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Small drone with camera hovering outside my window today.

#61
$_12.jpg
More of same...ebay $14.99
 
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#62
kanonfodr said:
Dear people talking about using an RF Jammer to block the signal: stop. Jamming doesn't work like that, unless you want your electricity bill to take a sharp surge upward. It's a pain in the butt to implement effectively, and it's kinda like using a Sawzall to cut a cast - it can be done, but there's a lot of risk involved and very few folks have the capability to do it properly. Additionally, RF Jamming in the US is a Federal crime: Invalid Link Removed . - The Military Radio Technician who also worked with jamming equipment.

Now, if you have an idea of the frequency band and the control methods the drone is operating under, there's nothing wrong with having a Crosstalk issue and having the bird become an unfortunate lawn dart.
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Wrong Greg, a DC spark gap generator could be used - there are few other ways too (such as crosstalk), but I'm not going to post how to do it. But only a few radio bands with a small handful of freq's have been issued for hobby RC aircraft use by the FCC and so its much easier/quicker just buy an RC transmitter and dead key his freq.
 
#63
Joe Louvar said:
Wrong Greg, a DC spark gap generator could be used - there are few other ways too (such as crosstalk), but I'm not going to post how to do it. But only a few radio bands with a small handful of freq's have been issued for hobby RC aircraft use by the FCC and so its much easier/quicker just buy an RC transmitter and dead key his freq.
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Yeah, but the potato gun loaded with the fishing net would be more fun.....or fashion a shoulder fired fireworks launcher.
 
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#64
I've never heard the term "crosstalk" but you cannot interfere with 2.4ghz from more than 1 or 2 feet away. They use a spread spectrum and hop frequencies every few seconds to find the and maintain the strongest signal.

parachute men, small jet interceptors, and even air rockets are fair game. Potato launchers, sling shots, shot guns, throwing rocks = See you in court. You just destroyed something I spent over 10 hours building and 8 years developing.
 
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#68
Stepping back from Suburban Drone Wars 2014 for a second, so far only the neighbour has spotted a "gopro" which might be a battery, or some other device.

Realtime Wifi broadcasting drone cameras are here, no doubt in the US too. I would want to be sure what it was before messing with it.

A really flash one I would be probably be like Will, excited enough to jam rocksalt up its bottomside with the shotgun. It would be a case of "boom" and stash the gun before camera possibly came to bear on it. I wouldn't want to chance missing with any of the more passive methods, and being filmed having another crack.

"Officer, I heard a bang and it fell on my lawn"

I can see a whole new market for water blaster powered water guns. Pressurise chamber, aim, shoot 6ft bolt of water.
 
#69
Inertialsky said:
As for invading your privacy - There are hundreds of super high resolution cameras in orbit 24hours a day that can zoom in and read the smallest print on your bumper stickers. These "drones" (thanks mainstream media) can only stay in the air for 10-25 minutes with the extra weight of video gear. If your neighbor is a jerk that just sucks in general. If he's flying responsibly there's nothing anyone can do. The FAA doesn't have any set of actual rules for small unmanned RC aircraft and local PD would have to start arresting 8 year old kids flying ARdrones in their front yards. My point is there are many experienced responsible pilots that have been doing aerial photography as a hobby since before digital cameras or wifi even existed.
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One of the reasons I posted this thread is to discuss reasonable privacy expectations. As I stated earlier, I think this going to a much bigger problem for all of us in years to come as drones become more prevalent. I understand that congress has asked the FAA to come up with some rules by sometime in 2015 regarding drones and airspace.
BTW. I am not sure if the camera was a true Go Pro. My neighbor might have using the word Go Pro in a generic sense, meaning he saw a camera on the drone. For all I know it may have been a low res camera broadcasting in real time. Just sayin.
 
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#70
the new outboard wifi video connections are expensive, still have a delay, and they have a very limited range. no pros will ever use them. the hardware is very limiting.

professional pilots routinely fly over 400'+ up to 1500'+ with live RF video link.

It would be very difficult to shoot something down that has a climb rate of over 100ft per second and is instantly several hundred feet off the ground
 
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#73
Inertialsky said:
You cannot use the gopro wifi connection while flying any RC aircraft. The gopro wifi is 2.4ghz connection and has about a 10 second delay. 99% of RC transmitters being used are also 2.4hz now. If you take off with a gopro with the wifi turned on you will crash. Pilots have to be extra careful to disable the wifi before flight since the gopro and the receiver are usually fairly close together. Even if it operated on a different frequency the lag time makes wifi FPV flight impossible. It is possible to use an outboard transmitter on 5.8ghz or 1.2ghz and a slew of others but you won't see amateur pilots doing this.
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I was going to argue, but I found out that he was right. Kinda. If you're buying an off the shelf job and the controllers are using 2.4ghz (one of the most crowded civilian bands- oy vey) your GoPro runs a risk of crashing your drone (and look at the prices on those things!!) . Homebrew it yourself and use a different band for the RC and you could have a pretty cool little spybot and the video delay would be under 2-3 seconds judging by my GoPro app when I set my three cameras up and then check them. But the short answer: maybe.

Joe Louvar said:
Wrong Greg, a DC spark gap generator could be used - there are few other ways too (such as crosstalk), but I'm not going to post how to do it. But only a few radio bands with a small handful of freq's have been issued for hobby RC aircraft use by the FCC and so its much easier/quicker just buy an RC transmitter and dead key his freq.
Click to expand...

So let me get this straight: you are going to crash a modern RC vehicle using a transmitter design so old it was banned for commercial users before my parents were hatched. I will admit, I had to apply some Google-fu to this, and it's a plausible scenario, but the best is what you ended with: buy a similar controller and cross talk his bird into the ground.

Inertialsky said:
I've never heard the term "crosstalk" but you cannot interfere with 2.4ghz from more than 1 or 2 feet away. They use a spread spectrum and hop frequencies every few seconds to find the and maintain the strongest signal.
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If you haven't heard the term crosstalk before, I worry for your safety entering a debate about jamming radio signals. Cross talk happens when you have two transmitters operating on the same frequency at the same time in close proximity (could be a few feet, could be a few miles). Comms get garbled, users get angry, and experiencing cross-talk (also called getting stepped on) is pretty annoying to your ears. Now, saying that you can't jam WiFi is like saying the Titanic couldn't sink: bad news my friend. My Wifi got spotty in Iraq when convoys were rolling through and someone forgot to turn their CREW off at the gate. Because jamming a signal is really easy when you knock out the whole damn operating band. Or you have a system that has a 10ms cycle at 9:1 - the unit spends 9ms jamming frequencies and then one second listening for signals in it's operating bands, then jams those for 9ms, then has another 1ms listen, ad infinitum.

Peace,
Greg
 
#74
I never said you can't jam wifi. I said you cannot jam a 2.4ghz spread spectrum signal that is always changing. 2.4ghz is used for many applications other than wifi. And there are many different flavors of 2.4ghz.

"crosstalk" is not a term currently used with RC aircraft signals. "Interference" is. I'm familiar with the word but it doesn't apply to new digital spread spectrum tech.
 
#75
Inertialsky said:
the new outboard wifi video connections are expensive, still have a delay, and they have a very limited range. no pros will ever use them. the hardware is very limiting.

professional pilots routinely fly over 400'+ up to 1500'+ with live RF video link.

It would be very difficult to shoot something down that has a climb rate of over 100ft per second and is instantly several hundred feet off the ground
Click to expand...

wow, yeah that's fast
 
#78
I can see two different ways of bringing the drone down--the fun ways that have been suggested above, or by organizing the neighborhood to take the perp to small claims court with multiple individual claims of invasion of privacy at $10,000 per claim. The second way takes some work (getting organized; getting pictures of the drone in action, hopefully without being observed; recording any YouTube videos the perp posts) but with a sympathetic judge, you could get some real results. And if the judge rules against the neighborhood, there's always the fun way.
 
#79
bobcruz said:
I can see two different ways of bringing the drone down--the fun ways that have been suggested above, or by organizing the neighborhood to take the perp to small claims court with multiple individual claims of invasion of privacy at $10,000 per claim. The second way takes some work (getting organized; getting pictures of the drone in action, hopefully without being observed; recording any YouTube videos the perp posts) but with a sympathetic judge, you could get some real results. And if the judge rules against the neighborhood, there's always the fun way.
Click to expand...

And while we're at it lets arrest everyone that has a camera phone... or a DSLR camera or any camera for that matter. You realize what you're saying is just absurd?

seriously..
 

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