I don't agree... There are ways to carefully control WHERE the jamming is effective and barring multi-path and reflections it is not that hard to be pretty limited outside the bounds. You don't go in with RF blazing in all directions and a 100W PA (although that would do it), you put in multiple directional antennas, putting out a few watts each, watch where you put them and where they are pointed.

I think you could be pretty effective and not bleed over into the public's space, but if you did? So what. Your WiFi router runs under part 15, which means you have ZERO protection from interference legally. For instance, part of the WiFi spectrum overlaps a Ham allocation, this means that I can (as a ham) legally run 1,500W PEP on the WiFi band which would likely wipe out WiFi for the whole town. I might get complaints, but legally I'm golden because part 15 devices have no protection from licensed services.

Simply bizarre. I reallize the a person is going to take what the market will pay them, but it is seriously difficult to imagine that they are worth that much.

I never said it was a perfect solution, only that it might be a good idea to try to do this. There really isn't that many WiFi connections out there to monitor, especially ones that would have enough coverage to enable the control of a Hobbyist's drone on a public street. Surely one could winnow down the possible bad guys by keeping track of the environment and filtering out the benign signals and those devices that where connecting to the known Access Points, then looking at the signals left and eliminated any that where too weak to be used. I'm guessing you will have a pretty short list after that...

You all act like it's not possible to tell where a specific signal comes from.... All you need is a couple of direction finders tied together and you can develop a pretty good location for *THAT* WiFi signal and decide if it is new, if it's within a specified area and do all this very quickly. So I might not be able to determine exactly what the traffic means, but I can pretty quickly decide if it's a possible threat coming from the clearing over there and not something I've monitored for weeks on end in the office building across the street. How hard is this? If I can image it, I'm sure some smart guys have implemented this already...

Which is why you put up GPS jamming and physical barriers too. Inertial nav is only accurate over short distances, unless you have some external way to calibrate your nav system and can remove the various bias issues caused by vibration, temperature changes and other things that cause changes in the gyros (mechanical, laser ring or otherwise). Usually inertial nav's need to be calibrated, and they do that with GPS (or some other system like LORAN) in order to maintain enough accuracy over time.

Nothing is perfect, but you do the best you can with the resources you have and you live with the risks you cannot afford to fix. I'm suggesting that there is bigger bang for the buck in other things than trying to go out and detect these things in flight.

Oh come on..

I'm suggesting we JAM 2.4Ghz around the Whitehouse lawn. Make it impossible for WiFi to work more than a few feet. Then I'm suggesting we track WiFi signals in an effort to catch the pilot, not the aircraft. There are ways to do this w/o being totally disruptive to WiFi service in the surrounding area, or trying to find the needle that pops up in the haystack.

But this is but a small part of the whole plan where physical barriers play a part too....

However, nothing is perfect and nobody has endless resources, so you make a list of risks and how to limit them, pick the things from the list that get you the most risk reduction for the money and live with the rest or go get more money until you CAN live with the risks that are left..

The self piloted drone doesn't get to it's destination w/o a GPS fix. Short range GPS jammers are off the shelf, *easy* use, and not expensive.

Remember, I'm saying that detection is down on my list of things to develop, that other things have a better cost/reward and are based on existing technology.

If they are that well funded, catching their drone is unlikely to be your primary worry.

Look, they could just set up a mortar and shell the white house if they where well enough funded, and there is very little you can do to stop a mortar shell in flight and I'm not even going to guess how hard it would be to get your hands on one if you where well funded... Everything has it's limits.

I used 5v as an example as the linked article spoke specifically of running 5V and 12V everywhere. I agree that you really want a higher voltage for distribution. 48V goes a long way, although it still requires quite a lot more copper than 110V or 240V for the same power carrying capacity. (About 5x if I did my math correctly.)

Now, if those in-wall adaptors could store some charge locally (small capacitor bank), and you didn't have to wire for peak current, only sustained current, maybe you could get away with smaller wiring that way. I'm skeptical.

Well then write better stuff for me.

Even though I don't agree with you, your scenario with that last line made me laugh so hard I cried! I needed that today.

Well played sir, well played indeed!

Personally I don't think concentrating on the detection problem is the best approach. We can jam, and we can put up barriers and reduce a lot of the risks with very low cost. We already have RF direction finding capability which could be deployed to pinpoint not only the drone but the pilot's location, it's a little costly, but it's out there and would be nearly off the shelf. Trying to build a RADAR or IR sensor to hone in on the drone is a nice idea, but high cost, low reward.

Personally I would consider the surveillance activity just as dangerous. Despite what they tell you, all security systems have weak points which may not be visible externally, but if you can observe from the right angles become obvious. Knowing the weak points in advance can make a successful assault out of a bad idea.

Still, being able to pinpoint the pilot based on RF emissions and get there quickly might be a good idea...

I suggest a multilayered approach.. RF jamming, Signal detectors, GPS jamming as well as physical barriers (nets, trees, fences etc). Couple that with a vigorous response to folks flying these things where they shouldn't and the bulk of the problem goes away...