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How To Fly Drone Indoors? Complete Guide

How To Fly Drone Indoors?

Flying a drone indoors is hard, but it can also be really useful especially if you’re doing real estate photography and you want to add little video tours rather than having to buy a big gimbal or a crane to get different shots. You can get all of that with a drone and with a lot of practice and some safety measures. So let’s talk about what you need to do, as safe as possible. Even if you’re near an airport it is generally okay to fly indoors because the FAA does not consider indoors to be navigable airspace.

First of all, you need to be a really good drone pilot. You need to know how to actively fly your Drone without the use of any electronics, without being able to use the screen. So this 10 tips is my complete guide how to fly drone Indoors.

1) Don’t Fly Indoors If You Don’t Have To!

Most shots can be filmed using a ladder or DJI Osmo. This advice is for both, to new and experienced pilots. Don’t fly indoors if you don’t have to. Use a DJI Osmo instead if it’s only about their super smoot movement or use a letter if it’s about the height only. Only use Drone if you for example have to fly outside a window and then have to raise height within one shot and If that is a shot you can’t capture with any other camera. Flying a drone in house is dangerous and should be avoided to prevent damage or injury. So for safety purposes only fly indoors if you have to.

2) Choose the Right Drone

If you are planning on flying indoors, you need the right drone for the job. Larger drones are not desirable for the house and can cause great damage and injuries. Therefore you need to chose small drones for indoor flying. If you choose mini drones, it is best to fly them indoors. Your family won’t be too happy, but it doesn’t matter. Here are the best drones for Indoor flying:

Wallet Drone

Wallet Drone is the World’s smallest quadcopter. It fits inside of the controller itself which is the size of a wallet and fits perfectly into your pocket. Not only does the quadcopter fit inside of the remote control, but It actually uses the remote controls batteris to charge itselfs while not in use. By far this drone is one of the most portable quadcopters on the market today. The wallet drone is available in four unique colors; blue , green, yellow and orange.

Micro Drone 3.0

Micro Drone is small size personal drone that is affordable, durable, easy to fly and straight out of the box drone. Whether you fly micro drone in extreme conditions, like on a windy beach or in delicate ones like inside your home, does not pose a problem to him. These micro drones are very flexible and resilient and you don’t need any flying experience. Micro Drone is small size personal drone that is affordable, durable, easy to fly and straight out of the box drone. Whether you fly micro drone in extreme conditions, like on a windy beach or in delicate ones like inside your home, does not pose a problem to him. It is very rugged and if anything breaks, its modular design what means it’s easy to replace any parts.

Nano Drone

World’s smallest quadcopter which is easier and fun for beginners to fly. Nano Drone has design that provides a more forgiving flight process, while protecting the blades and motors at the same time. All new 3-Speed Calibration system provides smoother lift and maneuverability reducing the pogo stick effect that new Flyers experience with the previous design. It has improven stabilization which allows Nano Drone to hover remarkably well. It can now hover less than an inch off the surface below in addition to higher altitudes.

3) Never Use Carbon Fiber (reinforced) Propellers.

They can cause serious injuries a lot easier than plastic ones. Don’t ever fly with carbon-fiber propellers, use the plastic standard propellers only. The carbon-fiber props can easily damage property or object, and of course they can harm people as well if they cut through flesh. They can easily cause very very bad woundings. That is why I only use the plastic standard propellers made by DJI. For flying indoors it is a lot safer and highly recommended. 

4) Always Use Propeller Guards.

Save the Drone when bumping into objects or scracthing the wall at lower speeds. Always fly with the prop guards installed to the Drone. The prop guards add a lot of safety to the Drone. If you’re using the prop guards with a obstacle, sensing system gets disabled, but being honest, indoors we don’t need the obstacle sensing system. For example, when flying through here the optical sensors would already stop me even if I would have to pass that one metal structure thing.

5) Disable Return to Home (RTH) Function

Otherwise the Drone might crash into the ceiling. It is super important to change one setting. How to do it? Open up the MC settings menu, the main controller settings menu. In here we scroll down until we reach the Advanced Settings. We want to change the remote controller signal “lost” from “return to home” hover, because indoors it can easily happen that you are having a signal lost, not because of the distance, but because there might be a Wi-Fi. There  might be interference at all times and if something happens, we don’t the Drone to raise its height and return home because once it raises the height it probably raises right into the ceiling. So avoid that and set the remote controller signal “lost” to “hover” always when flying indoors.

6) Choose “P or A” Mode

a) Use P-Mode

Use only with a steady Glonass (at least 10+ satellites). Let’s focus on some of the flight modes of the Drone. We have the P, S and A mode on the remote controller and the P mode is the normal standard flight mode. The S mode is the sport mode that we never ever want to touch when flying indoors because it’s way too fast. And finally we have the A mode of the attitude mode. When should we use the P mode? My drone, I always connected to 10 plus satellites when being in here. Which means that I can use the P mode just as I normally would outdoors and the GPS and the GLONASS will hold my Drone’s position quite safely. Then I recommend using the P mode. It is pretty simple if you are flying for example inside a church or inside a house with a ceiling abouve your head that is thicker and you’re not connected with 10 plus satellites at all times the Drone will try to then use the VPS (The vision positioning system). That sensor is down, with sonar and camera. Those sensors only work until a certain height, for example up to 3 meters.  

b) Use of A-Mode

Use if your Drone can’t connect to at least 10 satellites. If your drone is not steadily connected at least 10 satellites, we want to switch over to the 80 GI mode to prevent any problems from happening. For example there could be a GPS kick in. You’re not having GPS at the 1 second and then GPS module switches back ON and the Drone correct its position. That could cause you to crash into something. So if you’re not all the time connected to at least 10 satellites switch over to A mode (the attitude mode). Only keep in mind that when using the atti mode, you have to pull the brakes yourself. So you have to power back a little and pay some more attention to open windows because if there is a wind gust coming in, inside the room that might hit the Drone and the Drone can drift away with it. But flying A mode indoors is pretty pretty safe.

7) Keep the Eyes On the Drone

Keep in mind that the liveview shows a windeangle, not a true front view on your display. Objects are closer than they appear. The once you are flying closer to an object and you think you might be still half a meter away and it looks quite nicely on your monitor, the camera is wide-angle camera. So keep that in mind. You might already be very very close to the object, so always pay attention to that. Keep in mind that your camera has a wide-angle lens and take a look at the Drone yourself. Don’t only watch the monitor.

8) Keep Some Space Between Drone and Ceiling

Never every fly too close towards the ceiling because if you do so, the Drone might suck itself into the ceiling. That can really happen as the propellers, they suck the air from above down to push the Drone up and fly that is what happens basically. And if you’re flying too close towards the ceiling and have enough power, the Drone might suck itself up to the wall, and we don’t want that to happen. Always have half a meter if possible space between the Drone and the ceiling and you’ll be good to go.

9) Use Course Lock Mode

Use Course Lock Mode for Indoor Orientation when rotating in flight. For a better and safer orientation, you should always fly within the course lock mode when you fly indoors. Being honest, the course lock mode is my very very favorite mode over the Pui and over the waypoints. The cords lock is the film mode and it is the safety mode when flying indoors. Which means that for example you rotate the drone the front if I push the sticks to the front, the front would now be over here and If I get confused indoors that could easily cause the crash to happen and with the course lock activated. If I once get into trouble and I rotate the Copter wrongly I probably won’t crash into anything. It’s pretty safe. 

10) Use Common Sense!

Stay away from animals/people, fly at low speeds and with special caution. It might be iron structures inside your house or building. There might be a Wi-Fi ruter and there might be electronics also, that interfere with the Drone. So if yo’re having any transmission delays or complete interruptions, don’t get crazy and if you are having a complete signal loss, don’t get crazy. Nothing is going to happen that way. Keep in mind to never ever fly too fast towards people or animals that way you can save some money because you don’t have to pay for the hospital cost and fees.

Is it legal to fly a drone Indoors?

The FAA’s rules do not require your drone to be registered if you are flying your drone it in a closed space. One of the things you need to know when you are flying a drone on your own yard is that you need to register your UAS if it weighs is more than 0.55 pounds. Any drone that is between 0.55 pounds and 55 pounds has to be registered as a small unmanned aircraft system on the FAAs website. 

It’s best to avoid indoor flight if you can, but sometimes it can be a useful tool for shooting some scenes. If you are planning on it, make sure you choose the right drone for the job and build up to it. If you need more flying experience, it’s best to stick to your personal capabilities. Do not overdo it and do something you think could end up dangerous. One has to be very careful when it comes to Indoor flying with your drone.

Conclusion:

The best thing you can do if you decide to fly indoors is to choose some kind of mini drone. Inside the home, it’s best to test your skills, or learn to fly. Your family may find it annoying, but if you ask them politely, they might just let you.

You must know the possibilities of your Drone and behave accordingly to avoid any accidents. If you have children in the house, pay attention to it, and do not let them manage the drone, no matter how much they insist on it. Drones can be a faun creative outlet and at the same time a very dangerous thing, so you must take care when you are using it indoor. You need a lot of practice to be able to control Drone perfectly.

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