jbd

Inspecting fields. Counting cattle/goats/livestock. Checking for downed fence lines. Checking water, mineral trays, ... Of course, you would need video on the UAV, and a high-speed data/video connection to its camera. Weather is the biggest challenge - it can't be used in moderate wind or gusty conditions. So a fairly good "localized weather" station system might be in order too. Another challenge might be areas of high pollen concentration - depending on the drive mechanism for the UAV. What we found is if we have to go to the field anyway, then we might as well do the inspection ourselves rather than fool with setting up and packing away a UAV. Having a fixed, computer controlled flight path for a large field might make it more worthwhile - but then there's problems with RC radio range.

For doing something like this... Popularity? Hits? I forget its name. I've noticed that this sorta information encourages people to come back more often to see what the "really hot" discussions are all about. However, it also encourages "flame wars".

The number of reads and possibly the popularity of the article wrt other articles in the same group. I think exposing user names might be seen as a challenge to privacy.

Do you have examples of other structures? I was thinking that each tool could have its own "forum", but you might need something like Organic Groups and a specialized content type to implement this.

Water weighs about 8lbs/gallon, so a full 250 gallon container would weigh at least a ton, and a lot of roofs can't support that kind of weight in a small area. Another thing to consider is surface area - the more surface area you expose the water to, the more heat loss there'll be. So on a cold night, you may lose all of your heat by midnight instead of 6am! Using a variable number of bladders that can be easily filled from a larger water mass (tank) is probably best. Good idea Louis!