Completely awesome. I was curious so I looked up the eBee price. $12,000 - too steep for a hobbyist, but I'm sure that price will come down over time as drones become more widespread.
Not sure what you get for $12k, but know that it is possible to build an autonomous airplane, and a gopro for much less than that. Here's a friend's video for evidence:
You can do it for less than that, even. A Naza M flight controller costs $200 (http://www.uavproducts.com/product.php?id_product=21), and that's one of the more expensive controllers out there. The remainder of the components for a flying wing would run you $80-$120. You could replace the Naza M with a multiwii controller and write your own flight control program for much less. These are multicopter components but there are analogous components for gliders and planes. Then there's the GoPro, a used one of which might cost $150. I guess you can do this for an all-in price of less than $600.
$600.00 is a pretty solid estimate for a DIY, autonomous, man-packable flying wing with relatively robust performance.
I've done it for around $1100, excluding the cost of a laptop to run some open source flight control software, but ~$600 of that was a 9-channel RX/TX controller setup. Overkill unless you're doing some really crazy stuff.
It's not all sunshine and rainbows, though. I've worked closely with scientists that have had problems with SenseFly units in the field, despite the high level of polish in the product. I've flown similar sized UAVs to the eBee (all self constructed) in great environmental conditions (low altitude ASL, favorable wind conditions, etc.) and had great success. However, get these things in less hospitable environments, and things go sideways real fast. So, while Joe Everyman is getting closer and closer to just throwing a small UAV in the air and having it work, we're still quite a ways from guaranteed success out of these things.
Observation: I've never had good luck using a GoPro for mapping tasks. My suspicion was the rolling shutter, but perhaps I was just doing it wrong.
> Overkill unless you're doing some really crazy stuff.
Especially considering you can buy a 9XR + FrSky module for like $130 nowadays. This wasn't always the case though -- Rx/Tx solutions have become a lot less expensive since 2008 or so, as I understand.
I'd agree that you'd easily be able to replicate 95% of what they've done for under $600 (so long as you don't count the time you'd spend researching/building/learning - FWIW, I wouldn't sell one of these hypothetical $600 autonomous camera planes to someone else for less than a few grand - my time, warranty, and liability would easily add up to that.)
Honestly I would strongly recommend you avoid flying these without umbrella coverage. Odds of something bad happening are pretty low, but the financial costs could be catastrophic if it did. Read your umbrella policy to make sure it covers this type of loss as well (mine doesn't cover aircraft liability, but it defines aircraft in such a way that anything too small to carry a passenger is excluded, and thus covered).
It's definitely worth considering – but for me with that toy, I've considered and chosen to accept and ignore any theoretical "catastrophic" consequences, much the same as I ignore the risks of dying in a car accident on the way to the park to fly it.
The plane in that video weighs 128g (~4.5oz) thats ~20% lighter than a baseball (or cricket ball) and ~30% lighter than a frisbee. Sure, it's got a powered spinning propeller on the front, but it's pretty low powered (sub 6A draw at 7.2V - 45W tops) and more importantly I've got _much_ more control of it than people throwing balls or frisbees have - at least once they've left their hands.
I'm happy enough to accept the personal risk of flying this "toy" with the same sort of common sense rules that I'd use if chucking a ball or frisbee around with friends. Don't be reckless, don't "buzz" people, try to be obviously taking safety into account. Yeah, there's some risk - but a little bit of self control can easily reduce that risk to near-enough-to-zero (and I'm prepared if required to throw myself on the mercy of a court and argue that I'd considered and taken prudent precautions to avoid an accident in the case of a truly tragic incident.)
A bigger/heavier/more-powerful plane like the one in the OP would affect my decisions about when/where were sensible places to fly - but keep in mind the eBee in the article only weight "less than 700g" - that's less than 50% more than a football. Personally, I suspect there'd be a lot of times/places where other people occasionally kick footballs around that I'd happily fly a one of them - not without a little extra caution, but given suitable circumstances I'd fly a ~700g eBee on the same cricket ground as that video of my Mini Swift.
market segmentation. They used the "industrial" keyword. So it could have been anything between $300 for Parrot and $35K (airframe only, the whole system is $200K+) for Raven.
Man that's expensive. You could probably build something similar on a quadrocopter base for a tenth of that. Not a lot to the thing when you look at it.
A multi-rotor will ccurrently only give you 10-15 mins flight time with a payload. There are cheaper options (than the OP) that are also more practical.
