TLDR: I frequently need to look at stuff on rooftops at work and I'm looking for a fairly budget camera drone to let me do that more easily than I can with my extension ladder.
I'm a commercial refrigeration/HVAC tech which means I do a lot of rooftop work often on large commercial sites where sometimes the only roof access is the extension ladder on my van. The most anoying thing about that type of work is the constant trips up and down from the roof often just to check basic like like if flipping that breaker inside actually turned the rooftop unit off.
I've been considering getting a cheapish camera drone for a while just to do things like reading rooftop unit dataplates, checking the readings on my instruments connected to the rooftop equipment while I work on the indoor parts of said equipment, or checking the rough state of equipment before I climb up to the roof so I can have some idea of what tools to bring with me. I could also see a camera drone being very useful for taking aerial surveys of large industrial sites to map out all of the rooftop equipment.
So I'm looking for a camera drone which can withstand moderate wind fairly well and is fairly rugged. On the other hand, range is not really a concern for me because I'll usually be operating it from 100-200ft away at most. Having longer range would be nice but I can only think of two customer sites where that would be necissary so it definitely isn't a priority. For the same reason, battery life also isn't really a concern. Odds are this drone would only ever be doing short jogs up to a roof to check something and then coming right back down. My work van has an inverter which could run my house so charging between jobs would be trivial. I'm also not terribly concerned about picture quality. I need good enough camera quality and fine enough control to read equipment data plates but outside of that I'm not going to be doing professional photography with it or anything. So as long as the drone would be capable of flying up to and reading a newspaper then the camera is good enough.
Right now I'm just looking for the cheapest drone that fits my requirements. At the same time though, I have had to spend thousands of dollars on tools far less frequently useful than it seems like this drone would be so if I need to spend up to about $800 on it then I can do that. I am also aware that diy is an option and I would love to get into that at some point but I already know that that way lies maddness for me. Right now I just need a functional drone and not a hobby I will definitely wind up spending more money on than my vehicle.
So what do you all recommend for a budget no frills workhorse camera drone?
Keep in mind that using a drone for purposes related to making money (in the U.S.) require particular licensing of the operator. I've even heard that if you show your drone footage on your monetized YouTube page, you should have one of these specific licenses. I don't like it and feel there should be certain exceptions and caveats, but this is as I understand it, based on research a few years back.
I wasn't actually aware that the FAA was that strict on what they considered commercial. But I was anticipating needing a commercial liscense anyways because I will also need a BVLOS waiver due to not being able to see the drone once it gets much over a roofline. I've looked at getting a comercial drone pilots liscense before and it doesn't look like it'll be any worse to get than any of my other liscenses. From what I understand the waiver may take a while but should be a pretty sure thing considering that everything I plan to use it for is both "shielded" and "close by but out of sight" which are uses the FAA regularly writes waivers for.