Update on drone defence/offense

Just a small update, there's been a few articles now about companies whom are reversing the RF control signals to hijack the control of the quads, it's a good approach, fits nice with the DMCA i'm sure, but still leaves many questions.

Once the attacker (defender) takes control, do they take over? or just signal to crash land?
Can they simply spam disarm packets out, like a de-auth in 802.11 but to disarm? Simply toggle all aux switches randomly to confuse the original pilot?

Drones over jails/prisons, those would likely be interactively-flown Phantoms or other builds, some which they have 'deauth' 'crash packets' for, others they don't. But it offers a reasonable level of prevention.

This works ok, but doesn't for those with a pre-configured flight path, which is really what those with an armed drone would do, something pressure-cooker style would likely have a pre-configured flight path, so the offender could get away and it would autonomously fly to its intended target, that would be hard to disarm or take down, aside from EMP/GPS jamming techniques, which I can't imagine would become a commodity attack for the obvious negative side effects against legitimate users of those services - heh, targeted EMP attack devices becoming common, that wont be fun for our digital and connected world...

Press here:

Hackers take control of drones mid-flight

HV batteries and their weight

I've tried a few batteries, but have enjoyed the HV Turnigy Bolts. They rated well in semi-scientific tests by others, and they've done me well.. They do puff, but they do deliver.

4S 1300mah versus the 1000, I naturally prefer the 1300, but the weight saving in the 1000's is worth it for racing.. but that's where the puffing happens :)

78.2gm versus 59gm

Tiny whoop, for winter!

I got myself a tiny whoop, inductrix (from here), whatever you want to call it .. awesome fun, kids love it, great for winter or super windy days!

Later I got myself some 201mah batteries from Nemos

Quick morning session

A quick morning session

TCR210
Cobra 2204/2300
BeeRotorF3
Xiaomi Yi running Waffle @ 35mb/s

Gate crasher (TCR210 racing)

The TCR210 racing with a Xiaomi Yi (running Waffle) 

Realacc X210 build (QAV-X clone)

I was looking for an X frame, and came across the Realacc X210 - which turned out is a QAV-X clone.. I really need to donate some cash to Lumenier!

I already had Emax 2205/2300 "red-bottom" motors and 30A ESCs (DYS XM30A) wired up to an Alien clone (Martian 1, a horrible thing) which was half built as the FC failed and I never went back to it - avoid the Skyline32 with OSD, basically the OSD switch to disable the UART didn't work... So you couldn't progress it, junk basically.

Anyway I grabbed these motors and ESCs off and put them on the X, after adjusting (extending) the ESC -> PDB wires (as I cut them super short for the Martian build), I got to this point (note the shorter now-desoldered wires to the right):

I used the built in PDB (which i'll talk about later) as below (5v and 12v wires soldered on here):

I had an SP F3 FC laying around, which I hadn't used one before but I quite like it so far. No OSD and not as neat as the BeeRotor, but it's what I had and it's highly rated by friends

FC placed on top (with wired buzzer) and a poor USB orientation I ended up changing later.

Next was the receiver. This is quite a tight build, and the Frsky X4R-SB just wouldn't fit in with the pins. So I desoldered them (like the XSR minus the mini-port), and ended up with this:

I used the Foxeer Arrow for the first time, which has a built-in voltage read-out OSD, single wire, nice and simple.. It's really all I need for racing, and meant I didn't need a fancy FC or additional OSD layer in this tight build

However I ended up getting really weird camera footage. Everything was fine on my 12v 3S test battery at home, but in the field using a 4S it looked like the world was melting. Ah, this is a bad cap or regulator experience I thought, of course! So I bypassed the 12v regulator on the PDB and wired it straight to the PDB. Yes there's some motor noise, but it's actually not bad.

Finished product, with 3D printed Xaomi Yi faceplate/holder:

Another shot of the finished product, with Joos batteries (my new favourite)

A good mate and 3D designer extraordinaire (!!) made up this VTX mount (top right), which is awesome. He's reiterating the design a bit to lower the height (you hit gates at times), and will refine it, but it's awesome and saves a lot of space on the build.

The VTX channel changer is nice and accessible:

Overall to date i've only flown LOS due to some config issues I had and the video issue, but i'll update this blog or others once I get it tuned in and running well. Hopefully this is my new favourite build

2.1mm lens for the HS1177, it's a must!

I've been using the HS1177 like the rest of us (and variants, HS1190 etc), but the stock 2.5 or 2.8 lens just doesn't cut it when you're running 30-35 degrees camera angle, and want to land safely at low speeds..

So I highly recommend going to a 2.1mm lens, there's a few out there, but I found these from Banggood are quite good, reliable, strong and give me what I need. Cheap enough at $10 AUD

TCR210 build fully loaded (603gm)

My favourite build to date, the TCR210 (QAV-R clone), loaded up with a Xaomi Yi and 3D printed mount/protector (35 degrees) from speedy3dprinting

AUW 603.9gm with the 4S 1300mah Turnigy A-Spec

This is before I put on the 2.1mm lens, look at that tiny thing!

Naked shot:

TCR210 build from Banggood

I like the X style, but wanted to avoid the Alien because they were out of stock, but also didn't want to simply follow others.

So I found the TCR210, which is basically a QAV-R clone (which I found out later). I really like this build, in fact I bought another frame to replace parts as they break :)

Running the BeeRotor F3 with OSD, with the BeeRotor PDB as well for seamless integration.. quite nice!

Shown below, the OSD control cable to the HS1177 is connected to a small lead I exposed. Works great