I am a local property inspector looking to use a drone to do the roof. I received an AR Drone for last Christmas as kind of a proof of concept to see if this would work for taking still photos and with some modifications I see that it may be possible. Specifically I would need to tilt and zoom in order to do what I would need to do.
The limitations of the AR drone were/are:
1. Limited range w/WiFi, I would lose the drone if I went over the peak of the roof and lost visual of the drone.
2. Would need to control the tilt of the camera from the ground.
3. There was a ground effect (dirty air) associated with bringing the drone down close to the roof so I would need to be able to zoom.
4. With the above limitations I would need a drone that would support a higher payload.
I'm looking for a low cost solution initially and settled on a DJI F550 w/NAZA and a 2 axis gimbal. As others have mentioned above there are open-source options to control low-cost, in my case a Canon, light weight point-and-shoot cameras that you can control via RC, specifically using (
http://www.gentles.ltd.uk/gentwire/multi.htm).
I realize there are much higher-end options that could easily do what I need, but we are talking $5k on up.
Using the RC receiver you can control the tilt, zoom, and trigger release and transmit the video the camera is seeing via FPV. I do not have the final setup working yet but I have downloaded the open-source code to my Canon and confirmed its operation. My 2 axis gimbal is for a GoPro (100 grams) and I may need to upgrade it to support the higher weight of the Canon (140 grams).
The FPV would be displayed on a monitor along with OSD, while the resulting photos would be stored within the camera onboard and retrieved at the end of flight via an SD card.
