With the increasing number of affordable quadcopters sporting high-quality video recording features, the task of capturing videos at a bird's eye view is becoming easier for many. At the same time, such unmanned drones are posing new threats to other individuals' security and privacy.
To counter this, anti-drone technology is burgeoning on the horizon. This new type of technology aims to prevent the invasion of privacy by drones controlled via Wi-Fi.
An interesting project has even surfaced on the web, which can transform a Raspberry Pi computer into a tool that can drop Wi-Fi powered drones from the sky with ease. If drones within an area are becoming more of a pain than a wonderful sight, then creating a wireless drone disabler system with a Raspberry Pi is a good start.
This handy drone disabler system will be using a directional antenna made from a can plus two computer scripts that have already been made ready for use to take out bothersome drones with just a tap of the finger.
How It Works
The concept for this nifty tool came from Brent Chapman, and was first published on Make, the online magazine. It uses a Raspberry Pi, some simple Bash codes that were programmed to execute a couple of basic network commands, and a touchscreen display.
Tapping the touchscreen display will command the Raspberry Pi to find the unsecured access point of the drone. This access point is what the anonymous pilot uses to control the flying object with his tablet or smartphone.
The terminal emulation program will then allow users to connect interactively to a server and access remote sites. In this case, it will access the drone's default gateway address to shut down the system from inside without the pilot's knowledge.
For many modern drones, Wi-Fi access is an important factor because it can be used as a controller interface between the user and drone. The guide also includes steps on how to create a Wi-Fi signal booster using a large can to increase the range of the drone disabler system.
The guide also outlined steps to specifically attack Parrot's AR Drone 2.0 with the use of a Raspberry Pi. Since Parrot's drones have a number of sensors that make it easy to manipulate and target, exploring its weakness via a Linux terminal is highly plausible.
Keep in mind that the guide could work flawlessly on some drones with Wi-Fi connectivity but not on others. Users conduct this experiment at their own risk.
Photo: Nils Jakobi | Flickr
