Being Pestered By Drones? Buy a Drone-Hunting Drone 151
schwit1 writes, "Are paparazzi flying drones over your garden to snap you sunbathing? You may need the Rapere, the drone-hunting drone which uses 'tangle-lines' to quickly down its prey."
From The Telegraph's article: It has been designed to be faster and more agile than other drones to ensure that they can't escape - partly by limiting flight time and therefore reducing weight.
“Having worked in the UAS industry for years, we've collectively never come across any bogus use of drones. However it's inevitable that will happen, and for people such as celebrities, where there is profit to be made in illegally invading their privacy, there should be an option to thwart it,” the group say on their website.
This seems more efficient than going after those pesky paparazzi drones with fighting kites (video), but it should also inspire some skepticism: CNET notes that the team behind it is anonymous, and that "Rapere works in a lab setting, however there aren't any photos or videos of the killer drone in action. The website instead has only a slideshow of the concept."
Heh (Score:5, Interesting)
There was that old sf story by Robert Silverberg, I think, that went like this: They made automated police drones (they weren't called drones back then) that prevented any violent crime from happening. Unfortunately they had learning circuits and decided even killing animals for food or harvesting crops was violent crime, and the society ended up starving. The solution was to create a new kind of drone to kill the existing drones - but this also had learning circuits and it decided it had to kill everyone.
Looks pretty realistic these days. Anyone remember the name of the story, and the author if i got it wrong?
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No, but I remember a similar one of his about hacker-types disabling all the "cops-eyes" (his term) used to monitor a public park. Everything goes to hell shortly thereafter. I still have it around here somewhere...
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No, but I remember a similar one of his about hacker-types disabling all the "cops-eyes" (his term) used to monitor a public park. Everything goes to hell shortly thereafter. I still have it around here somewhere...
We're getting a bit off topic here, but that was a story ("Cloak of Anarchy") by Larry Niven, not Robert Silverberg
Re:Heh (Score:4, Informative)
"Watchbird" by Robert Sheckley.
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Thanks! I always confuse Sheckley and Silverberg :)
It seems to be available legally online on Project Gutenberg, if you found the article interesting go read it for a laugh: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebook... [gutenberg.org]
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Anyone remember the name of the story, and the author if i got it wrong?
"Self-Programming AIs are Dangerous" by Captain Obvious.
Solution looking for a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm more interested to see whether the market is civilians being fed up with surveillance. Unless there is a good way to identify who controls the anti-drone-drone, be prepared to see a few police drones go into early retirement.
Re:Solution looking for a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Depending on the height an air rifle, or if that is illegal a decent slingshot would be a cheaper easier alternative. You don't need to do a lot of damage to bring them down.
If we are talking serious height, chances are you haven't even noticed it is there.
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A slingshot? Not geeky enough for /., and not enough profit.
What you really need is a household-scale Surface-Air Missile!
Now off to kickstarter ...
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Re:Solution looking for a problem (Score:4, Funny)
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If they hit it.
Ain't breaking stuff fun?
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But wouldn't that shot/pebble-like-stuff fall and potentially hurt someone?
I don't think that birdshot is dangerous on the way back down, unless a pellet falls right into your upturned eye. It has enough kinetic energy to harm a bird (or fragile drone) within some range of the shooter, but by the time it comes back down it has slowed to terminal velocity. Birdshot is only around a millimeter in diameter, like coarse sand. The "pebble-like-stuff" would be buckshot, which would not be practical to use against a bird/drone because not many pellets of that shot fit in a shell, making
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Even larger calibre ammunition poses limited threat. A 7.62 round (think AK47) has a terminal velocity of around 90m/s and weighs around 200g (depending on the round you use). That combination is right on the lower limit of power needed to break the skin if it struck with the point. What actually happens, in most cases, is the bullet twists and ends up flying sideways so you have a larger impact point making it significantly less harmful.
Smaller calibre bullets have a much lower terminal velocity and hav
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People die every year from falling bullets previously shot up in the air, and hundreds more are injured. That said, birdshot won't hurt you coming down. You might notice it, but probably doesn't even have as much force as a light hail.
Lots of references on falling bullets on the wiki article [wikipedia.org] on it.
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If you go through the cited articles there you will see that almost all of them are people who are hit while the bullets are on the way up or the bullet was fired at a sub 45 degree angle.
Even the Puerto Rico CDC link which is used as the primary source material starts by saying that it is based on media reports. That page seems to conflate injuries sustained through "celebratory gunfire" and bullets falling from the sky. People get shot when someone does something stupid with a weapon. However the physi
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I'm not saying firing a 7.62 round into the air is without risk. But the chances of serious injury are very low.
Based on anecdotal evidence from Mythbusters testing, the determining factor seemed to be if the bullet maintains a stable spin. Once the bullet starts tumbling, it loses speed quickly and it becomes less damaging. http://mythbustersresults.com/... [mythbustersresults.com]
Even shotgun pellets used in duck and pheasant hunting (Size 6 shot or less than 3mm) don't hurt when falling back to earth. I've been on a few pheasant hunts where hunters accidentally shoot upward toward another group of hunters and the falling shot does n
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And I don't see any way the bullet would retain a stable alignment. As soon as its spin speed dropped it would have to remain perfectly angled through the air with never a breath of air pressure differential. A momentary change in pressure on one edge, let alone a gust of wind, will cause it to tumble.
You can see if with .22lr rounds on a 200yd range. Sometimes your bullet will have tumbled before reaching the target
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The design of a range I shoot at means that on windy days we'll occasionally be hit with shot on the way down. It's normally either 9 or 7.5 (skeet or sporting), and it's no more than an annoyance.
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We get the same thing at bird dog field trials from popper loads (which can travel a couple hundred yards in a good wind) -- it's kinda like being spattered by light sleet.
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Depending on the height an air rifle, or if that is illegal a decent slingshot would be a cheaper easier alternative.
It's not legal to throw a rock in a city area if you don't know where it will land, and by the same token, it's not legal to fire even an airgun into the sky if you don't know where the projectile is coming down. In the boondocks with no nearby neighbors your solution might be viable, but the drone-attacking drone is a more practical solution for city use.
Re:Solution looking for a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
An air rifle would be fine for city use. A BB has next to no kinetic energy by the time it returns to the ground. Air resistance is a real energy sapper for things that small.
A thrown rock or a slung projectile will be larger and more massive and so retain more of its kinetic energy on return. The attacked drone falling from the sky will do more potential damage than any of the projectiles you'd use to bring it down.
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An air rifle would be fine for city use. A BB has next to no kinetic energy by the time it returns to the ground.
it also has next to no kinetic energy when it strikes something on the way out, too, unless it's very close. that's why we use pellets. and unless those are pointy, they won't really serve. A .177 pointed pellet is actually pretty useful. I don't think they're heavy enough to be dangerous coming down either, but they're still heftier than a BB. And besides, there are .22 caliber air guns. Fire one of those at a shallow enough angle, and it might be dangerous. But the law doesn't differentiate; if you don't
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Are the laws you're referring to nation wide? I was under the impression they vary from state to state.
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I was kinda assuming that deploying a hunter/killer drone and having at least 1 potentially 2 sizable devices falling out of the sky was illegal already.
You chances of being caught as the person who fired a marble out of a slingshot or a air rifle pellet are probably lower than being cause as the owner of your hunter/killer.
Slingshot for me would be the most fun I think. You could mess around with different pellet designs, like making a fishing line let and firing a wad of 12 small fishing weights. Would
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They have a guy in a trenchcoat wearing sunglasses on a public road.
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Yet, bows and arrows aren't.
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Re:Solution looking for a problem (Score:5, Informative)
If there's a drone hovering over my land, or my 'charge' if I am hired security, it is guilty until proven innocent.
We did not build fences and walls -- and for that matter -- start wearing clothes, only to keep out the weather. We developed personal boundaries and we even invisibly project them around us when we move. If you've ever been asked "What're YOU lookin' at?" by someone, you know this even extends to where you are gazing in public. A common stumble in across cultures is violating staring rules. Expected behavior and perceived intent matters.
One of our sharpest instinctive startle-reactions is the sudden appearance of eyes in places where eyes were not expected, or where eyes should not be. This has evolved with us from a predator mechanism, where swift action becomes necessary, and it is why spotting glowing eyes around a campfire generates a moment of apprehension. Modern humans have correctly characterized drones as eyes in the sky. Unlike helicopters which strive to spend their time beyond the dead man's curve [wikipedia.org] drones are close and personal and quiet.
You can also follow this eyes in the sky phenomenon in history. Even friendly nations felt it necessary to go on alert when their neighbors unexpectedly entered their airspace for reconnaissance flights, and during the Cold War these incursions were considered acts of war. The Treaty On Open Skies [wikipedia.org] was the culmination of 50 year effort to declare aerial surveillance a mutually beneficial activity. Originally proposed by Eisenhower, this treaty was like a 'cease and desist' order for those who sought to keep aerial photography out of reach of the common man, just as there are those who would try to keep secure encryption from the public, oh holy shit President Obama why are you starting this Clipper crap again, sorry about that, and has paved the way for the Google Earth we all know and love to browse.
Interestingly the treaty limits its signatories' ground resolution to 30 centimeters. Enough to count fighter planes but not good enough to gawk at bathing beauties.
So scale this eyes where eyes are not supposed to be thing down to the personal level as part of a right to privacy. The problem is that predatory paparazzi are assholes and bullies, and the people who read tabloid magazines are their silent enablers. For every measure, a suitable countermeasure. That is the market, and you can bet if I was on a security detail one of these would be on my Xmas list.
If you are comforted to be watched over by machines of loving grace... smile, you're on Candid Camera.
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Interestingly the treaty limits its signatories' ground resolution to 30 centimeters. Enough to count fighter planes but not good enough to gawk at bathing beauties.
Unless you play Minecraft.
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We did not build fences and walls -- and for that matter -- start wearing clothes, only to keep out the weather
No, it was done out of fear that other people would treat us the way we treat them.
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Perhaps you are or were a thief, but most of us are not criminals and we are
interested in doing what is necessary to protect ourselves, or families, and our
possessions.
You have it ass-backwards. The walls enable us to keep the people who are deprived when we advance from taking back what was made on their backs.
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Airspace ownership is a complex issue and will only become more so as new categories of flying devices appear. Making your own rules and destroying other people's property based on them is unlikely to go well for you.
Re:Solution looking for a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
destroying other people's property based on them is unlikely to go well for you.
I'd lay odds that the Secret Service will be their first customer because unidentified drones cannot be tolerated in their controlled area, and they try to avoid sniping things unless a clear threat is in progress.
It's a cryin' shame that Deer Trail, Colorado voted down its proposed $25/year drone hunting license [kdvr.com]. Of 181 votes cast ~73% were against. This makes perfect sense to me, because at any point in history it seems only ~25% of any given population seems able to spot and move against certain trends that would take us down a bad road. And I'm not just talking about the guv'mint.
Up to now paparazzi, peeping toms and criminals casing potential victims and whole neighborhoods have had to grace their target areas with their physical presence, which has held them greatly in check.
I'm sure many are excited at the prospect of Amazon deliveries and pizzas buzzing through the skies -- or just exploring -- just for the novelty of how cool it would be. Hell, whole generations of us were enthralled by the "drone footage" at the beginning of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood [youtube.com] and how it would show a bird's eye view as he left home to visit his neighbors. Or perhaps you imagine something like this [youtube.com]. Reality is a lot messier as they become commonplace. Drone operators will be watching their objectives on the ground and zooming their lenses as they fail to spot each other, power lines and aviation.
They will be crashing down onto busy roadways. As their payloads become heavier and their motors stronger there is potential for real harm to bystanders. When signal is lost or power is low they will go into autonomous descent without regard to the hazards below (such as fast moving traffic). It is inevitable that the use of 'cheap' drones is to become a favored method of terrorists. All of these things will happen by degrees.
We put pilots through the wringer and hold aircraft to ultra-high standards of reliability for good reason. We must not brush these things off lightly, and allow the the skies to become filled moving with objects of unknown purpose and origin. Unless we are really, really excited about putting pizza delivery folk out of work.
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I love how you delved deep, deep into your bowels in order to conjure up some argument as to how you are correct. 25%? Brilliant work. "At any point in history" - genius stuff.
Congratulations! Since it's obvious that you hold a well-considered contrary view (though you did not express it) it's obvious that you too are in that ~25% who come to their own conclusions, rather than the ~75% "we're not ready for this/perhaps everything will turn out alright" majority that just lets things happen. And you have bowels too? It's amazing what we have in common.
Deer Trail's drone hunting license may seem like it was about dudes with shotguns who wanted to destroy others' property... at le
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start wearing clothes, only to keep out the weather.
Actually we did start wearing clothes only to keep out the weather.
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Actually we did start wearing clothes only to keep out the weather.
You're right of course. And to keep the bugs in.
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If the woman is not wearing hijab, then it is her fault.
Re: Solution looking for a problem (Score:1)
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I'm going to get ahead of the curve with my anti anti drone drone drone.
Occam's Razor, people (Score:2)
12-gauge shotgun with modified choke ought to take out the plastic birds
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How big a market is this "defensive" drone problem? Seems more likely the market is bullies chasing down innocent drones
Seems like you are a child who lacks a bass understanding of how drones
are used in the real world.
If you ever leave your mother's basement you are in for a shock, son.
The treble with that remark is that it's totally off-key.
Maybe the NRA was right? (Score:1)
Just to play devils advocate for a few seconds, wouldn't it be cool to have a small canon to launch something like a fishing-line "hairy ball" at the drone, which would jam the moving parts, but if it hit a human would just bounce off them?
Like bullet-powered guns are meant to kill people, but good luck hitting a drone that is moving quickly.
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You want something that turns or tumbles in flight so it sweeps a big area. Like a bolas or chain-shot.
My particular application is as an ATWAD (Anti Two Wheeled Asshat Device).
Dullards. (Score:1)
we've collectively never come across any bogus use of drones
"Intelligence" is the ability to ignore what you find inconvenient, I guess.
Cheaper: Ballons (Score:5, Interesting)
Put 4 big helium ballons and place nylon wires between them. Operates 24h a day and is cheap.
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on 4 weather ballon, you can place ~ 8 km of nylon fishing line.
So you can randomly traverse a 100x100x100m volume 80 times.
Not unlikely that you crash the papparazis expensive drone with this approach.
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drone operators would only need to glue razorblades on the tips of the rotors
And take the chance that this will go out of control near a playground? Way to make friends in law enforgement and regulatory agencies. Then, nobody can have nice things anymore.
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"Only" (Score:3)
drone operators would only need to glue razorblades on the tips of the rotors
Which would Only affect the entry aerodynamic stability of the craft, making it just as likely it would slit the operators throat on launch as it would be to slice through anything, or be controllable at all...
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You say that as it were a bad thing.
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i did not say that this is a new idea.
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Worst. Name. Ever.
At least since Apple decided not to go with "Liger"
Inevitible (Score:1)
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I have said it before and I'll say it again: I'm amazed noone has taken a consumer-grade self-built multicopter, put a pound of plastic explosive on it, and flown it into or next to an important building from a mile away.
Building a quadcopter or such capable of carrying a lethal payload and flying it FPV takes about $250-300.
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That type of attack would be very unlikely to cause any structural damage. You would not be able to get close enough to the walls so you will only get splash impact.
It would be a useful anti-personnel weapon but your payload is always going to be cripplingly small for the cost. If you are someone with access to plastic explosive you probably have access to mortars. A mortar will have a much longer range and deliver a much greater payload. In addition it actually strikes the building before detonation ra
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Yes, anti-personnel is the danger. I wouldn't be surprised if the secret service don't already jam potential drone control frequencies for their high-value people. The real danger is with autonomous drones that use GPS or, worse, are smart enough to do without it. These things could be a poor man's mini cruise missile.
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Probably because most of the terrorists are not thinkers. These guys are still trying to set off some m80s in the back of a car next to a propane cylinder and expecting something exiting to happen. Essentially they are not smart enough to put something like that together that actually works without help. They are not smart enough to solicit help without getting caught either.
It will happen eventually but its going to have to be some relatively intelligent person who has gone of the deep end for one reaso
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that is a naive and dangerous assumption.
Look at any engineering program in the US -- how many pakistani / arab students are there? How hard would it be for someone actually motivated to use such a device to find one of these students who either already had resentment towards the west, or had family back home who could be used as leverage?*
The complexity involved in *using* these tools, pales in comparison to developing them. All it would it take is getting an impressionable kid to design it.
*I only menti
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Look at any engineering program in the US -- how many pakistani / arab students are there? How hard would it be for someone actually motivated to use such a device to find one of these students who either already had resentment towards the west, or had family back home who could be used as leverage?
Impossible no, but there is always going to be risk in a free society. I suspect there are not that many engineering students that take the 72 virgins stuff literally, and more than there are those who fear going into the woods because Satan might be waiting. They are engineering students because they have talent, aspirations, and opportunity. Could they use that opportunity to be a suicide terrorist, yes they could, but most of them certainly feel they worked hard to get where they are and want somethi
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That is a silly assumption, that terrorists aren't thinkers.
The suicide guys? Yeah, they're the ones who can be persuaded that dying is worth it. But 'terrorist' by now encompasses such a large group, there are going to be plenty of people capable of planning a complex attack.
One guy with a few drones remotely piloted on a common frequency, say 433MHz, carrying pipe bombs onto school playgrounds cannot easily be stopped. Where this same guy with an AK47 can be stopped with a single bullet.
Re:Inevitible (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't forget that guy in New Zealand who designed and built an inexpensive home-built cruise missile that could be launched from a pickup truck. It wasn't big, but it was effectively unstoppable and theoretically pretty easy to launch and escape without getting caught.
The important part here, is that he built a guidance system for it. Adapt that for a small drone platform, and suddenly you don't need to be at the controls or within visual range of the thing.
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The important part here, is that he built a guidance system for it. Adapt that for a small drone platform, and suddenly you don't need to be at the controls or within visual range of the thing.
For a quadcopter, you can use ordinary COTS GPS for guidance, or an IMU including same. They travel at speeds at which GPS is willing to function. Cruise missiles take more work.
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I wouldn't trust GPS to navigate a city, too much opportunity to bump into things, even above street level. You definitely need some kind of terrain recognition / object avoidance system in place.
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So that would be... (Score:3)
(too long to fit in the subject line)
Unnecessarily hi-tech (Score:3)
Surface to Drone Missile (Score:3)
Begun (Score:5, Funny)
The drone war has!
Easyer solution: A hawk-friendly environment (Score:3)
An easyer solution and way more fun :-):
Hawk vs. Drone: 1 - 0 [youtube.com]
Who pays for dammage caused by fall? (Score:1)
Neighbour's greenhouse smashed by falling illegal drone (over my or neighbour's land), downed by my legal drone (over my land, possibly on autopilot). Who's liable?
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Neighbour's greenhouse smashed by falling illegal drone (over my or neighbour's land), downed by my legal drone (over my land, possibly on autopilot). Who's liable?
The city goes after the owner of the drone, and the owner of the drone goes after whoever shot it down. They might well both win. The People lose, with such a waste of time in court.
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laser (Score:2)
Model rocketry SAMs are next (Score:2)
Model rocketry Surface to Air Missiles are next, it seems.
startup landing page and few gifs (Score:2)
FFS /. stop wasting my time.
Best Robot Wars ever (Score:1)
Seems like jamming would be easier (Score:1)
Most drones operate using either 2.4 or 5.8Ghz frequencies for control. Seems like downing a drone just requires a RF jammer with a directional antenna. I suppose that the targeted drone can still get up again once you stop jamming it, so that's a difference compared to the fighting drone.
I also suppose this wouldn't block drones that were set to operate autonomously.
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Intentionally jamming an RF signal, even if you think it's illegally over your own property (which is also debatable), is a federal crime.
Section 333 of Title 47
Section 302 prevents selling such equipment.
There are about 5 bands that model aircraft use, and they are narrow bands. You'd have to not on
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It's not clear to me that the wording above applies to wifi frequencies. But in any case, in order to "jam" wifi, you don't need an illegal "jammer", you could use a wifi station that broadcasts strong signals across multiple channels.
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Jamming a single frequency would only result in the loss of a few frames of control signals before the TX/RX would move on to the next frequency.
~~
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Not all RC systems use spread spectrum. (The very popular DSM2 doesn't.) Those that use wifi don't either. Also, most video transmitters are single frequency. In any case, the 2.4Ghz band is fairly narrow. With only 3 wifi channels, you can cover most of it.
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~~
And let the lawsuits commence. (Score:2)
Robert Sheckley saw it coming, in 1953. (Score:2)
Liability. (Score:2)
The second you disable another drone in flight you become liable for any damage it does coming down. If someone gets injured or something gets damaged the owner of the attack drone in on the hook. It could also be considered destruction of private property if what the drone was doing was legal.
Being Pestered By Drone-Hunting Drones ? (Score:2)