Real-Time Drone Streaming in San Diego

The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department faced a challenge while searching for a fast, secure solution for real-time drone streaming. The ability to remotely monitor fires, natural disasters, and other emerging situations without deploying full teams on the ground helps save time, money, lives, and property. Read on to learn how the joint Red5 and Nomad Media solution hosted on AWS cloud met their needs.

About San Diego County Sheriff’s Department

The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department (SDSD) was established in 1850. It is the primary and largest law enforcement agency in San Diego County, California, and one of the largest sheriff’s departments in the United States: with over 4,000 employees, an annual budget of over $960 million, and a service area over 4,500 square miles, extending to a 60-mile international border.

The SDSD provides general law enforcement and public safety services to all unincorporated areas of the county (traffic enforcement, accidents, and other traffic related issues are handled by the California Highway Patrol).

Challenge

The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department called on our partner, Nomad Media, to get the ball rolling. The team requested a secure, reliable, scalable real-time streaming solution that was also device agnostic. It had to support virtually unlimited numbers of cameras and users with an easy-to-use, customizable interface. They wanted a future-proof solution that could grow and change over time as their needs evolved.

Solution

The Red5 and Nomad Media joint solution deployment diagram

To meet the department’s needs for a secure, user-friendly platform with powerful search and content management features, Nomad Media provided a flexible CMS tailored for high-stakes public safety environments. Its intuitive interface and advanced search capabilities made it easy to organize and access critical media assets.

However, delivering that content in real time required a robust, low-latency streaming layer. That’s where the Red5 real-time streaming technology, used in Red5 Pro and Red5 Cloud, came in. Powered by a WebRTC-based architecture and hosted on AWS Cloud, Red5 enabled secure, sub-250ms live video streaming with the speed, interactivity, and reliability the mission demanded.

Together, Red5 and Nomad Media delivered a fully operational, real-time drone streaming command center now used by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and their partner agencies to improve situational awareness and accelerate response.

Benefits and Results

The Red5 and Nomad Media joint solution delivered measurable advantages for field operations and command centers alike.

Below are the key benefits realized during deployment:

• Real-time video and audio streaming with sub 250-ms latency of remotely operated drone feeds.
• Highly secure remote viewing and sharing.
• Simple operational support for managing live-feeds from the field.
• Increased flexibility and reliability.
• Increased situational awareness.
• Reduced operational overhead.

Client Testimonial 

The simplicity of Red5 and Nomad is where the solution truly shines. There are no troubleshooting issues during critical incidents. The solution just works every time.” – Corporal Ryan Christy, UAS Pilot, San Diego County Sheriff’s Department

Conclusion

Red5 partners regularly with quality and reliable brands like Nomad Media and AWS to provide full-service streaming services. Whether you’re monitoring drone footage or rush-hour traffic, we’ve got you covered.

Ready to experience the Red5 Pro difference? Start your 30-day trial today, or reach out to our team to discuss how we can help solve your streaming challenges.