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A genius dad invented something to make dad life easier: a flying, camera-equipped quadrocopter that could follow his kids to the school bus stop. That’s right, a personal drone for his kids. Genius, I say. Genius!
Paul Wallich, the guy who cooked up the flying drone, used to walk his grade school son 400 metres down a hill to the bus stop. But he was always curious to make a drone with a camera follow his son so he could watch the trip from his computer. So he did it. And it’s a lot easier than you think.
Wallich simply bought a quadrocopter kit and attached a smartphone with a video-chatting app enabled. The tricky part was to have the drone follow his kid. Wallich came up with a smart solution:
The hard part was getting it to locate and track its quarry. After looking into long-distance RFID systems, I decided to go with a GPS beacon instead. Reading an RFID tag from meters rather than centimeters takes more amplification and a fancier antenna than I was willing to have my quadcopter carry. And the open-source flight software already has a “follow-me” mode that will keep the copter an arbitrary distance from a GPS position delivered by radio.
So Wallich made a beacon to fit inside his son’s backpack. He chose a RF modem to send out GPS signals to the copter and bam, flying drone kid walker. Well, it’s not as simple as that. Battery life is an issue and so is wind but it’s pretty awesome to imagine a kid having a homemade quadrocopter trail him on his walk to school. Read more about Paul Wallich’s great DIY parenting skills at IEEE. [IEEE via Geekosystem]
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then they follow you to work…then home…next thing you know…..BIG ROBOY BROTHER OVERLORD IS WATCHING aarrrrggghhhh
1. His son is now a walking beacon to anyone who wants to follow him.
2. If someone attacks his son/he’s hit by a car etc, he gets to watch his child get injured and still not be close enough to do anything about it, then spend years thinking that if only he hadn’t been so lazy he could have done something.
Genius, eh?
“And it’s a lot easier than you think.”
Then I suggest he may not be a genius. Maybe the heading should read ‘Lazy Father Makes Quadrocopter to Walk Neglected Child to the Bus Stop’ – that has more snap.
This isn’t genius..it’s stupid and idiotic.
What a fucking lazy piece of shit who can’t even be arsed walking did children to school.
400m?!?!
What a piece of shit
I think this is genius, dunno about other people
Lazy bastard.
Perhaps it’s more clever than first appears – wrong uns might be more interested in nabbing the drone than the kid.
Stick a paintball gun on it and scare the blighters away!
I would say madness more than genius, time to cut the purse strings or start taking anti-anxiety medication.
Clever from a technical standpoint.
Clever from a parenting standpoint? Not so much.
Im not sure the authorities would be too understanding if something happened and you explained you though it was ok because you built a drone to watch your child.
What a tit