Ask HN: Anyone making money with drones?

I am not. However, I know several people in agtech who have stable businesses.

None of the startups are using off-the-shelf photography drones though. Those drones are nice if you've got a lot of money and need a lot of otherwise-impossible dolly and helicopter shots.

Consider that a small drone with a 7m battery life and a rasppi core capable of LOS operation within a mile of base station can cost less than $250/unit. For one that can carry more weight with similar characteristics? $500.

Medium size drones can spot-spray crops, survey property, and provide survey overviews for a fraction of the cost of competing solutions once the software has been amortized. If your operators are experts or trained, the cost goes down further.

For me, I use recreational fpv rigs on high performance-to-weight drones to race and freestyle. It's amazing and it's inexpensive and it's fun.

Those I met doing surveying had a GIS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_information_system) consulting business first and knew how to bid on local government contracts. The drone is just another tool, the customers pay for the analysis/report.

During a sports event (24h race) one person created a DVD and sold it later on. I can't tell if he made profit. In my opinion there is more money in photographing individual participants (cyclists in this case).

http://www.flyflock.io/ sells insurance to drone owners. Depending on country you have to have one once do fly them commercially.

I know a real estate guy who hires drone pilots to shoot videos of McMansions. Most of those drone guys are hobbyist and business is not scalable though. Could be fun way to checkout different neighborhoods and pay for expensive hobby.

Here in the US Virgin Islands two of my friends are attempting to monetize drone videos/content creation along with underwater camera/go pro footage for charter boats, real estate, and other businesses. With the tourist industry, it's a viable business here.

They've got some cool content. They just did a shoot with a charter that came out really well, it's only on FB right now though.

Here's their youtube link if your interested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2Cr2QDdHtA

> Anyone here started a drone company?

Don't you need some sort of aviation license ("Remote Pilot Certificate") to operate it in the States these days (assuming you are in US) if you are doing it for commercial purposes ?

Source: https://www.faa.gov/uas/faqs/#ffr

> Option #2. Fly under the FAA's Small UAS Rule (14 CFR part 107). Under this rule, operators must:

> Register their UAS with the FAA as a "non-modeler".

> Obtain an FAA Remote Pilot Certificate

I know a guy who makes money by training hawks to fetch drones who try to spy events featuring VIP ppl in Greece.

Isn't that something or what?

He said that the hawks figured that in order to avoid getting hurt, happened a few times, they need to attack the drones from under. A guy asked if the drones were moving too fast and he said that the ones he had to deal with, were considerably slower than eagles plus most of them are floating still not running around.

I am an advisor for http://www.dronesbench.com from Italy, an electro-mechanical testing bench for consumer drones entering the market worldwide in September. We hope to have a drone certification market soon in order to start running workshops in a scalable manner. Also engaging with IEEE and EASA for safety legislation to come while promoting our concise drone efficiency parameter for drone's plate. We will see.

Me and my lady are starting up a business and we're still learning, getting some experience, and haven't had a client yet, but we're working with a real estate agent and have gotten a few business cards from others who are interested.

Basically, we are taking 360 photos of inside the house and an aerial views outside the house in hopes to help real estate agents sell. Our basic package includes just the 360 video, while our deluxe package offers the whole deal including aerial views of the house and the roof and the entire neighborhood.