Video Saturday: Drone Explorations

I never really got the appeal of civilian drones, until now. Over at Sarracenia forum, Trey shared this above video which shows his test flight of a DJI Phantom 2 Vision+ V3.0 Quadcopter to explore a Sarracenia site near Sumatra, Florida. The level of detail on the camera plus the range makes this a great tool for exploring carnivorous plant locations.

One of the things I immediately thought of was the ability to explore mountainsides for new Pinguicula locations, a project which currently takes a lot of time and effort due to the need to hike up the mountains and carefully explore them so as to avoid falling.

Another possibility is relocating old sites with inexact information. For instance, some members of the NECPS and I were trying to relocate some rare Drosera sites in Maine, but the terrain was too tough for an ordinary hike in. What was really needed was a drone, which could explore for us, and allow us to target the expedition.

My guess is that the $1,200 price tag on the DJI Phantom 2 is going to be a little pricey for most, but I envision that a few intrepid explorers will pick up cheaper alternatives, such as the Syma X5C 4 Channel 2.4GHz RC Explorers Quad Copter w/ Camera. These won't have as long a flight times (7 minutes compared to 25), but are probably useful enough to provide some valuable information to those of us who like to hike out and explore bogs.