How to turn your Nokia Lumia 1020 into the ultimate surveillance drone

Nokia finally unveiled the Lumia 1020. It’s unique in the world of Windows Phone (and smartphones in general) for packing 41 million pixels into the camera module. Nokia is taking advantage of this power with their Camera Pro app. Other app makers, like Hipstamatic/Oggl Pro and Vyclone are doing the same with special apps tailored for the Lumia 1020. What’s happening in the world of hardware accessories? In another first for Windows Phone, a company is preparing to offer up a drone that pairs with your Lumia 1020 to capture high-resolution aerial photographs. Um, press review units please?

A company called Lehmann Aviation is producing what they claim is the world’s first drone that uses a cell phone with a high resolution camera. And honestly, who are we to disprove that claim. Seems like a valid statement since the only other cell phone that matches the Nokia Lumia 1020 in resolution is the Nokia 808 PureView.

The LA300 is a drone that has been designed to use the Lumia 1020 for orthophoto and DEM. Don’t worry, I went to Wikipedia for you. An orthophotograph is an aerial photograph that has been corrected so that the scale is uniform. By removing distortion, the photograph it produces is more like a map. DEM stands for digital elevation model. That’s a digital model or 3D representation of a terrain’s surface. What better camera to produce those images than the super over sampling imaging inside the Lumia 1020?

Badass right? Well, it gets cooler. The company has designed the LA300 to be a fully autonomous UAV. You can even set flight paths using their Windows 8 app called OperationCenter. Grab it here in the Windows Store for all those drones sitting around in your basement.

Let that sink in. You can buy a drone, use your Lumia 1020 as the camera, and control all this with your Windows 8 laptop/tablet/hybrid/convertible.

The LA300 will set you back 4,900 euros (about $6,399.76). So this is probably not aimed for all us to play around with on the occasional weekend, but maybe for those who actually use this stuff on the job (or a really, really serious hobby). Lehmann Aviation, how about you send a review unit to one of us here at Windows Phone Central. Otherwise we’ll have to ship Rich across the channel to visit you for a demo.

Which one of you pioneering folks will be the first to produce a DIY version of this that we can afford? 

Source: Lehmann Aviation, Via: GSMArena; Thanks, Moody Caplan, for the tip!