So based on my last couple of articles based on video streaming (Video Streaming Technologies in the CCTV World: Where is the Future Headed? and Streaming Milestone Video to Third-Party Systems (Tech Guide)), it was suggested/requested to dive into drones and Perimeter Intrusion Detection Systems (PIDS). So here it is!

So here we’re talking drones, Milestone XProtect, and perimeter security—the stuff that’s no longer just cool tech, but genuinely useful in the field. Integrating live drone feeds into your VMS used to feel like science fiction. Now? It’s just smart engineering.

Let’s take a look at how combining tools like ORBNET’s StreamForce (ORB Driver + Streaming Engine) with Milestone and a capable drone (such as DJI) or using our newly released dedicated Skydio Driver gives you a powerful layer of mobile, responsive surveillance—especially for those harder-to-secure perimeters.

For security engineers and integrators, the value of drones in surveillance has moved beyond the hype. Drones provide “eyes in the sky” – a mobile vantage point that can cover ground cameras cannot. When an alarm goes off on the perimeter, an autonomous drone can be your fastest responder. Instead of dispatching a guard to investigate a fence-line alert in the dead of night, a drone can zip over in seconds, stream live video back to the control room, and let your team see exactly what’s happening.

Some key benefits of integrating drone feeds into your Milestone XProtect VMS include:

In short, drones integrated with your VMS become force multipliers for security staff – enhancing visibility, improving response, and keeping personnel out of harm’s way when investigating potential threats.

So how do we actually get these live drone feeds into Milestone XProtect? Traditionally, adding non-traditional cameras (like drones or mobile devices) into a VMS could be a headache. This is where ORBNET Systems steps in as a smart, practical partner for integrators. ORBNET’s StreamForce offering  – a combination of their ORBNET Streaming Engine and ORB Driver – is the enabler that bridges the gap between drones in the field and XProtect in the control room.

ORB Driver is an enhanced device driver for Milestone XProtect that goes beyond the built-in Universal Driver. It’s designed to handle a wide range of video stream formats and sources. In essence, ORB Driver lets you treat a drone feed just like any other camera in XProtect. Meanwhile, the ORBNET Streaming Engine works behind the scenes to reliably transport and translate those drone video streams into a format the VMS understands. Together, they form the “StreamForce” duo – ensuring that whether your drone supports RTSP, RTSPs, RTMP, RTMPs or SRT, its live video can be pulled into XProtect with minimal fuss.

What does setup look like? Quite straightforward. Essentially, the Drones feed is streamed via the Streaming Engine and the ORB Driver registers it in XProtect – so operators see the drone just like a standard camera in the Smart Client view. As an example, DJI drones can be integrated by streaming the drone’s video output (for instance, using a DJI controller’s RTMP or Wi-Fi streaming capability) into the Streaming Engine. ORBNET even showcased this in a short video demonstration of a DJI drone feed in XProtect. The process doesn’t require deep custom coding or kludgy hacks; it uses open standards (RTSP, RTMP, etc.) and ORBNET’s purpose-built tools to make the connection seamless.

The beauty of this approach is that once the drone feed is in XProtect, you can leverage all the VMS functionality on it. Want to record the drone’s footage on the server? Check. Need to set up motion detection or analytics on the drone’s video? That’s possible too. The drone essentially becomes another movable CCTV camera in your ecosystem – one you can deploy on demand.

For Skydio we have gone one step further and created a dedicated driver and plugin to ease setup and management, you can read more on the setup and request the driver here. In this case we are also importing the Metadata which leads me nicely onto...

Video is only part of the story. When you have a camera flying around a large site, knowing exactly where that drone is becomes crucial for situational awareness. This is where ORBNET Live Maps comes into play. ORBNET Live Maps is a cutting edge GIS mapping add-on for Milestone XProtect that displays real-time locations of moving assets (drones, security vehicles, body-worn cameras, etc.) on your facility map within the XProtect Smart Client.

Imagine receiving a perimeter breach alert and launching a drone. As the drone feeds video into XProtect, Live Maps simultaneously shows a drone icon moving along your perimeter map, heading to the alarm location. You can see the drone’s GPS position update in real time on the map, right alongside your fixed camera icons. This gives the operator an instant understanding of where the drone is relative to the site – no guessing based on camera visuals alone. It’s a powerful “god’s eye view” of the situation: the live video tells you what the drone sees, and the map tells you where it’s seeing it.

Situational awareness is dramatically improved. For instance, if an intruder starts running, the operator can watch the dot (drone) chase the moving target on the map, ensuring no area is left unchecked. If you have multiple drones or other mobile assets, Live Maps can track all of them at once. The data can be recorded too, so you could play back an incident and see both the video and the geo-location trail of the drone simultaneously in Milestone.

Setting up ORBNET Live Maps is straightforward for XProtect users – it integrates as a plugin and works hand-in-hand with ORB Driver’s drone integration. As long as the drone provides GPS coordinates (most enterprise drones like Skydio and DJI do), those coordinates feed into Live Maps automatically. You can see a demo of Live Maps in action in this Live Maps demo video. The end result is a unified system where your drone becomes an integrated part of the security picture, not an isolated gadget on the side.

Bringing live drone feeds and tracking into XProtect opens up a world of practical use cases for security teams. Here are a few scenarios where this integration really shines:

These examples just scratch the surface. Essentially, any scenario where having a camera in a dynamic, elevated position would help, a drone integrated into your Milestone system is the answer. It blurs the line between fixed and mobile surveillance in daily operations.

It’s not hype anymore: drones are here to stay as part of the modern security arsenal. What’s changed is how easily they can slot into existing systems. With solutions like ORBNET’s ORB Driver and Streaming Engine (the StreamForce duo) or our Skydio Driver handling the heavy lifting of integration, and tools like Live Maps providing real-time tracking, we’ve never been closer to that science-fiction vision of a fully integrated, responsive security grid.

For security engineers and integrators, this means you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to deploy drones. You can leverage your familiar Milestone XProtect platform – the same interface and workflows your team knows – now augmented with live drone capabilities. This lowers the barrier to adoption significantly. We’ve gone from “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could see drone footage in our VMS?” to “We integrated our drones into XProtect over a weekend, and now they’re part of our SOP.”

In the spirit of keeping it practical and conversational (as promised), I’ll say this: Don’t let anyone’s FUD (“fear, uncertainty, and doubt”) convince you that drones are too complex or experimental for real security work. The tech has matured. Integrating a Skydio or DJI drone feed is now about as straightforward as adding a new CCTV camera – especially with the right tools at hand.

As someone who’s watched this space evolve from concept to real deployments, it’s incredibly satisfying to see security teams catch that “aha” moment when they deploy their first drone-through-Milestone setup. The next time you’re refining your perimeter defense strategy or evaluating PIDS solutions, consider giving those eyes in the sky a direct line to your control room. Chances are, you’ll soon wonder how you ever managed without them.

For those interested in diving deeper or getting hands-on: check out ORBNET’s pages on the ORB Driver, Streaming Engine and our Skydio Driver for technical details, or see ORBNET’s Live Maps in action to explore the mapping capabilities. The links and demo videos above offer a great starting point to bring drones into your own security ecosystem.

Author: Justin Butterworth
Date: May 20th 2025
Original Article