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Meet Drone Shield, an Ambitious Idea For a $70 Drone Detection System
An anonymous reader writes "Here's an Interesting idea of how to use a Raspberry Pi and a few other inexpensive items to make a low cost detection system. From the article: 'The Drone Shield would combine a Raspberry Pi, a signal processor, a microphone, and analysis software to scan for specific audio signatures and compare them against what known drones sound like. (Because obviously a Predator drone is going to sound very different than a small quadcopter.) Once a match is found, the Drone Shield then sends an e-mail or SMS to its owner...'"
Good job. This tech could be used for a lot of other good things as well. Basically an electronic ear for specific frequencies. I'm surprised it's not much more developed.
Question is, will it have better acuity then a trained dog with excellent hearing?
A Predator has an operating ceiling of 25,000 feet. You think a raspberry pi and mic is going to hear a Predator drone in cruise mode that's 5 miles above? You can't even hear a massive passenger jet at that altitude! Now a quadcopter is a different story, as they are as loud as can be, but saying this system would work on something like a Predator is a stretch.
Better known as 318230.
You run away?
That's as much of a "shield" as a radar detector "protects" you from speeding tickets.
It's tough to reliably detect low-level background repetitive noise without detecting all sorts of nearby domestic appliances, car engines, and such. In the modern city, we live with *alot* of noise.
Now, if the problem is to detect jet engines in rural areas featuring mountainous terrain, then I think I know what the point of this project is.
Someone comes along playing the sound of a drone on their smartphone and you realized what a waste of time and money it was.
So, it's a project with a computer that happens to run on a slightly slower processor. If this ran on a mini-itx no one would even mention that part.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
This is more likely to work better as a "squirrel" vs. "bird" detector, or with good/better datasets, perhaps even as a "cardinal" vs. "bluejay" vs. "mockingbird" vs. "car alarm" detector, especially if the birds are in your front or back yard. But really, the concept of hearing a predator drone is very farfetched, unless the drone is flying super low for some reason!
.
Better to use this as an auto-logging device for some birders falling in love with counting how many birdies are coming by, or for recording to the exact micro-second when the swallows finally make it back to San Juan Capistrano!
Hopefully better spelling will be a natural consequence of said recolution.
Don't drones blast RF on known frequencies? Unless they're flying with auto pilot and just collecting data, but that would be dangerous in an urban environment with lot's of air traffic. How much would it cost to build something with an antenna that's just listening for broadcasts on these frequencies? You could even measure the doppler shift to see if they're coming or going, and at what speed. Listening for audible noise just seems useless anywhere outside of a big empty desert with a large directional microphone.
Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGCFmSFvIZw
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Seriously, when I read the headline, my mind read "Meat Drone Shield" and I thought at first there was some kind of organic meat shield which screwed up with drone targeting systems (like infra-red, etc.) and provided protection.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
When was the last time a drone was spying on you? I'm getting sick of this drone hysteria that is being hyped by the media and now apparently also by slashdot.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Nothing short of a Soviet Workers America can stop the genocidal depradations of the killer gang of Wall Street/Washington.
Hopefully better spelling will be a natural consequence of said recolution.
Ah, spelling. I was wanderg why he wanted to de-Prada his new Soviet state.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Isn't the government supposed to be in service to the citizens? And here are the citizens getting organised and generating their own funding in order to defend themselves from the government. That's the same government which is 'elected' by the citizens. You know things are outrageously out of hand when citizens are funding the generation of defensive mechanisms to protect themselves from the military industrial complex of their government.
Isn't it about time for honest Americans to stand up and say "I don't care how hungry my children are or how much I like playing with guns / flying drones or how good an education I get, I'm simply not going to fight to support a corrupt regime". After all, just about everyone in society knows the difference between right and wrong. Call me naive, but how can somebody put themselves in a position where they disregard their own morality? There's not enough benefits in any job to exercise a job description which involves attacking civilians. And make no bones about it, you aren't just "following orders".
Quit trying to defend yourselves against a complex which is expecting and anticipating that you'll fight back. Start taking your own action to disempower the complex, it simply wouldn't work without the support of the citizenry. Convince yourself, convince your neighbours and then convince your 'leaders'. Isn't it about time?
Take the red pill.
You actually don't need to listen for them. If you watch really carefully, you might be able to see part of your neighborhood blow up. Then you know a drone is overhead.
As a commercial sUAS operator, this is depressing. To think that Americans believe their lives are so interesting that the government would care to spy on them is downright unbelievable, and I think the person trying to sell these "Drone Shields" should be tried before the Supreme Court. It seems everyone is trying to get a scoop of the "drone pie" these days, be it news sources, "terrorists," police departments, or people trying to sell "drone detectors."
It just undermines the good uses for UAVs, like environmental monitoring, control of infectious disease, mapping, and agriculture. All the media including /. (!) cares about is selling some stupid sensational story about how "the government is going to spy on us and have missiles pointed at us all the time with these here drones." If you're gullible enough to believe this BS, then do something about it! Don't just sit on your asses and whine like sick dogs.
Using an RPi for this is also plain overkill. You could do this unoriginal crap with an Arduino.
This is obviously going to get downrated to oblivion since it's posted as Anon, but screw it. I forgot my password and don't feel like being tracked. If someone will read it, I'll have a little faith left in this cruel world.
At least the tools of the fifth column are kept busy with an imaginary problem...
Its not like we think our Government wants to spy on us because they think we intend them harm.
I think its more down the line of : You just fixed your patio cover. Did you have a permit to do that (fee)? Did you have it inspected by the city inspector ( another fee ). We need to re-do your property tax!
And gee whiz, what if someone is hanging their wash in the back yard on a clothes line instead of using a dryer!
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
In all honesty, while there are plenty of good reasons to dislike drones, I think this is a terrible one. You're worried that drones would allow them perfect enforcement of laws? How is this a bad thing exactly?
Worst case I can think of is that they are enforcing bad laws in which case right now they might slip by because "no one ACTUALLY pays that fee!" except that a widely ignored but still on the books law is unfair to anyone who actually does follow it, or leaves it as an opening to target a person who hasn't done anything else wrong.
"Warning: Predator drone detec---"
Predator drones use a common small aircraft engine used on about 30 other small aircraft. Similar Rotax engines are used in snowmobiles, jet skis, go-carts, and other small engine applications.
You're going to get an alarm every time something with a small engine goes by, and you probably won't pick up an aircraft flying high enough to not be blatantly annoying.
If you want to detect nearby aircraft, build a radar. There are automotive anti-collision radars that could be adapted.
Apart from hobby drones (like quadcopters) it's fairly limited what drones you'll encounter around where you live. Unless you live where the wild Predator drones roam... there you'll most likely hear the sound of missiles detonating before you hear the drone itself.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
"Yeah, you'll need some bigger tools for that."
Can't we just raise money to buy/rent/bribe the "bigger tools" who keep telling us that this (drone-use) horse$hit is "legal?" Just sayin'...
"Democracy." It's just a slogan.
Nothing short of a Soviet Workers America can stop the genocidal depradations of the killer gang of Wall Street/Washington.
Because I am sure that there is not ubiquitous surveillance and drones operating after these fabulous revolutions. Kinda like in China, North Korea, Russia, Cuba, .... Maybe you better rethink that plan.
Sounds more like a drone notifier than a drone shield.
As a commercial sUAS operator, this is depressing. To think that Americans believe their lives are so interesting that the government would care to spy on them is downright unbelievable
For that, the gouvernment put quite a bit of effort into defining what can and what can't be done to American citizens using drones...
And mostly while circumventing the checks and balances.
bickerdyke
And gee whiz, what if someone is hanging their wash in the back yard on a clothes line instead of using a dryer!
WHAT?? Someone drying clothes without using lots of electrical energy to power a big machine? How Un-American! :-)
bickerdyke
of course @drunkenpredator always tweets post mission :-)
I hope they add a feature to detect high speed ballistics (e.g., gun shots), and to mesh sensors so as to triangulate on the shooter ... to end [gun violence].
See related [commercial versions] and potentially useful [open-source versions].
===
[commercial versions]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfire_locator#Acoustic
http://www.shotspotter.com
[open-source versions]
http://phys.org/news/2013-04-tracking-gunfire-smartphone.html
http://noisetube.net
[gun violence]:http://slate.me/15JovGp
You're worried that drones would allow them perfect enforcement of laws? How is this a bad thing exactly?
Because the laws are not perfect....far, far from perfect.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It's easy to reduce gun violence. Just reduce the inequality in society.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think the person trying to sell these "Drone Shields" should be tried before the Supreme Court
Why? He's done nothing illegal, and certainly nothing as immoral as selling or running tech that can only profitably be used for warfare and surveillance.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Great, because I was worried about these.
No.
What I think most people are worried about are false-positives. I don't want my front door destroyed, my friendly dog shot to death, and my reputation smeared because some doofus with a drone mistakenly ended up identifying the infrared signature of my heated fish tank as a "growing operation" inside the house, for example.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
How about all the stupid, pointless, and even unconstitutional laws?
Hot Springs, Arkansas decided that it was going to "beautify" the lake fronts around it. So, they took to the skies, and took photos of everything. Your old care sitting out back had to be towed away. Your aluminum can collection had to go. The weathered siding on some buildings had to be replace, while other buildings were condemned. All because they wanted a "pretty" tourist trap.
And, most of it was wrong.
This was years ago, before the advent of drones. Today, Hot Springs probably has plans for daily flyovers. If they can catch you tanning in your enclosed back yard, you'll probably be ticketed for indecent exposure.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Given the Predator uses hellfire missiles that are supersonic, they're going to blow you up before it is physically possible to hear them. And the drone itself can fire from five miles away.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
Laws to a large part are reactionary rules created by an organization that has very fixed focus on propagating itself above any other concern. A major number of our laws come from a time when enforcement was a process where a person thought, "Should I apply this law?" and it has become a case of, "Can I apply this law?". This sickness is combined with a few other bad things. A general guiding opinion of people running government is that the citizenry is "their source of revenue". Another factor is that the punishment for smaller crimes is based on the idea that only a small number of actual infractions will be witnessed so that any penalty could be applied, so the penalty is quite a bit higher so it has a deterrent force. 100% perfect enforcement with the same level of penalty would create a level of penalty that is completely out of step with reality. (but within the dreams of bureaucrats...)
...". Whoa! Stop right there: PEOPLE have rights. A government is an organization chart. You want to make an organization chart have rights that supersedes your own? Really?
A government is a hierarchy, an organization chart. People who exist in a hierarchy naturally wish to move upward in that organization chart. A key part of this attitude that is necessary for someone live in a hierarchy is they need to constantly be aware of influence: both their own and the people around them.
In other words: Power
(Everyone really needs to get a copy of the book, "The Peter Principle" and read the whole book. It is funny because it is undeniably true.)
So you have an organization that is completely populated at all levels (except some at the bottom rung) by people with a focus on power. They tend to hold a belief that people outside the organization are their source of income, and they believe that they NEED and are justified in applying their influence/power on those that are outside the organization. (Starting to see any issues?)
Now lets add cheap affordable automated technology that will effortlessly allow micromanagement of the poor fools outside the organization... At A Profit!!!
You have camera's at a major percentage of intersections in modern urban areas now. It is small potatoes to add software that would allow biometric identification of people and automated identification of every single possible infraction possible. (The UK has gone a lot farther down this road then the US has...) Impossible? Uhhh... Half of the stupid fear based changes since 9/11 were "Impossible" to any adult in the 1970s.
So you say, "But I don't break any laws!" You are deluded.
- So you step out of a store fumbling with your wallet and drop a dollar. Camera sees you drop a piece of paper and issues your fine for littering.
- You are crossing the street in a crosswalk and step outside the white lines to pick up a dollar. Camera sees your infraction and sends you your fine for jaywalking.
- One thousand other little things happen in EVERYONE'S daily life...
The quantity of people that persist in a Pollyanna belief that the government will take care of them and that the government should remove all risk from their lives are a danger to responsible adults everywhere. They help governments take greater and greater control of their daily lives. They say silly things like, "The government has a right to
If you had a teenage daughter that danced around and played with the truth like a government, and spent money with the same reckless disregard as a government you would ground them for life! Governments are amazingly irresponsible and reckless.
Do not give them the opportunity to digitally micromanage every ones life. That "Liberty" thing that you might have heard of demands you keep government power in check.
because naturally you need a defensive swarm of drone that move with you through the world, forming a dome around you, to shield you from the potentially bad drones that are coming to get you, or perhaps happen to be a part of the drone shield of the guy standing next to you.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
You're worried that drones would allow them perfect enforcement of laws? How is this a bad thing exactly?
Because the impracticality of enforcement is why we don't have more ridiculous, privacy invading laws.
What's to stop a politician from claiming an "open window loophole" that allows people to evade the tax on electricity for using air conditioning? So there is a $0.10 per hour per day per window tax on exploiting the open window loophole. They couldn't do this because enforcement would be impossible. Thousands of drones would make this possible. There is no constitutional right to having open windows. Since the outside of your house is in plain view of the public, you have no right to privacy to protect you from the observation of the outside of your house.
These technologies enable government to reach into more aspects of our lives. That's why I oppose any expansion of government power.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Its projects like these that lead to things like.... uh... radar etc... he should get a government grant.
Your second paragraph nailed it.
We have so many laws on the books already, most unenforced, that everyone breaks on a daily basis as a routine part of life.
So you want to make life hard for someone? Just snoop on them and demand the law concerning some trivial thing be enforced. Did you do some home maintenance sans licensed contractor? Having a backyard barbeque? Having a few neighbors over? Are you harboring a stray cat? Did you trap a possom that was messing up your garden and getting to your veggies first? Have a sibling over longer than some HOA spec? Maybe you had a smoke outside - you never know, there may be some law about it.
I for one fear the police state we are evolving to, mostly because our law, like our tax code, is demeaning to a lot of us for the benefit of a few.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]