeable remote controller means this system is ready to fly out of the box. Flying this product is restricted within 15 miles radius of the White House.  DJI Pilot app for iOS and Android allows live viewing and complete camera control (phone/tablet sold separately; see DJI’s website for compatible models).  Kindly refer all the Tutorial Videos given in the Image Section on the Catalog before use for the proper training.

The Phantom 3 Professional continues the proud tradition of DJI’s Phantom series and brings several important innovations to the Phantom’s rich feature set. The Phantom 3 Professional carries a fully stabilized 3-axis 4k UHD video camera for smooth, crisp videos and still photos.

To allow you to see what the drone sees, DJI has engineered a new generation of their Lightbridge technology that allows 720p HD digital streaming of live video directly from the drone. You can control the camera and see video in real time as you fly and you can even share the video using the DJI Pilot app’s advanced features.

To aid indoor flying, the Phantom 3 Professional includes an integrated array of optical and ultrasonic sensors call Vision Positioning that allows you to fly precisely indoors without a GPS signal. The Phantom 3 Professional includes all the tried-and-true features you’d expect from a DJI drone, including GPS navigation with auto takeoffs and auto landings, intelligent high power flight battery, a built-in safety database of no fly zones, and a powerful mobile app for your iOS or Android device.

Note: DJI has locked your Phantom from being able to even start the motor if you live within a 15 mile radius of the White House. This encompasses not only D.C. but much of Prince Georges County, Arlington, Fairfax, Silver Spring, Falls Church and Montgomery County. DJI does not warn you of this prior to purchase. Outside of this 15 mile radius, the drone works great, but be aware, that if you bought it and live within the restricted zone, you will not be able to fly it, even on your own property.

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2.  DJI Mavic Pro Platinum FLY MORE COMBO Collapsible Quadcopter Drone Bundle

Fly for miles. From your pocket; Inside the Mavic’s pocket-sized remote controller is DJI’s brand new OcuSync transmission technology, with a range of 4.3mi (7km) and Full HD 1080p video streaming; No bumps and scrapes When you know what’s in front of you, you won’t bump into it. The same is true of the Mavic. Using FlightAutonomy it can see obstacles as far away as 49ft (15m) in front, so that it can fly at up to 22mph (36kph) while avoiding the things it sees.

1. DJI Inspire 2 Quadcopter Cinema Premium Combo Bundle

DJI’s magnesium-aluminum-clad Inspire 2 Quadcopter is a powerful cinematic and photographic tool. Combining the Inspire 2 with the separately available X4S and X5S gimbal cameras yields cinema-grade images, which can be recorded in high bit rates using H.264 and H.265 formats, or, in the case of the X5R, various flavors of Apple ProRes and CinemaDNG raw using the required licenses available from DJI.

 

All the recording functionality is processed by the Inspire 2’s CineCore 2.0 image processing engine. Not all the power to be found in the Inspire 2 is in the recording functionality. DJI beefed up the flight capabilities of the Inspire 2. Able to accelerate to 50 mph in 4 seconds and reach a top speed of 58 mph, the Inspire 2 can follow fast-moving subjects for dramatic sports and action footage.

The flight prowess of the Inspire 2 doesn’t come at the expense of battery life. With the two included LiPo batteries onboard, up to 27 minutes of flight time can be had on a full charge.

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Combo Includes: DJI Inspire 2 Quadcopter (CinemaDNG & Apple ProRes) • Zenmuse X7 Camera/Gimbal • 2x Cendence Remote Controller • 2x CrystalSky 7.85 Inch Monitors • DJI Focus Handwheel 2 with Remote Controller Stand • 8x TB50 Intelligent Flight Batteries (10 Total) • 1550T Propeller Pair (6 Total) • 5x 480GB CineSSD • CineSSD Station

DL-S 16mm F2.8 ND ASPH Lens • DL 24mm F2.8 LS ASPH Lens • DL 35mm F2.8 LS ASPH Lens • DL 50mm F2.8 LS ASPH Lens • 2x MicroUSB Cable • Calibration Plate • 32GB microSD Card & Card Reader • eDigitalUSA Maintenance Kit

Dual-Battery Design ❚ Advanced Obstacle Sensing

Includes CinemaDNG & ProRes Record License • CineCore 2.0 Image Processing • 20.8MP Still Images • Micro 4/3 Sensor and Lens Mount • Up to 5.2K Videoz

 Dual-Battery Design • Advanced Obstacle Sensing • Accelerates to 50 mph in 4 Seconds • 67 mph Maximum Velocity

Honorable Mentions…

These drones have shown promise from users and pack loads of features.  Voice and gesture control are some of the latest advances in UIs.  Longer battery times and more data  storage is also available.  The drone manufacturers have almost made them crash proof.

 

 

Final Thoughts

 

Drones are very sophisticated machines and requires the pilot to be responsible when flying them.  They take a window of practice to skillfully fly around objects and buildings but they offer hours of enjoyment.

If you ever wanted to sevey your property these drones can be great tools for doing that.  The modern electronics and GPS make them easy to teach and get the results you want.

Do some homework and find the drone that is best for you.  Some systems can get very expensive and may be beyond what your looking for.

Home surveillance has developed into many different areas of protection.  Right now drones are becoming more advanced with simpler UIs(User Interfaces) making them more and more affordable and productive.  If you do decide to try droning as a home security feature, you won’t be the first or the last doing it.

Thanks for reading.