On Tue, 16 Aug 2016 11:02:59 -0700, "Snuffy \"Hub Cap\" McKinney"
wrote:

The quadcopter is a good idea. I'm sure that's what Dad meant when he
said drone, since a plane won't work.


For scoping out the roof, what about a helium balloon? Can't get much lower cost than that.

Or just attaching a camera to a few lengths of conduit. Although, that eliminates the justification to get a drone.... LOL

I have a 3-section pole that extends to ??18 feet? that I used to
paint the house, and I have an extendable pipe that curves over at the
top that I bought to flush out my gutters, which last summer were
overflowing for the first time since I've been here.** I taped the
pipe to the top end of the pole, taped a camera to the top of the
pipe, and stood about 4 steps up on a ladder, to video the gutters. I
used a USB camera with a 20 foot amplified USB cable, going to my
laptop.

The camera worked but it was spherical and hard to keep in place,
pointed down. Plus the pole was hard to control and didn't always
stay perfectly straight. I could surely get the camera over a
particular place but it was hard to move it slowly down the gutter to
look at all of it. Partly because I was on a ladder, but mostly
because the pole was so long.

Since then I've bought a camera that is not spherical and woudl work
much better, but I guess I've lost interest. For the front, I used
the extendable pole with the extendable pipe, and I succssfully
flushed out the front gutter, so half my incentive is gone.



**In fact when I was up there for various reasons, they never even had
leaves in them, despite all the tall trees only 20 -30 feet from the
house. But I think the cottonwood tree, part of which fell on my
yard and seemed to have some tar-like stuff in it, got in the gutter
and clogged the gutter (not the downspout).