DroneShield: A low-cost, easy-to-use device that alerts you to nearby drones.
On Tuesday, an ambitious aerospace engineer from Washington, DC began seeking donations on Indiegogo to create an “open-source drone detection system.”
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 from a small quadcopter.) Once a match is found, the Drone Shield then sends an e-mail or SMS to its owner. As of this writing, the campaign is only closing in on one-tenth of its goal with $301 out $3,500 raised.
John Franklin, the project’s organizer, believes it would cost around $60 to $70 to make one, but he’s hoping to raise funds from other privacy-minded citizens like himself. He notes the idea here is to counter the rising use of drones not only in foreign theaters of war, but also in domestic skies.
"I'm a problem solver and I'm trying to gauge if this is a problem that people are interested in solving,” he told Ars. “The idea here is that it becomes an open-source thing and people could contribute their own signatures.”
Franklin estimated it probably would take “about $100 and two months” to figure out if the idea would work. There are other anti-drone tactics and devices out there, but none quite as cheap as this one—assuming it functions as advertised. Not all experts are convinced.
"It would be theoretically feasible," said Chris Kyriakakis, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California with expertise in acoustic signal processing. "A lot of problems to solve, however, to make that happen. [It's] not clear if a single mic would suffice—most likely [you] would need a mic array. Noise mitigation would be another huge problem. Yes, there are dozens of feature extraction approaches that would work theoretically, but none that I have seen be effective in the presence of additive or convolutive noise."
Franklin acknowledged that the device won’t be 100 percent perfect. He also told Ars that the system would be based on existing publicly available documents, such as this 1997-era research paper from the Army Research Laboratory entitled: "Acoustic Feature Extraction for a Neural Network Classifier" (PDF). But again, his goal is an open-sourced device that an audience can build upon and improve. If the interest is there, hopefully the implementation will be too.
“This project is yet another indicator of the fact that there is very strong and widespread sentiment on the ground about drones—and it’s one of tremendous skepticism,” wrote Linda Lye, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, in an e-mail to Ars.
_________________________________________________________
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/droneshield/ DroneShield is a device that detects the presence of nearby drones (including RC helicopters, quadrotors, etc) and issues alerts via email, sms, and/or a flashing light. The goal is to help preserve your privacy from low-cost remote-control air vehicles with video cameras. The DroneShield team consists of makers, engineers, and developers collaborating on a device that can detect small drones well before you can hear them. We have a collaboration website at www.droneshield.org with links to free software and hardware specifications. Free software and hardware specifications are free to download for do-it-yourself-ers. We also sell assembled devices at-cost. DroneShield has a microphone that listens for sounds of drones. Each DroneShield contains a database of common drone acoustic signatures to reduce false alarms (IE ignores lawn mowers and leaf blowers) and in many cases the type of drone is also included in the alert. Our initial target platform is the Raspberry Pi. Other components include a microphone, power supply plugs (also works with a micro-USB battery pack, not included). Wifi connectivity is required for email and SMS alerts. Signature database updates can be downloaded and updated via the RPi SD card. The goal of this campaign is to create a low-cost device that will help protect privacy against RC helicopters with video cameras; we already have a working prototype running on a laptop. This campaign will port that code to a small low-cost hardware platform that you can plug in and forget about. If you like you can periodically update the signatures of the drones we scan for, or even contribute your own signatures to the database. Our goal is to port our existing code and database to the Raspberry Pi platform and bundle that with peripherals into a stand-alone product that can be operational right out of the box with absolutely no technical knowledge needed. The funds will be used to buy hardware in bulk (reducing prices) and the developers will donate their time to assemble the hardware and port the code. 50 units are needed to get the first price break in bulk discounts for many of our components. We hope that there will be enough interest to justify further development to reduce costs in future generations; we believe ultimately we could get the cost down to the $20-range at scale. Future plans could include moving to an open-source 'sourceforge' type development environment and teaming with 3rd party hardware makers. We could also envision a smart-phone based platform for portable applications. Our team has over 20 years of combined experience working on science and engineering projects including machine learning and acoustic signal processing. We have advanced degrees in engineering and computer science, including MIT and UMD graduates, and a proven track record of finishing projects on time and within budget for our customers. Any technology project will carry certain risks, and surprises can occur at any point in a project. We have done our best to mitigate and minimize the risks associated with porting the current laptop version to the Raspberry Pi platform. However, risks external to our work include:
How Does It Work?
Technical Specifications
What’s the Plan?
Qualifications
Risks and Challenges
Of course, it would eat the battery life on your phone,,just like gps and other things do,,,,but I have an idea,,,,,I would rather it didn't even tell me,,,,and just send out the same signal that Iran used to take down the American drone!! That would be fun ! I think it was as simple as jamming the drone's signals,,so it couldn't be piloted,,,and just shut down. That's how it was explained anyways....Then,,,if a drone gets too close,,,my android uses a burst of energy to take it down,,,,instead of a constant drain looking out for them !
But honestly,,it sounds like a great way to instill more fear....."Oh No",,,,my drone detector is out of service,,,,I'm ducking for cover!!!" haha! we just need to set up the same thing Iran used,,and then have it naturally emanating from all phones,,,that should cover the sky pretty good,,,at least in populated areas...L,,,T
Of course, it would eat the battery life on your phone,,just like gps and other things do,,,,but I have an idea,,,,,I would rather it didn't even tell me,,,,and just send out the same signal that Iran used to take down the American drone!! That would be fun ! I think it was as simple as jamming the drone's signals,,so it couldn't be piloted,,,and just shut down. That's how it was explained anyways....Then,,,if a drone gets too close,,,my android uses a burst of energy to take it down,,,,instead of a constant drain looking out for them !
But honestly,,it sounds like a great way to instill more fear....."Oh No",,,,my drone detector is out of service,,,,I'm ducking for cover!!!" haha! we just need to set up the same thing Iran used,,and then have it naturally emanating from all phones,,,that should cover the sky pretty good,,,at least in populated areas...L,,,T
like a good idea - at least one moving toward peoples' claiming their own sovereignty and their own airspace along with it.
TC M.T. Keshe (keshefoundation.org) claims Iran captured the US drones using his technology.
I like the Iran method. They better not be able to trace the signal, though.
I wonder what one does when the drone alert goes off. What kind of "incriminating" thing would the average person be doing to make him change his behavior?
To me it's kind of like using a Geiger counter. Yeah, you know when you're near something radioactive, but if the plutonium keeps following you around all day, what's the point?
The Iranian method sounds more to the point.
Iran claimed they did this but I wonder if they were just talking tough. It might have just crash-landed-they hid the landing gear portion of the craft with a curtain for the photo-ops...Those drones would certainly have programming to self-land themselves under serious failure conditions. I like the invention here but what would work best would be a network of microphones listening throughout a city (they already do this some places to detect gunfire). A city government could easily deploy such a system using existing infrastructure such as traffic light data networks. Only problem? They would be the users of drones so they won't do it. Ugh