• Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    17
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 days ago

    Small, probably stupid tip, but what the hell. There is an almost surefire way to kill drones without needing a firearm. Buy a high-powered laser (>5W). It obviously won’t be enough to take the drone down, but just a fraction of a second of that beam is enough to permanently destroy the camera. The downside is that the beam is very visible so you’d also be giving away your location. Also works on static cameras like traffic cams, number plate readers, …

    • JayDee@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      edit-2
      2 days ago

      This would be a trash way to take down a drone. You would have to know where the camera is exactly on the drone and then manage to shine the laser directly into that camera long enough to damage it. As distance grows between you and the drone, that time to damage the lenses will grow longer.

      The currently most common drone takedown methods implemented are radio signal jammers, counterattack drones with nets, and shotguns filled with an intermediate shot size between bird shot and buck shot. The first two are fairly expensive options which take know-how to create, where as the latter is a shotgun, which are abundant and fairly cheap in comparison to the other two.

    • Mac@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      2 days ago

      Yeah and this way if you’re imperfect in aiming the FBI will show up at your door for lasering any aircraft in the background.

        • LostXOR@fedia.io
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          2 days ago

          If the beam is wide enough to make hitting the camera easy, it probably doesn’t have a high enough power density to cause serious damage. And even if it does, from what I’ve seen the damage is usually limited to dead pixels on the parts of the sensor directly exposed to the laser. I think a shotgun would be much more effective since all you have to do is clip a propeller or an important part of the internals and the drone is going down.

          • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            2 days ago

            It definitely would be, but you can’t just order a shotgun online and have it delivered to you in a day like you can with a laser.