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Link: https://hobbyking.com/en_us/ho...

Many people used to buy Craftsman tools due to high quality (compared to almost any other consumer brand) plus the lifetime warranty - the math made sense. But for years now the majority of Craftsman tools for sale are made in China ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ), the quality has plummeted to Harbor Freight levels, and every time you get a warranty replacement the quality drops. Normal MBA thinking - how can I goose profits this quarter, and my golden parachute will carry me out the door when things go bad. This thinking across American business is whats killing American retail. Why buy crap from Sears or Wall-Mart when I can get slightly better crap faster on Amazon? Or if you don't mind waiting, roll the dice and order your crap directly from China. Related, no connection or affiliate code - I don't go to hobby stores any more, I go to https://hobbyking.com/ . Sure, sometimes the parts that arrive are bad, but most of the time its exactly what the local store offers, at 1/3 the price. If people (in general) don't want (to pay for) quality, and business managers don't care about killing the business, then everything is short term now. Silly people don't realize that trickles down to their own jobs. Or already has.

FYI: You're on the "terrist" watch list now if you weren't already.

A ~$120 quad with a couple of added goodies (Either that or DIY: Neewer SK450 or F450, XXD 30A ESCs and 1000kV motors, cheapest-possible 4S 5AH battery, ~$18 Naze32 and $15 neo8m, $5 bluetooth to serial) can fly for over two miles at a total takeoff weight of 2 kg. It weighs 680g and the $30 battery weighs 650g. The total weight of a M67 grenade is only 400g and you should be able to pull the pin with an inexpensive winch constructed from a $8 eBay metal gear continuous drive servomotor which weighs 60g. Most of what you need comes with the servo since it comes with horns. Presumably you could improvise your own explosive, but I'm told it's not impossible to get one's hands on grenades.

Everything you need except the explosive can be simply purchased from eBay and/or HobbyKing. If you want to manage standby power you'll need a computer-controlled charger, those are readily available. So who exactly is this stuff supposed to be a secret from? You can google all of this up; I just did. I've been a loudmouth on the web about as long as there has bee one, so I think it's safe to say I'm already on watch lists. I don't have any problem passing an FBI background check though, or at least, I didn't last time I tried to work for a casino. The devil you know? Or maybe they just don't give a shit.

They don't really seem to be 4x as expensive (though the capacity loss is real).

For instance, a 30 second search on Hobby King:

Turnigy 2200 mah 3S Lipo pack, $10
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobby...

Zippy 2100 mah 3S LiFePO4 pack, $15.60
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobby...

I bet the cell manufacturers don't pay more than $4-5 for the current Lipos in our phones in bulk. That would be more like $6-7.50 for a LiFePo4 cell. But it would have to be 25-30% larger for the same capacity as well.

No idea why NO manufacturers are willing to do this though.

They don't really seem to be 4x as expensive (though the capacity loss is real).

For instance, a 30 second search on Hobby King:

Turnigy 2200 mah 3S Lipo pack, $10
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobby...

Zippy 2100 mah 3S LiFePO4 pack, $15.60
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobby...

I bet the cell manufacturers don't pay more than $4-5 for the current Lipos in our phones in bulk. That would be more like $6-7.50 for a LiFePo4 cell. But it would have to be 25-30% larger for the same capacity as well.

No idea why NO manufacturers are willing to do this though.

I'm honestly not sure. They are always referred to as Lithium Poly. Claimed power density is 0.15-0.17kw/kg. They are 4 cells in parallel and operate at 16v

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobby...

The first time, we built full-size planes, then we built models that look like them. Now, we are building model planes with these:

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobby...

...now we just need to build bigger ones!

I am against huge companies, but what does this have to do with big aviation companies? They have not missed the market, because it is not their market.

Just go to http://hobbyking.com/ and you can order a quadcopter (or drone) in pieces and build it yourself.

Buy a FPV set and add it. Or build a plane yourself, add sole componenets and you are ready.

Now look into long range FPV and you will find that most of them are home made. 25 miles is not uncommon as a distance.

This also exists already since several years. It is just that it is now easier to buy and to fly that has changed.

There are youtube channels that show you how to build a plane capable of carrying a few kg for of $3 of parts purchased from the dollar store. It only takes a few minutes and $100 of electronics.

First up, nothing is 100% perfect, so lets' skip that red herring.
That said, your "drones r cheap" is half the point of forcing registration. For now a painted serial number is a easily quick web lookup away.

How to pay for it? A $500 fine for an unregistered drone will cover it pretty fast. Cop sees you with a drone, inquires about registry and tickets you if yours is not registered. That's high enough that they have a $$$ incentive to enforce it (not that quotas exist, nooo). If it is registered? No big deal.

This will mainly be selectively enforced against terr'ah looking people I'm sure, but that's life. The $500 means lil Jimmy will get scanned once in a while too.

So the benefit is that if someone shows up and practices drone flight in the USA, we'll know who they are. If they are sketchy seeming, they'll be watched closer sooner, rather than spying on the HomeLand Artist guys who wrote "Homeland is Watermelon" all day equally.

If someone trains in IDontCaristan and comes here with a fully loaded explosive device, great planning and execution for them - we're no worse off in that corner case. That guy is probably using a much cheaper and more effective mortar anyway. But bumbling self inspired idiots? They'll get flagged in the first dozen times or so they takes it out to practice. That's the guy we CAN and should TRY to stop. Not crazy waste o time TSA crap. Give everyone a rubber truncheon, lock the door and we're good to go as far as that stuff is concerned. We'll beat half to death to death any brown people that can't wait to pee, much less actual terrorists...

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2011/05/09/passengers-and-flight-crew-subdue-unruly-man-on-sfo-bound-plane/
http://nypost.com/2011/11/17/pilot-locked-in-lavatory-causes-unnecessary-terror-scare/
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/someone-did-a-shit-so-bad-a-british-airways-flight-had-to-turn-around-and-land-475

Obviously I'd prefer the cops to have a binoculars to read the drone registration rather than forcing the pilot to recall/land mid flight and voice verify, maybe spend five minutes to let the guy demo his legit skill and use his charge normally, but I'd also like them not to shoot people over routine matters just because they don't lie down on the ground and play dead instantly.

There are youtube channels that show you how to build a plane capable of carrying a few kg for of $3 of parts purchased from the dollar store. It only takes a few minutes and $100 of electronics.

While you're correct, you're spending your money in the wrong place if you buy that TX. You want the HK-T6A. That way you will have some money left over from your $100 to get on eBay and pick up a motor, prop, and ESC, as well as some super-cheap servos. And if you have a smartphone with USB OTG to program it with in the field you can get a good flight controller board for $13, and with a $15 GPS module you've made a plane into a drone for around $30. I went ahead and spent $20 on a FC with a display on it for my quad so I wouldn't need to fiddle with a phone to make sure my receiver is working, etc.

There are youtube channels that show you how to build a plane capable of carrying a few kg for of $3 of parts purchased from the dollar store. It only takes a few minutes and $100 of electronics.

... You're claiming that there are billions of sports cars available for sale right now?

No. Like with all design decisions, "sports" implies tradeoffs in other areas which are more valuable to most people. Furthermore, all people don't want a new car right now, and it makes sense to delay production as long as possible since technology keeps developing.

Or did you perhaps confuse "everyone can have a car" with "everyone can have an infinite number of cars"?

As to status symbols... who said the product had to make sense?

Status symbols make perfect sense in a class-based society. However, they obey different economic rules than mass-produced goods, because status symbol's utility comes from its exclusiveness, while a mass-produced good's utility comes from its functionality (and thus doesn't go down when more is produced, and in the case of phones actually goes up).

But if you'd prefer something less silly we can talk about jet engines. Can we produce a jet engine for everyone? No. We cannot produce 5~7 billion jet engines.... we do not have the industrial base to do that. And even if we did, we wouldn't do it because it is inefficient

Right, so what does this have to do with either cell phones or cars?

Also, you do realize that small jet engines exist, right?

What gives something value is our opinions of it or our desire for it to accomplish some goal. But when you cite your opinion of value as if everyone else should share it or the market should share it... you are either arrogantly presuming to tell everyone how they should structure their economy or you're just confused as to how the markets work.

Failing to account for externalities, in this case opportunity costs, is a well-known failure mechanism in market-based price forming.

it is a democracy of dollars.

It's an odd democracy where one person gets to cast hundreds of times as many votes as another. In fact it sounds more like a dictatorship to me.

As to the inevitable collapse of the final communist failures... yes. Their stupid ideology is doomed. It is ironically holding on strongest in the US... amongst our neo peasantry.

Ironic, yes, but predictable. As soon as the communist block collapsed, the upper classes began looting everyone beneath them - because what are these "neo peasants" going to do about it, start a new revolution? Which they will, once their situation gets bad enough, which it will, because the rich and powerful can always get a little more so by squeezing a little harder. So the cycle will repeat itself until one revolution actually manages to solve the inherent problems of capitalism (specifically, that wealth tends to concentrate towards the top without limit) through sheer dumb luck if nothing else. Whether it'll call itself communism, social democracy, anarcho-whatever or something else is irrelevant; either way, it's capitalism that's doomed, or at least delegated to guiding developing economies through Industrial Revolution to the Information Age. This might even mean perpetual existence, should we ever get serious about colonizing space.

It's not the Marx's and Lenin's who'll bring forth the downfall of capitalism, but the Trump's and Koch brothers.

But the ambitions of that sad ideology are quickly becoming moot... our industrial and economic systems are shifting beyond the reference frame of their conceptual model.

And that shift is taking them to a place where most people have little to look forward to except flipping burgers and waiting to see how they're screwed over next. The ideological structure of capitalism is starting to get

Aquila Grande
Aquila

I'm pretty sure the limitation has nothing to do with the batteries and everything to do with the power electronics, the "inverters" which create AC in sync with the grid. Just to give you an idea of the power you can get out of LiPo batteries: This toy battery is rated for about 40A ("20 times capacity", 20*2.2) continuous current. In an application where battery longevity is important, you probably shouldn't draw more than 10A, but at the average voltage of 11.1V that's more than 100W already, from a $9 battery with a 0.020kWh capacity.

They aren't going to bring the price down to $50 until the sensors are $1 each. Considering a quality GPS still costs > $50, as do a set of gyros or a set of accelerometers that are high enough quality to be useful, this is a year or two off still.

I watched the video yesterday and I'm not re-watching it, but did Danyliw's quad even have GPS? Because if not, you can already get a decent Micro Quad for about $50 that's built out of a PCB. Granted, it doesn't have GPS and can't fly autonomously, but it is a standards-compatible and hackable quad at the $50ish price point.

The nRF24 sounds neat.

Did you see the gauge of wires attached to that connector? Here's the harness. Notice the description of 12 gauge wires.

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobby...

60 amps. It's not that tiny, but it's just the size of the wire. Granted, the surface are of a barrel connector is quite high.

Check this out:

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobby...

Stuff's gettin real, y'all.

I've seen people do this with quads, what's the difference?

RC's these days can be outfitted with auto pilots.

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__37328__HKPilot_Mega_V2_5_Flight_Controller_USB_GYRO_ACC_MAG_BARO.html

Still I see this as being little more than an RC with a crash frame.

You can find starter kits at http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__702__689__Robotics_DIY-Robotics_Kits.html
If you want to go for the soccer project, perhaps the biped kit would do.

Great idea, but its likely to only stimulate the development of interceptor drones out to get one keg up on the other drones.

Why isn't this an annual robotics contest yet?

from TFA, it is.

Alright, somebody help me here. Please?

Other than the involvement of a very expensive 3D printer, what's the big deal? At $2000 this thing is hugely expensive. Especially when you consider that the $2000 does not seem to include labor hours or printer time.

Meanwhile, Hobby King has almost ready to fly trainers of similar size and design for $210.

So, what is the point? What is so great about this, other than personal accomplishment and a 3D printer?

Toys R Us has a $20 CDN toy laptop with QWERTY keyboard:

http://www.toysrus.ca/product/index.jsp?productId=11495909

add 2 sets of rechargeable batteries: $2*6 = $12
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__25023__Turnigy_AA_LSD_2400mAh_Low_Self_Discharge_ready_to_use_.html

and a charger: $6
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__27991__NiZN_AA_1_5A_Battery_Charger.html

You can charge the batteries when you have power.
Alternatively reduce the number of batteries and chargers to less than 1 set per computer and pool the leftover $$$ to get a solar panel to power a charging station

Toys R Us has a $20 CDN toy laptop with QWERTY keyboard:

http://www.toysrus.ca/product/index.jsp?productId=11495909

add 2 sets of rechargeable batteries: $2*6 = $12
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__25023__Turnigy_AA_LSD_2400mAh_Low_Self_Discharge_ready_to_use_.html

and a charger: $6
http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__27991__NiZN_AA_1_5A_Battery_Charger.html

You can charge the batteries when you have power.
Alternatively reduce the number of batteries and chargers to less than 1 set per computer and pool the leftover $$$ to get a solar panel to power a charging station

Not as hard or as heavy as you'd imagine.

To clear up some confusion I found the source on CPSC's own site. It's slightly more informational than the Reuters summary... But I'm still confused.

I bought tiny fridge magnets from The Container Store that are actually tiny neodymium cubes, are they banned also? Are they exempt because they're not toys?

How about just plain neodymium magnets direct from suppliers? Are they banned also or are they exempt because they're not labeled as toys?

How about a hobby brushless motor kit that comes with neodymium magnets? Is that banned also or is that exempt because even though it's a toy the magnets are supplied with the purpose of installing them in the motor?

So many unanswered questions... I think it would be easier to require all kids to wear muzzles to keep their mouth closed at all times. It would solve all the issues where kids choke on things or eat poisonous/dangerous materials, and has added benefit of muffling their annoying whiny cries.

I sent the following letter to Bruce Schneier last year...

Back in the July 2011, I built a device called the Video Coat.

I then went on a family vacation, which culminated in displaying the coat at the Maker Faire in Detroit. The coat traveled to Detroit packed into a suitcase, and I spent an hour assembling it in the hotel room.

I had to catch a plane just as the Faire was ending, so we quickly piled the family into the car and drove to the airport. I didn't have time to pack the coat back into its suitcase, so I carried it on my lap.

I wore the coat into the airport. Everything was fine until I arrived at the luggage check-in counter and was getting my boarding passes. Then, a Detroit cop walked up and told me that he'd had about 50 phone calls about my coat.

They asked me to please pack it into my checked luggage. I had my boarding passes at this time, so I took the time to sit down and disassemble the coat and pack it into its suitcase.

Then, the TSA had decided that my family (wife and two teenage sons) was special, so they wrote SSSS on all of our boarding passes. They nicely let us cut ahead of all the other passengers so that we could get fully scanned, groped, fondled and molested in time to catch our flight. I was enjoying this whole situation very much, since it was so surreal.

The most surreal part was when they inspected the eight big LiPo batteries that are used to provide power to the video coat. They decided that the batteries were small enough to be allowed on the flight, and they handed all eight of them to me for me to repack into my son's backpack.

The way more ultimately surreal part was a month later, when I was at Burning Man, recharging the batteries one morning. I wasn't paying attention, and I accidentally plugged one battery into another battery instead of plugging it into the charger. There was a brilliant white light as the contacts started arcing against each other. I quickly unplugged the batteries and regained my composure.

Since this battery is designed to provide 100 Amperes continuous current in normal use, one can only imagine what the short-circuit current capability is. The manufacturer doesn't provide any safety fuses or shutoff circuits in the packs. It's safe to assume that two of these batteries plugged into each other would catch fire in about 10 seconds.

Imagine if I had plugged two batteries into each other on an airplane! I had enough incendiary material on hand to start four fine lithium fires on that aircraft, not that I would want to do anything remotely like that. I really don't know what the flight crew would have done about that situation. It definitely would make headlines.

So can you please tell me why you think that the TSA allows incendiary devices to be carried on board, but not bottled water?

Bruce's reply? "Because there was an uncovered liquid plot, but no documented battery plot."

You're severely misinformed, battery technology has improved quite a bit over the past few years.

Here's an example, at 12 Volts this battery can supply 325 Amps continuous. That's about 3500 watts, and this battery weighs just 442 grams (less than a pound) and it costs only $50.

If you want even higher wattage, you can get higher voltage batteries, at 37 volts this battery pack can supply a whopping 12000 watts continuous, and weighs only about 3 pounds.

You're severely misinformed, battery technology has improved quite a bit over the past few years.

Here's an example, at 12 Volts this battery can supply 325 Amps continuous. That's about 3500 watts, and this battery weighs just 442 grams (less than a pound) and it costs only $50.

If you want even higher wattage, you can get higher voltage batteries, at 37 volts this battery pack can supply a whopping 12000 watts continuous, and weighs only about 3 pounds.

Need an ultra high discharge or charge rate? NiCd cells can have extremely low internal resistance, which is required for fast charge/discharge.

That is indeed a good feature of them, but LiPo cells have recently beaten even NiCd cells in this regard.

It's not uncommon at all to find LiPo packs intended for R/C use that are rated at a sustained 60C discharge rate -- for example, this pack which they say can put out a sustained 390 amps (and considering that this is at a 65C rate -- that means the pack can do that for a whole 55 seconds.)

I don't know of any NiCd cells that can support this sort of power/weight ratio.

This pack can probably also handle a 15C charge rate -- so full charge in four minutes.

That said, NiCd still has it's niche -- they're resistant to abuse (running this LiPo pack at 65C will wear it out fast), tend to survive a large number of cycles, don't deteriorate much over time, can handle fairly high discharge rates and are cheap. But they've been largely replaced by other chemistries.

It's not an actual missile but it is called a Stinger. It's a ready-to-fly manually controlled Anti-UAV device for ~$150 including battery and charger.

The plane itself is nothing dangerous or even impressive.

Build your own if you want... start here: http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/uh_viewItem.asp?idProduct=14465