
Andreessen Horowitz Backs SkySafe, Which Wirelessly Grounds Your Drone - cpeterso
http://recode.net/2016/04/20/skysafe-uses-a-wireless-signal-to-take-down-drones/
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viperscape
So this might not work with totally custom drones, and that's a huge market in
done world. They'd have to continually track and build a database of new
controllers as they come out. Unless they plan on just saturating the 2.4ghz
air waves, is that legal? Any ways, seems kinda unsafe to see the drone fall
in disabled mode. Hopefully no one is near by

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god_bless_texas
Yep I was coming here to post something similar. I imagine they are further
along than I am assuming. Or maybe they are OK with only being able to protect
against a certain percentage of drones out there.

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rasz_pl
They probably count on clients being clueless or not caring. 'we stop 99% of
drones out there by sales volume' might by enough for the same people that buy
application firewalls and antivirus software pretending its a sound security
strategy.

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snsr
I'm curious about the legalities of a product like this, FCC and otherwise.

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NickNameNick
It does seem to run straight into the 'harmful interference' part of part 15.

I've seen people in previous discussions (mostly around the 'rogue ap
containment' feature of some wireless access points) try to argue that only
'dumb' broadband jammers fall afoul of the limitations on jammers, and that
'smart' or protocol aware jammers wouldn't. I don't agree, and based on the
ruling against the conference centre that was abusing the AP containment
feature of their wifi AP's to block other peoples wifi signals, I'm guessing
that the FCC doesn't think so either.

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HoopleHead
So. What if you disable a drone and it hits someone as it falls?

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falcolas
This is my thought as well. Not all drones (I hate that term, but that ship
has sailed) have return to home or even fail safe operations.

Imagine, for a moment, someone triggering this while there's a quad racing
event going on. All of a sudden, you have between 3 and 5 unguided projectiles
following unpredictable paths, usually with spectators present. All of them
are also carrying a fairly nasty incendiary device (also known to laymen as a
battery), which reacts poorly to being crashed.

Or a fly-in, where not only the quads, but all RC aircraft are affected. Some
of those move at well over 100mph, and are filled with jet fuel.

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datalord
These guys have something similar:

[http://www.department13.com/](http://www.department13.com/)

Existing military contracts. Probably similar tech.

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mrpants1
I think one difference though is D13 can take control of the drone, fly it
somewhere, and land it.

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Klasiaster
Any details on what they are emitting to disable the drone?

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headShrinker
My guess is it's a 2.4Ghz narrow beam jammer. It would likely have little
effect on say a 400Mhz receiver. Not to mention it is reliant on a predicable
failsafe. What if the failsafe is 100% throttle. It would be pretty easy to
make this device useless.

