US News – by JASON KOEBLER Worried about drones spying on you? Soon, a device might be able to send you text and email alerts that let you know when a drone is nearby.
A Washington, D.C.-based engineer is working on the “Drone Shield,” a small, Wi-Fi-connected device that uses a microphone to detect a drone’s “acoustic signatures” (sound frequency and spectrum) when it’s within range.
The company’s founder, John Franklin, who has been working in aerospace engineering for seven years, says he hopes to start selling the device sometime this year. He is using the Kickstarter-like Indiegogo to finance the project.
The device will cost $69 and will be about the size of a USB thumb drive. It will use Raspberry Pi – a tiny, $25 computer – and commercially available microphones to detect drones. He says he imagines that people will attach the Drone Shield to their fences or roofs to protect their home from surveillance.
“People will get the alert and then close their blinds,” Franklin says.
He is currently working on an open-source database of drone sounds that the detector will check what it’s hearing against. Other devices with motors, such as lawn mowers and weed-whackers, will also be included to reduce false positives. Drone owners will be asked to record the sound of their drones to be included in the database. When the Drone Shield identifies a drone, it’ll flash and send an email and text message alert to a homeowner.
Franklin says that most commercially available drones have to come relatively close to a home in order to spy. More sophisticated drones, such as Predators, would fly too high to detect.
He got the idea for the device after getting into a bit of hot water with his neighbor, which Franklin says alerted him to the reality of people’s concerns about drones.
“I bought a [drone] from Amazon and was going to use it to look at my roof. The wind took it and I crashed it into my neighbor’s yard. It freaked him out once he noticed it had a camera on it,” Franklin says. “It sort of dawned on me that it’s so easy to invade someone’s privacy with a couple hundred dollar drone.”
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Jason Koebler is a science and technology reporter for U.S. News & World Report. You can follow him on Twitter or reach him at jkoebler@usnews.com.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/05/01/tiny-device-will-detect-domestic-drones
I guess this would help, and the cost is certainly easy to live with. I would prefer to have a jammer though.
Personal drones to spy on your neighbor etc. well think of the other possibilities like a drone being used by a dope dealer. It would be a dope dealers dream, just think of all of the other possibilities.
Digger, I don’t think they are big enough to fly ya some shine.
Oh well rhumstruck, one of those big Eagles around here would probobly take out that drone anyway 🙂
That’s for sure!
How about like drones used by paparazzi? Or drones used by citizens to stop police and governmental abuses? Spy on the Mayor? The Police chief? Their families?
And how long before some idiot gets smart and does what Uncle Sam’s done: Adds explosives and sends out seeker/killer drones?
The knife cuts both ways…
Exactly what I was thinking. Yep, the govt. doesn`t like it when the tables are turned on them.
12 gage will fix this problum.
There’s a story on the Daily Sheeple about a drone out of Harvard that’s about the size of a quarter.
Imagine some loonie with a penchant for poisons adding a “stinger” syringe…
http://www.thedailysheeple.com/new-video-shows-harvards-creepy-quarter-sized-robobee-robot-insect-in-flight_052013
A quarter? That”s too big.
Try this on for size (pun intended)
http://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/us-military-surveillance-future-drones-now-come-in-swarms/16582