Gyan Kalra's "Heatseeker" Is a Low-Cost 3D-Printable Drone Tailored for Search and Rescue Operations
With day and night vision, plus the option of thermal imaging if desired, the Heatseeker can find survivors and lead them to safety.
Maker Gyan Kalra is looking to save some lives — with a 3D-printable search and rescue drone boasting both visible light and infrared night vision modes, plus the option of adding thermal imaging at a later date.
"Search and Rescue drones are a life saving technology for disaster response, as they can provide real-time information, deliver supplies, and help locate survivors in inaccessible areas," Kalra explains by way of background. "Unfortunately, commercial SAR drones are often expensive and hard to repair."
That's where the "Heatseeker" comes in: a 3D-printable, low-cost search and rescue drone that can provide a live video feed in both visible light and infrared spectra. This, Kalra says, could be used to locate survivors of a disaster and guide rescue teams to their location, deliver — lightweight, admittedly — supplies, guide survivors to safety, explore high-risk areas, and conduct aerial scans.
The drone itself is built using off-the-shelf components including a SpeedyBee F405 V4 flight controller, power distribution board, and electronic speed control stack, a HGLRC M100 5883 global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receiver, a SpeedyBee TX800 video transmitter linked to Eachine EV800D googles, a ViFly Finder 2 buzzer, and a SpeedyBee Nano 2.4G transceiver connected to a Radiomaster Pocket ELRS control system.
It's the vision system that makes the Heatseeker an effective search-and-rescue drone though: a Runcam Night Eagle 3v2 camera, which can transmit imagery in full color if the lighting is good or switch to a black-and-white night vision mode under infrared illumination when lighting is poor. The 3D-printed chassis also supports "any camera with a width of 19mm," Kalra explains — and the platform could be expanded to include an infrared thermal imaging sensor, allowing it to peer through smoke and fog to find warm bodies in need of rescue.
The project is documented in full on Instructables.
