I live on the beautiful northern coast of California, and I often fly over water to get scenic photos, whales and so forth. I know I'm taking a big risk every time. I have DJI Refresh still active on my P4A+, but using it requires recovering the crashed or dunked drone to return to them. I know there are little water activated marker float kits originally developed for fishing gear recovery. Unfortunately it requires a minimum depth of water to activate, and it has a fishing line tethering a small marker buoy to the drone that sets a maximum depth that it is useful for. I think the useful range of depth it would work for is a minimum of 4-5 ft. of water, and a maximum of 20-30 ft. The marker float is tiny, and far too small to raise the drone.
So what I envision is a water-activated bladder, such as a mylar balloon, that could inflate and bring the crashed drone to the surface, and make it highly visible. It seems that this could be put into a small pack that could attach to the drone and that would weigh only about an ounce or so. A mixture of dry acid powder and baking soda would produce CO2 gas when water wets it. The trick would be how to keep the active ingredients perfectly dry until needed, yet allow water to quickly reach them and inflate the float bladder when the drone falls into the water.
Something like this would be far more compact and lightweight, and cause far less aerodynamic problems than the currently offered foam float and pontoon rigs that are available.
If anybody wants to run with this idea, be my guest. I could be one of your first customers. Discussion is encouraged.
So what I envision is a water-activated bladder, such as a mylar balloon, that could inflate and bring the crashed drone to the surface, and make it highly visible. It seems that this could be put into a small pack that could attach to the drone and that would weigh only about an ounce or so. A mixture of dry acid powder and baking soda would produce CO2 gas when water wets it. The trick would be how to keep the active ingredients perfectly dry until needed, yet allow water to quickly reach them and inflate the float bladder when the drone falls into the water.
Something like this would be far more compact and lightweight, and cause far less aerodynamic problems than the currently offered foam float and pontoon rigs that are available.
If anybody wants to run with this idea, be my guest. I could be one of your first customers. Discussion is encouraged.