The conclusion of that article, just in case how good a card SOUNDS actually matters more than how well it reproduces noise at well beyond the range of the human ear.
Sound Blaster X-Fi - The built-in band limiting at 24KHz and rising noise floor above that make the card useless for wide-frequency testing. However, it had the best distortion performance and very low spurious signals on both inputs and outputs. This should probably be the best sounding card of the bunch.
I read the article, the police claimed the drone approached them, the pilots of the drone say their video shows it was not the case at all.
That coupled with the wildly inaccurate claims of the helicopter pilot lead to the simple conclusion that he wasn't speaking the truth.
While it is nice of you to spout a bunch of pilot stuff, the simple fact is that even the FAA says if you follow some simple rules all that other stuff simply doesn't apply to model aircraft operators. Your quad copter pilot flying at 300' doesn't have to comply with or know the difference between class E and class G airspace.
I disagree, an object that you believe to be much further away than it really is becomes very difficult to measure the altitude of.
As proof, he estimated it climbed 2000' in 2 secs. Since it clearly did not, he either got the time wildly wrong or he very inaccurately measured it's altitude.
I think it is clear he wasn't accurate in his altitude estimates and, as I said previously, nothing the pilot claimed should be given any credence.
The pilot were suffering from an optical illusion. They believed it was a must larger aircraft much further away and incorrectly estimated its speed, distance and altitude. In short, nothing they claim they saw should be given any credence. But as most people figure out with time, cops routinely exaggerate.
People have been killed by automobiles on more than several occasions.
There are about 100 childhood drownings in buckets, bathtubs, toilets and water features around homes every year.
The most recent, of the quite rare, incidents in the US of remote controlled model plane deaths were helicopters that have quite long, very fast rotating, dangerous blades. The drone in this article isn't going to chop off your head or your arms or probably anything else.
Firefighters no more "risk their lives on every call" than does my plumber.
To start with, a relatively low percentage of calls involve a fire. Of those only a relatively few put a few of the firefighters at the scene in any degree of danger.
Hats off to my plumber, at least he knows he's just doing a job and getting paid well for it without any need to pretend he's doing something noble.
There is a nice video out there of a quadcopter that loses control and flips. But because it uses a stabilized camera mount the picture is still perfectly oriented with the horizon all the way to the ground, while the quadcopter is all over the place.
That you don't understand something doesn't make it a fake.
No reason to even get into the silliness of assuming that there is some massive shock wave that would have flipped the copter over.
Some further good reading is Pirker's reply to the FAA's appeal
http://www.ntsb.gov/legal/pirk...
It clearly lays out the argument, which prevailed in the Pirker decision, that the FAA has only offered up advisories on safe operation of model aircraft and they had not issued any actual, enforceable regulations governing them.
The latest FAA move is an attempt to create regulations governing them, though the question remains as to whether they have the authority to do so.
Particularly for those that keep insisting the FAA regulates model aircraft already and have done so "forever"
http://dronelawjournal.com/
And for those who insist the FAA regulates the air around your head and regulates houses (and maybe fences and trees and perhaps can tell you that your grass needs to be trimmed) here is the US Supreme Court ruling that says otherwise:
http://supreme.justia.com/case...
That was a decision that did two things, confirmed that you don't own the airspace up to the heavens above your property but also made it clear that you had exclusive control of the airspace below what was defined as the navigable airspace. While the FAA might want to pretend they can regulate your toy hovercraft that flies 1/16th off the surface, they would lose in court.
http://www.mainstreettoys.com/...
Not all airspace is under FAA jurisdiction
on
That Toy Is Now a Drone
·
· Score: 3, Informative
While there have been a few comments claiming otherwise, the simple fact is that not all airspace in the US can be regulated by the FAA.
The US Supreme Court ruled in US v Causby in 1946
""We have said that the airspace is a public highway. Yet it is obvious that if the landowner is to have full enjoyment of the land, he must have exclusive control of the immediate reaches of the enveloping atmosphere. Otherwise buildings could not be erected, trees could not be planted, and even fences could not be run. The principle is recognized when the law gives a remedy in case overhanging structures are erected on adjoining land.[9] The landowner owns at least as much of the space above the ground as he can occupy or use in connection with the land. See Hinman v. Pacific Air Transport, 84 F.2d 755. The fact that he does not occupy it in a physical sense — by the erection of buildings and the like — is not material."
The FAA has jurisdiction of the navigable airways, it does not have jurisdiction over YOUR use of the airspace immediately above your backyard and they cannot regulate the use of drones of model aircraft outside the navigable airspace any more than they can require you to get a permit to plant a tree in your backyard.
Now the FAA won't admit it and likes to pretend that they have control of the air around your head, but it is clear from US v Causby that "must have exclusive control of the immediate reaches of the enveloping atmosphere".
No more frisbees?
How about rubber band powered balsa wood planes you used to buy for 25 cents?
The FAA does not now have nor never has had jurisdiction of anything that flies.
The definition of what airspace they can regulate is questionable.
For example, can they regulate baseball games just because a ball is hit up into the air? Frisbee throwing? Jumping off a diving board?
That something goes up into the air doesn't mean the FAA has authority over it.
Maybe you can do the research for us, show us where the FAA previously made it illegal for a hobbyist to fly a model aircraft out of line of sight.
There is an informal hobbyist code of conduct that calls for that, but it was not a law or FAA rule.
So if hundreds of thousands of people do it then it is a problem?
Let's say 1 million people do it
1 million times 10 uW = 10W
No, 10W siphoned off across 1 million homes is not significant at all.
The "lower reach" impact of one of these is restricted to a transmitter within a few meters of the device and the impact is, as I already showed, minuscule to the point of being immeasurable. It's not sucking power from the transmitter, it is capturing power ALREADY TRANSMITTED and virtually all of that transmitted power never makes it to an antenna of any kind in the first place.
If "stealing" 10 uW of power is theft we should at least compute the value of that theft.
10uW for one year is 0.09Wh and at 20 cents/kWh that is approximately 2 thousandths of a penny.
That's theft about as much as me stealing an apple by sniffing a few molecules of it at the grocery store.
I saw a car driving on the Interstate between Phoenix and Los Angeles.
Therefore to claim that it is impossible to drive a car to the moon is ridiculous.
"Sadly, using drones for beer delivery is currently against the law in the USA"
Perhaps someone can direct me to that law.
The courts recently ruled that the FAA did not currently have the authority to ban commercial use of drones and fine those who flaunted the unlawful FAA rule.
You keep your keys in a single place? What single place would that be? You never deviate from that single place? How do you go through an airport security line without putting your keys someplace you don't normally place them? When you travel do you leave your keys at home in their single place or do you place them someplace else?
Just like with people claiming a virgin birth, there are people who claim they've never misplaced their keys but I don't believe them either.
I'd discuss it more with you but I've got to figure out where the kids left the damn remote.
Who said their device is "clearly possible"?
Here are some rough numbers to chew on. There are a number of other similar devices already on the market that run off of batteries. The typical battery is a CR2032 which has about 240mAh @ 2V of capacity or about 500mWh. Those devices are reported to last about 2-6 months before the battery dies.
There are about 720 hours in a month, 6 months is about 4500 hours
Therefore the devices are drawing an average of 500mWh/2500h =.2mW of power or 200 uW
Their device is about 4 cm^2 in size, an overly optimistic efficiency of energy harvesting would be 10%. That is an effective area of 0.4 cm^2. To get 200uW of energy would therefore require an energy field of approximately 200uW/0.4cm^2 or 500uW per cm^2
Even their own field measurements directly against the door of an operating microwave oven showed a field 1/5th of that. A 500mW router at a distance of 1 meter has a field strength of 500mW/12566 cm^2 of only 40 uW per cm^2
So even 3' from a 500mW router that is unlikely to really be radiating 500mW of power we are short by a factor of 10.
If they are able to overcome that factor of 10 then they should be able to produce a battery powered equivalent that lasts for 5 years on one battery.
And even if they are able to overcome that factor of 10 that is only for a tag within 1 meter of a high powered router. Great if you have a habit of losing something within a meter of your router but if the device is 4 meters away (12 feet) then you have a factor of 160 to overcome.
So you tell me why battery powered tags aren't made that work for 5 years (or 40 years) if these guys have a design that can live on 200 uW of power.
Slashdot Mirror
The conclusion of that article, just in case how good a card SOUNDS actually matters more than how well it reproduces noise at well beyond the range of the human ear. Sound Blaster X-Fi - The built-in band limiting at 24KHz and rising noise floor above that make the card useless for wide-frequency testing. However, it had the best distortion performance and very low spurious signals on both inputs and outputs. This should probably be the best sounding card of the bunch.
Congress explicitly exempted small radio controlled model aircraft that follow certain guidelines from what you are quoting.
I read the article, the police claimed the drone approached them, the pilots of the drone say their video shows it was not the case at all. That coupled with the wildly inaccurate claims of the helicopter pilot lead to the simple conclusion that he wasn't speaking the truth. While it is nice of you to spout a bunch of pilot stuff, the simple fact is that even the FAA says if you follow some simple rules all that other stuff simply doesn't apply to model aircraft operators. Your quad copter pilot flying at 300' doesn't have to comply with or know the difference between class E and class G airspace.
I disagree, an object that you believe to be much further away than it really is becomes very difficult to measure the altitude of. As proof, he estimated it climbed 2000' in 2 secs. Since it clearly did not, he either got the time wildly wrong or he very inaccurately measured it's altitude. I think it is clear he wasn't accurate in his altitude estimates and, as I said previously, nothing the pilot claimed should be given any credence.
The pilot were suffering from an optical illusion. They believed it was a must larger aircraft much further away and incorrectly estimated its speed, distance and altitude. In short, nothing they claim they saw should be given any credence. But as most people figure out with time, cops routinely exaggerate.
People have been killed by automobiles on more than several occasions. There are about 100 childhood drownings in buckets, bathtubs, toilets and water features around homes every year. The most recent, of the quite rare, incidents in the US of remote controlled model plane deaths were helicopters that have quite long, very fast rotating, dangerous blades. The drone in this article isn't going to chop off your head or your arms or probably anything else.
Firefighters no more "risk their lives on every call" than does my plumber. To start with, a relatively low percentage of calls involve a fire. Of those only a relatively few put a few of the firefighters at the scene in any degree of danger. Hats off to my plumber, at least he knows he's just doing a job and getting paid well for it without any need to pretend he's doing something noble.
There is a nice video out there of a quadcopter that loses control and flips. But because it uses a stabilized camera mount the picture is still perfectly oriented with the horizon all the way to the ground, while the quadcopter is all over the place. That you don't understand something doesn't make it a fake. No reason to even get into the silliness of assuming that there is some massive shock wave that would have flipped the copter over.
Some further good reading is Pirker's reply to the FAA's appeal http://www.ntsb.gov/legal/pirk... It clearly lays out the argument, which prevailed in the Pirker decision, that the FAA has only offered up advisories on safe operation of model aircraft and they had not issued any actual, enforceable regulations governing them. The latest FAA move is an attempt to create regulations governing them, though the question remains as to whether they have the authority to do so.
Particularly for those that keep insisting the FAA regulates model aircraft already and have done so "forever" http://dronelawjournal.com/ And for those who insist the FAA regulates the air around your head and regulates houses (and maybe fences and trees and perhaps can tell you that your grass needs to be trimmed) here is the US Supreme Court ruling that says otherwise: http://supreme.justia.com/case... That was a decision that did two things, confirmed that you don't own the airspace up to the heavens above your property but also made it clear that you had exclusive control of the airspace below what was defined as the navigable airspace. While the FAA might want to pretend they can regulate your toy hovercraft that flies 1/16th off the surface, they would lose in court. http://www.mainstreettoys.com/...
While there have been a few comments claiming otherwise, the simple fact is that not all airspace in the US can be regulated by the FAA. The US Supreme Court ruled in US v Causby in 1946 ""We have said that the airspace is a public highway. Yet it is obvious that if the landowner is to have full enjoyment of the land, he must have exclusive control of the immediate reaches of the enveloping atmosphere. Otherwise buildings could not be erected, trees could not be planted, and even fences could not be run. The principle is recognized when the law gives a remedy in case overhanging structures are erected on adjoining land.[9] The landowner owns at least as much of the space above the ground as he can occupy or use in connection with the land. See Hinman v. Pacific Air Transport, 84 F.2d 755. The fact that he does not occupy it in a physical sense — by the erection of buildings and the like — is not material." The FAA has jurisdiction of the navigable airways, it does not have jurisdiction over YOUR use of the airspace immediately above your backyard and they cannot regulate the use of drones of model aircraft outside the navigable airspace any more than they can require you to get a permit to plant a tree in your backyard. Now the FAA won't admit it and likes to pretend that they have control of the air around your head, but it is clear from US v Causby that "must have exclusive control of the immediate reaches of the enveloping atmosphere".
Buildings aren't "regulated by the FAA". I can assure you I didn't get the approval of the FAA to build my house or plant a tree.
If it doesn't exist what will Google return? If you want to claim that UFO's or a particular FAA regulation exists, you find it.
No more frisbees? How about rubber band powered balsa wood planes you used to buy for 25 cents? The FAA does not now have nor never has had jurisdiction of anything that flies.
The definition of what airspace they can regulate is questionable. For example, can they regulate baseball games just because a ball is hit up into the air? Frisbee throwing? Jumping off a diving board? That something goes up into the air doesn't mean the FAA has authority over it.
Not true. There is a hobbyist code of conduct that requires that but it wasn't a legal requirement.
Maybe you can do the research for us, show us where the FAA previously made it illegal for a hobbyist to fly a model aircraft out of line of sight. There is an informal hobbyist code of conduct that calls for that, but it was not a law or FAA rule.
Drone's are not "prohibited without special permission" and the FAA lost their case when they sought to ban commercial use of drones.
So if hundreds of thousands of people do it then it is a problem? Let's say 1 million people do it 1 million times 10 uW = 10W No, 10W siphoned off across 1 million homes is not significant at all. The "lower reach" impact of one of these is restricted to a transmitter within a few meters of the device and the impact is, as I already showed, minuscule to the point of being immeasurable. It's not sucking power from the transmitter, it is capturing power ALREADY TRANSMITTED and virtually all of that transmitted power never makes it to an antenna of any kind in the first place.
At home crying and wondering if it is too late to cancel their Tesla orders.
If "stealing" 10 uW of power is theft we should at least compute the value of that theft. 10uW for one year is 0.09Wh and at 20 cents/kWh that is approximately 2 thousandths of a penny. That's theft about as much as me stealing an apple by sniffing a few molecules of it at the grocery store.
I saw a car driving on the Interstate between Phoenix and Los Angeles. Therefore to claim that it is impossible to drive a car to the moon is ridiculous.
"Sadly, using drones for beer delivery is currently against the law in the USA" Perhaps someone can direct me to that law. The courts recently ruled that the FAA did not currently have the authority to ban commercial use of drones and fine those who flaunted the unlawful FAA rule.
You keep your keys in a single place? What single place would that be? You never deviate from that single place? How do you go through an airport security line without putting your keys someplace you don't normally place them? When you travel do you leave your keys at home in their single place or do you place them someplace else? Just like with people claiming a virgin birth, there are people who claim they've never misplaced their keys but I don't believe them either. I'd discuss it more with you but I've got to figure out where the kids left the damn remote.
Who said their device is "clearly possible"? Here are some rough numbers to chew on. There are a number of other similar devices already on the market that run off of batteries. The typical battery is a CR2032 which has about 240mAh @ 2V of capacity or about 500mWh. Those devices are reported to last about 2-6 months before the battery dies. There are about 720 hours in a month, 6 months is about 4500 hours Therefore the devices are drawing an average of 500mWh/2500h = .2mW of power or 200 uW
Their device is about 4 cm^2 in size, an overly optimistic efficiency of energy harvesting would be 10%. That is an effective area of 0.4 cm^2. To get 200uW of energy would therefore require an energy field of approximately 200uW/0.4cm^2 or 500uW per cm^2
Even their own field measurements directly against the door of an operating microwave oven showed a field 1/5th of that. A 500mW router at a distance of 1 meter has a field strength of 500mW/12566 cm^2 of only 40 uW per cm^2
So even 3' from a 500mW router that is unlikely to really be radiating 500mW of power we are short by a factor of 10.
If they are able to overcome that factor of 10 then they should be able to produce a battery powered equivalent that lasts for 5 years on one battery.
And even if they are able to overcome that factor of 10 that is only for a tag within 1 meter of a high powered router. Great if you have a habit of losing something within a meter of your router but if the device is 4 meters away (12 feet) then you have a factor of 160 to overcome.
So you tell me why battery powered tags aren't made that work for 5 years (or 40 years) if these guys have a design that can live on 200 uW of power.