Open Source DroneShield Kit Alerts You of Snooping UAVs

http://www.droneshield.org/Home.html

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/droneshield/

“ DroneShield: A simple device that alerts you to nearby drones

DroneShield is a low-cost, easy-to-use device that detects the presence of nearby drones (including RC helicopters, quadrotors, etc) and issues alerts via email, sms, and a flashing light. The goal is to help preserve privacy from low-cost remote-control air vehicles with video cameras.

How Does It Work?

DroneShield includes a microphone that listens for sounds of drones. Each DroneShield contains a database of common drone acoustic signatures so false alarms are reduced (IE ignores lawn mowers and leaf blowers) and in many cases the type of drone is also included in the alert.

Technical Specifications

Our initial target platform is the Raspberry Pi. Other components include a microphone, power supply plugs (or micro-USB battery pack). Wifi connectivity is required for email and SMS alerts. Signature database updates can be downloaded and uploaded on the RPi’s SD card.

What’s the Plan?

The goal of this initial campaign is to create a low-cost device that will help protect privacy against RC helicopters and quadrotors with video cameras; we already have a working prototype running on a laptop. The Indiegogo 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.

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 additional hardware makers. We could also envision a smart-phone based platform for portable applications.“