A security drone-in-a-box keeps a drone in a weatherproof base station on site. It flies scheduled patrols and lets an operator check alarms with live video from the air. It is a mobile camera and sensor, not a guard. It cannot stop anyone, so it works best alongside fences, detection, fixed cameras and a response plan. Nestua is building such a system. The software platform is functional in development builds, and the drone and base station hardware are still being built. Read what a drone-in-a-box is for the basics.
Where does a security drone-in-a-box add value?
- Long perimeters. Solar parks, wind farms, ports and logistics yards have kilometres of fence that are expensive to cover with cameras.
- Unstaffed or remote sites. Substations and energy sites are empty at night, and a crew sent to every alarm is slow and costly.
- Alarm verification. A drone can fly to an alarm location and show the operator what triggered it, before anyone is sent in.
- Changing layouts. On construction sites and container yards, patrol routes and geofences are redrawn in software instead of moving cameras.
- Weak connectivity. With an offline-first platform, patrols, video and detection keep running on site without internet.
Where does a drone not add much?
- Small, compact sites that a few fixed cameras already cover completely.
- Indoor areas. Warehouse interiors, server halls and offices are better served by fixed CCTV, access control and intrusion detection.
- Sites that need physical intervention. A drone records and informs; someone still has to respond.
- Difficult airspace. Sites next to airports, in dense residential areas or in restrictive geographical zones may not have a practical authorisation path.
- Sites where staff are always present. Here, GDPR and works council questions can outweigh the benefit unless patrols are limited to quiet hours.
Drone security by site type
Each page covers the security problem at that type of site in Europe, why fixed cameras and patrols leave gaps, how a drone patrol would work, the regulatory and privacy points, and a checklist of what to evaluate.
- Solar parks and PV plants: cable and panel theft across large, remote, unstaffed sites.
- Electrical substations and grid assets: metal theft and sabotage, flights near HV equipment, and CER obligations.
- Warehouses, logistics and distribution centres: cargo theft from yards, trailer parks and long fence lines.
- Construction sites: out-of-hours patrols on sites whose layout changes every week.
- Onshore wind farms: turbines, cable routes and substations spread over open country.
- Industrial and chemical plants: perimeter patrols at high-hazard sites, including Seveso III establishments.
- Data centres: perimeter verification around high-security sites where data must stay on site.
- Ports, rail yards and vehicle storage: large open yards with containers, wagons and parked vehicles.
All eight are also listed as cards below.
What requirements are common across all sites?
- Offline operation. Security should not stop when the internet does. Nestua runs flight control, missions, geofences, video, edge AI and the audit log on a local edge node, and the cloud is optional. See offline-first security drones.
- Audit and access control. Admin, operator and viewer roles; remote access disabled by default; admin re-authentication to enable remote control; and an exportable event journal, command log and config change history.
- Privacy by design. Person and vehicle detection runs on site and does not identify individuals. Geofences keep the drone off neighbouring land and public roads, and uploading recordings off-site is disabled by default. You still need a DPIA, a defined retention period and information for staff and visitors.
- A regulatory path. Automated beyond-visual-line-of-sight patrols normally fall into the EU "specific" category and need an operational authorisation from the national aviation authority. See EU drone regulations.
Want to see the software on a map of your own site? Request a demo.