I've been thinking about this recently because a lot of discussions around surveillance drones seem to focus on flight time or payload, while the camera often gets much less attention.

In real-world deployments, which imaging features have had the biggest impact on your results?

Some that come to mind are:

• Low-light performance
• HDR for challenging lighting conditions
• Global shutter vs. rolling shutter
• Frame rate
• Optical zoom
• NIR or thermal imaging
• Image stabilization
• AI-ready image quality for detection and tracking

For those working on public safety, perimeter security, infrastructure inspection, or industrial surveillance, what have you found to be the most important?

Has there been a camera feature you initially overlooked but later realized was critical in the field?

I'd love to hear about real deployment experiences and any lessons learned when choosing cameras for surveillance drones.

I just thought I'd give a short summary of why DJI drones have been banned in the USA for those who arent up to speed

Under Section 1709 of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act US congress stated that DJI and Autel would face a US import ban unless a national security agency audits them and clears them of security risk by the dead line 12-23-25

US congress ordered that an agency with appropriate authority should complete the audit.
They purposefully chose not to name, assign or fund any agency like ( FBI,NSA or DHS) to do the job.

DJI begged 5 different federal agencies to audit them so they could clear their name, since no agency was assigned to auditing DJI the deadline has been reached and DJI drones were officially banned 12-23-25

There was no audit that happened by the December deadline despite DJI’s constant attempts to have them audit them.

My thoughts on this are that the US congress was purposely stalling, they avoided auditing DJI on purpose so that DJI could be banned by the deadline. I believe who ever put forth the idea of banning DJI has a direct or indirect financial interest to DJI’s competition ( Skydio)

I have a i5 12 gen process, 16 GB Ram, 512 GB NVME4 SSD

Designated place for Ubuntu is 220 GB

Purpose : want to do my drone simultaion in a 3D environment ( large 3D environment is not necessary)

Method 1 : PX4, DDS agent, ROS 2 Humble, Gazeebo and QG Contron ( it gives a unreal 2 D environment)

Method 2: PX4, Ros 2 , Air simulation and Unreal Engine. ( Give a 3D environment but i have no dedicated graphic card)

Is there any possible way other than these ways to do 3D simulation or any way to do 3D simulation with these method but on my laptop specs?

It being my hobby, I like to record the construction of neighborhoods, new businesses, street improvement projects, mixed-use housing, and the like. Do I need Part 107 to share my footage/photos to Reddit?

It's just plastic housing and speed holes. Gonna see if I can access the firmware so I can fly this bad boy in Freestyle fpv style.

So far I can't even get the computer to recognize that it exists.

Im from the netherlands. I have a a1/a2/a3 license.

In the netherlands we have an app godrone wich shows all the nofly zones etc
Is there a equivalent for norway?

Anything specific i should watch out for so I dont get in trouble with the drone rules in norway?

I would like to learn as much as I can about the small drone commercial service industry. What books, trade magazines, websites, courses, etc should I investigate. All ideas appreciated.

https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=2711&Year=2025

This is insane, and I never heard about it before today. I wonder if the people who are writing this crap actually think anyone will pay these fees. It is now cheaper to just pay the fine for not registering with the state than to actually register.

Is it worth investing in new batteries (probably aftermarket now as originals don't seem to be available) or is this drone old hat now?

Flew it today and it was fine (and fortunately landed safely) but it's going to be expensive to run if the batteries fail at this rate