3 ms·

How would you "trivially" block LED/light sensor communication? It's not insanely hard to create a drone swarm with zero radio.

jasonjayr 8y ago
A brighter light to overwhelm the carrier signal
- downer68 8y ago
  "Lasers." (although, line of sight, point-to-point communication is admittedly less trivial to interfere with) The point being that, if "criminal gangs" are up to no good, but they're parting their equipment with off-the-shelf Best Buy and Radio Shack products, they probably aren't programming DSP interfaces, aren't encoding and decoding raw bit streams, aren't masking binary objects with base64 blobs, aren't rolling their own encryption. Or, if they are rolling their own encryption, they're using Excel spreadsheets to do it. [0] [0] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/ba_jihadist_trial_sentencing/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/ba_jihadist_trial_s...
  - dalore 8y ago
    Block line of sight, use a smoke grenade.
    - downer68 8y ago
      To be honest, I really don't think laser/LED chanels are being used. I've never seen a remote control quad copter sold off the shelve with IR LED TV remote style I/O for it's tranceiver control system.
- k__ 8y ago
  Does this work? I had the impression, you can't out-light shadows for example.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  There's a pretty bright light on between sunrise and sunset, doesn't affect free air optical transmission at all unless the sun happens to align with the sender or the receiver. The biggest limitations are water vapor in the air, precipitation and dust. Also, the distance is rather limited compared to radio.
- raducu 8y ago
  This doesn't work if the receiver on the drone is directed backwards and you usually are in front of the drone as its target.
sshine 8y ago
Two words: Trained Falcons.
- Verdex_3 8y ago
  I mean this theoretically works until the gangs decide to start putting small bombs in the drones that detonate on impact. I bet they can build drones faster than people can breed and train the birds.
  - wincy 8y ago
    Well yeah then you have a counter swarm of exploding drones. The government can always afford more than the criminals because they can just squeeze their tax cattle a little harder.
  - sshine 8y ago
    It doesn't just theoretically work. Trained falcons and eagles are being used by police forces already: https://www.google.dk/search?q=training+birds+to+attack+drones https://www.google.dk/search?q=training+birds+to+attack+dron... I don't know if any counter-measures are getting popular yet, but it's probably cheaper to poison or shoot them than explode them.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

jasonjayr 8y ago

A brighter light to overwhelm the carrier signal

downer68 8y ago
"Lasers." (although, line of sight, point-to-point communication is admittedly less trivial to interfere with) The point being that, if "criminal gangs" are up to no good, but they're parting their equipment with off-the-shelf Best Buy and Radio Shack products, they probably aren't programming DSP interfaces, aren't encoding and decoding raw bit streams, aren't masking binary objects with base64 blobs, aren't rolling their own encryption. Or, if they are rolling their own encryption, they're using Excel spreadsheets to do it. [0] [0] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/ba_jihadist_trial_sentencing/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/ba_jihadist_trial_s...
- dalore 8y ago
  Block line of sight, use a smoke grenade.
  - downer68 8y ago
    To be honest, I really don't think laser/LED chanels are being used. I've never seen a remote control quad copter sold off the shelve with IR LED TV remote style I/O for it's tranceiver control system.
k__ 8y ago
Does this work? I had the impression, you can't out-light shadows for example.
jacquesm 8y ago
There's a pretty bright light on between sunrise and sunset, doesn't affect free air optical transmission at all unless the sun happens to align with the sender or the receiver. The biggest limitations are water vapor in the air, precipitation and dust. Also, the distance is rather limited compared to radio.
raducu 8y ago
This doesn't work if the receiver on the drone is directed backwards and you usually are in front of the drone as its target.

sshine 8y ago

Two words: Trained Falcons.

Verdex_3 8y ago
I mean this theoretically works until the gangs decide to start putting small bombs in the drones that detonate on impact. I bet they can build drones faster than people can breed and train the birds.
- wincy 8y ago
  Well yeah then you have a counter swarm of exploding drones. The government can always afford more than the criminals because they can just squeeze their tax cattle a little harder.
- sshine 8y ago
  It doesn't just theoretically work. Trained falcons and eagles are being used by police forces already: https://www.google.dk/search?q=training+birds+to+attack+drones https://www.google.dk/search?q=training+birds+to+attack+dron... I don't know if any counter-measures are getting popular yet, but it's probably cheaper to poison or shoot them than explode them.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]