Slashdot Mirror
Hobbyists Selling Tesla Coil Kits To Fund Drone Flight Over North Korea
An anonymous reader writes Imagine for a moment having at your fingertips the ability to send a small robotic messenger — a minion if you will — virtually anywhere in the world and back. Sure, you've seen those fun little drone toys at the mall and perhaps you have had a friend that likes to tinker around with model airplanes, but what you are about to see unfold here is genuinely an unprecedented work of good 'ol fashioned American ingenuity. Apparently a group of hackers has started a kickstarter to build and fly a small drone over North Korea and back and is selling mini tesla coils to do this. "All of the money from this project will be used to extend the distance our drone can fly, so the more backers we have, the farther it will be able to go," they say.
Nothing helps ease tension in a hotbed area run by a bunch of crazies with cannons aimed at Seoul like tiny drones. Good on ya, you bunch of smarties!
This aught to be fun to watch...
The North Korean hackers have a new target!
Interesting that "Starting a War" does not appear in that section.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Oh, this won't end badly.. Vehicles crossing state boundaries without permission tends to irritate governments.
From FKP
We do understand that the legality of sending a drone on an intercontinental flight may be dubious. We will work with authorities to try to make our flight happen.
Good luck with that.
All of the money from this project will be used to extend the distance our drone can fly, so the more backers we have, the farther it will be able to go!
Ok, now I know it's a hoax/scam.
Seriously, what is this doing on Slashdot? It's not even April 1st, yet
The North Koreans aren't really a fun loving bunch. Starting World War III for kicks isn't really the best idea. Maybe if you shot puppies across the DMZ using an air cannon would be a better idea.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
You can buy "poke the bear with a stick" kits on Ebay, medical and political fallout insurance not included...
Why not leave anything that could start a major diplomatic incident (at best) to the hands of amateurs!
what could possibly go wrong...
bickerdyke
Is it actually necessary to the function that it look like random shit dug out of a junk heap, or was that a stylistic choice? And no, it absolutely does not have a fucking "cool N64 base". It looks like shit in a vaguely block shape.
Some low-altitude footage of the death camps would be a good thing to do...so far there's only satellite imagery and witness reports to go on.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Hopefully they can take some pictures or video's to show how things are going in North Korea.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
Why not somewhere more appropriate or interesting like europe? India? Africa? Why of all places would you send this drone somewhere it would be detected, tracked and destroyed in all likelyhood upon arrival?
Granted "drone" and "north korea" make a senasational headline for a project but outside of being a punching bag for failed american international policy North Korea doesnt seem to bring any intrinsic value to this project outside of the fact that between seth rogan, sony pictures, and our international sanctions America seems to have a morbid fascination with the place.
Good people go to bed earlier.
They can't design and build an intercontinental drone for ten thousand dollars. Nobody can. It’s total fantasy.
Well that's not going to get shot down at all. No'siree.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Why do you think the FAA is so nervous about drones?
You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
Now when South Korea and/or the USA send surveillance drones they will have "plausible deniability". I actually wonder whether they "kick started" this initiative.
Kickstarter's "prohibited items" page says this:
"If your project involves something illegal, heavily regulated, or potentially dangerous for backers and it is not on this list, please contact us before starting your project. "
The stated purpose of this fundraiser is a project which is clearly in violation of sovereign borders and international law.
The creators of this fundraiser should not be surprised when Kickstarter cancels the project.
Imagine if this was a fundraiser to perform the same activity against the U.S.A. These guys would never see the money. Hell, they'd be lucky if they didn't get a visit by shadow men and sent for extraordinary rendition.
For 10K they are going to build a drone that can navigate, on its own, the Pacific ocean, avoiding storms, accounting for winds, rough air, birds, etc and have enough fuel to fly 5,500 miles non-stop. Lets say the can do 20 mph, at that speed it's an 11.5 day trip. Even at a Predator speed of 135 mph it's still a 2 day trip. They may want to give it a try but the probability of success is zero. Of course, they could fly to South Korea and launch it from there, I'm sure the RSK wouldn't mind that. Then again, there's always the Aleutians...
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
If they had the skills to build an intercontinental UAV they would have realised that it will need solar power, overnight energy storage and high altitude flight capability. That's going to take it a long way over the limits for a model aircraft so they'll need FAA approval before their first test flights. Their target $10k might get them through that process but I wouldn't bet on it.
"All of the money from this project will be used to extend the distance our drone can fly, so the more backers we have, the farther it will be able to go,"
Power be damned, they invented a drone that flies on money!
Why are they overcomplicating their project by trying to build a drone that can cross the Pacific ocean and back? Not that I'm confident that they'd even be able to build one that can even go a few hundred miles, but round trip from the west coast to the Korean Peninsula is gonna be 12 freakin' thousand miles, minimum.
Yeah, good luck with that.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
You mean they're going to send it from the US, not South Korea?
It doesn't seem prudent to be figuring out ways to violate another country's airspace unless wants to actually be at war with them. I wouldn't want to comment on the merits of war with North Korea per se, but at least from the perspective of maintaining peace and a normal international order, nations generally expect to have their borders respected, and they take responsibility to control their citizens enough to make sure they don't violate the borders of their neighbours.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
OK, this was fun.
But Kickstarter needs better quality control than this.
What's next? Basement Cold Fusion? Brew Your Own Cure for Cancer?
Trevor Nestor Creatorr
Beyond the obvious problems with the concept (the cost of goods sold for the coils themselves, the extreme improbability of a kerosene-powered drone built by college students being able to make intercontinental flights, the fact that there's no way in hell the FAA or the State Department would permit such a flight, etc.), there's several big red flags on this that scream "scam:"
This KS is an excellent example of a KS from which you want to stay far, far away. Most of the time, the KS community is pretty wise to these sorts of things, but I suppose the combination of "North Korea," "tesla coils," and submissions to Slashdot will lure people in. Don't be a sucker.
The Freelance Wizard
They've already done that...
I wanted to start a kickstarter to simply bomb North Korea. If the US does it, then the US did it. If a bunch of random people from around the world fund it, who is there to strike back at?
Putting aside for a moment that this KS is probably a scam, what are the ramifications of an act such as this.
In the current climate, what would he US call it if citizens of another nation started drone flights of unknown purpose over US soil. I would suggest the T word would be used and as soon as the launch point is identified all extra-judicial efforts will be made to ensure the perpetrators are removed from the gene-pool.
Would a state like "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" consider doing less if it were in their interest.
Other states have done similar to citizens of other countries, located outside of their boarders for reasons of National Security, see:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
AND
http://www.globalresearch.ca/t...
AND ALSO
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
Just to put this silliness into perspective, the current distance and duration records for a model aircraft are held by The Spirit of Butts' Farm, built by legendary modeller Maynard Hill. The model took 38 hours, 52 minutes, 19 seconds to fly the 1,881.6 mi (3,028.1 km) from Cape Spear, near St. John's, Newfoundland, to Mannin Beach, near Clifden, Ireland.
This was their fifth attempt to complete the trip. The longer trip across the Pacific, against the wind one way (the proposal is a round trip!), would seem to be far outside the meager budget of the Kickstarter guys.
You can make a tesla coil out of an old CRT TV- the older the better. Once your grandmother dies, rip her TV apart and pull out the flyback transformer. The original primary coils can be ripped off and thrown out, but the secondary coil (the one that looks like a rubber tire, and has the lead that looks like a stethoscope attached to the glass CRT) is the one you really need. There are circuits that use a 555 timer, but the one I made had a self-tuning circuit with two primary coils (eight turns each) and two feedback coils (four turns each). Those connect to two power resistors (collector leads and gate leads respectively). The emitter leads were grounded, along with the ground clip of the secondary coil, and the other ends of all the coil windings were at 12 volts. (There were also resistors to keep the transistors from blowing out; I forget the details.) I made it in high school with a bunch of alligator clips, and it threw a high frequency spark about an inch long from the secondary lead. The spark hurt if it hit your finger. But you could hold the secondary lead, THEN turn it on, and a metal object in your other hand would throw a spark. You could hold a fluorescent tube by the middle, and move the other end near a grounded object until it threw a spark at it from the prong. Then the half of the tube between your hand and the prong would light up. And it threw off all kinds of RF crud. The North Koreans could probably make a drone crash with one of those things.
1. Bogus idea: They are going to build a UAV from scratch, fly it from CA to NK and back, all for $10K? They could barely afford the fuel they need for $10K! 2. Arbitrarily using the word "Tesla" -- might as well jump on the Tesla Meme Bandwagon promoted by The Oatmeal to get some popularity. 3. Going after a political hot topic, North Korea, to get some more press attention. 4. Yep, it's a bogus kick starter.
I thought they were selling a suspension mod for an electric car, tesla coils, silly me.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Yeah I always knew that. The charge leaks away after a couple days, but the first thing you do is find them and short them out. Then you remove them, charge them back up, and sneak up on other kids with your new disposable taser.
Yes but once you get the power...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00...
I see what these geeks are thinking about now...
I'll keep my money, but thanks for the laugh.
Any chance it'll be able to carry a decent-sized payload.. like a tactical nuke? XD
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