Front + rear-facing dual camera drones?

[henchook]

Are there drones with both front-facing and rear-facing gimbaled cameras?

I'm admittedly quite a novice dji mini 2 pilot, but I suspect the flying-backwards shot can be a bit daunting even for someone not as inexperienced as myself, perhaps even with a drone that does have obstacle avoidance, but still.... having a second rear-facing gimbaled camera (or perhaps a cheap digitally stabilized is could be enough?) would let you get both flying-forwards and flying-backwards shots simultaneously (two flights for one, closest you can get to two birds with one stone in this context) or if it's the cheaper digitally stabilized option you can have a second live video feed and see where you're going and not into that tree.

I can see how - if it doesn't significantly increase the BOM cost of the drone - this could at the very least be a differentiating competitive feature if not crucial capability.

Are there any drones with rear-facing sensors that can be hacked into to get their RAW optical feed?

 

[Yorkshire_Pud]

Women pilots only I think, it's difficult enough for most blokes to monitor the drone AND one screen let alone the drone AND two screens. And that's ignoring controls reversed effect if a glance at the rear facing camera caused panic.
Besides the cost of a gimballed second camera would surely be prohibitive.

 

[BigAl07]

It would be a tough project on consumer grade aircraft. You're adding components (weight and complexity), doubling the Data Stream, Doubling the processing requirements, and adding an additional stream to monitor in an already overloaded process.

While it absolutely COULD be done it's probably not a feasible off-the-shelf product. There are tons of DIY components that you could scrap together to make this work but you're adding weight to an aircraft that isn't designed to carry much more than what comes from the factory. IMHO your best bet would be an All Custom build.

 

[EpicFlight]

All the OA cameras are full color, fixed focus cameras that capture a normal, albeit 720p (IIRC) image. It's a matter of design that the hardware and/or software can't switch the video feed to any of those cameras.

HOWEVER, it would cost money, and not insignificant, to engineer and support the feature, and in my 8 years around this hobby I haven't seen demand for this.

The Parrot Mambo is an example of this potential... It has one downward camera for positioning, and you can take snaps with it.