UAV Reigns Down Vengeance Upon Thee

An unemployed electrical engineer can be a very dangerous thing. [Cybrown] has turned his skills toward darker, more awesome applications by building an armed unmanned aerial vehicle. This is a remote control airplane that has a movable camera mounted in the cockpit. Video and GPS data are sent back to the pilot who views the picture via a wearable display. We’re betting this doesn’t have the range that the 100km UAV did, but that’s good because this one brings doom from the skies. Check the wings in the picture above, this RC is fireworks-enable. We’ve embedded flight footage and attack video after the break.

Update: Here is a forum post covering this nugget of awesome. There are just a few details but the entire thread is interesting. Someone pointed this out in the comments but they don’t get credit because they didn’t leave a link.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sh10v52DBLM]

Flight demo

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBn1h0x-37E]

Launching fireworks

[Thanks Jonathan]

55 thoughts on “UAV Reigns Down Vengeance Upon Thee

  1. How long until these sorts of crafts are banned (in various countries) for being ‘terrorist paraphernalia’ or some such nonsense? If you can stick an array of fireworks on it what is preventing you from sticking a bomb on it and flying it into a crowd, building, or whatever?

  2. *THIS* is perhaps the most impressive hack and coolest thing I have ever seen on Hackaday.

    I have been dreaming of making something like this for years, except instead of fireworks & a plane, an rc Helicopter and an airsoft pistol. FPV flying is amazing by itself, but to link it up to rc fireworks, AND AC/DC and Rammstien music videos? Hell yes!

    This man is a hacking god. May his projects never get in in trouble with The Man. Engineers rule!

  3. You know, some crazy germans did this in the mid-1940’s. They did not have GPS, just crude electronic components.

    That was more than 60 years ago! My (then young) grandfather worked on such projects during the all-too-brief period that the official goals of our governments did not align so perfectly.

    Luckily, we no longer have to argue about such differences. And we were so similar in our natures, wasting time arguing about trivial issues such as religion and foreign policy!

    They used UHF(!) television cameras on pulse-jet flying machines, guiding them by remote control. It did not work very well, and did not have good range, but it did work. How far we have come!

    Only a few were made and tested, and then… quite suddenly, the party was over. The V2 got all the attention, even though it was much more expensive to make in terms of cost per kilo per kilometer. This is a lucky thing, because these men made it possible for us to punch holes in things that used to be too far away to really bother with, like the moon and caves in the khyber pass.

    I do not understand why @Twerpling asks about banning, such items are already banned; it is just that the laws are not very well known or publicized yet.

    My father gave me a replica flying wing glider kit from brazil, which I suppose could be used like this very easily. I haven’t put it together yet, mostly because I have been playing with Klaus’s WII every night since Christmas.

  4. Wow these are the best videos I have ever seen here.

    MEH DOES WANT!!

    @nave.notnilc they do…as long as it has less than a pound of propellant, anymore and you need a 130 dollar license. oh and cant go above some thousands of feet.

  5. it’s people like this that keep foreign powers from invading the U.S.A. by land. every hacker, modder, builder, and mechanic would build tons of this shit out of stuff they have sitting around and just mobilize it. great stuff

  6. @Mehhhhhhhh. I know RC planes with rockets are allowed with restrictions of course, but they said it had fireworks. Which explode and look cool, but, are probably not legal. At least where I live.

  7. “How long until these sorts of crafts are banned (in various countries) for being ‘terrorist paraphernalia’”

    Oh, grow a pair. You can’t stop an organised group of fanatic sleeper cells from TRYING to achieve their goals by banning radio controlled airplanes.

    It might seem preventative, but it’s a very reactive mindset you have. The key to co-habitation between different cultural groups is pro-action: be proud of yourself and others, don’t ban my airplanes.

  8. I agree with last poster. The pic of the platform
    shows what appear to be pods that could house some
    pyrotechnics under the wings – BUT – if you look
    at the videos, all you see is pseudo AAA / flack
    coming UP AT the drone (not the drone dropping a
    strike package/ordnance on ground targets)

  9. That’s a great piece of engineering but…

    Both model aircraft and fireworks can cause serious injury. There is no way that guy should have been buzzing those kids on the ground. That kind or recklessness will get these UAV’s banned.

  10. This is very much illegal per the rules set forth by the AMA.

    It’s guys like this that do ‘cool’ things without thinking about the repercussions that make it hard for the lobbyist that work for the AMA to make a case for the rest of us R/C people to continue to do what we do without having to fear the men in black coats showing up to shut us down.

    You would not believe how many towns refuse to let us start R/C clubs and to build suitable fields to fly from because of their fears of home grown terrorists. There have been many instances over the past few years where groups of guys will show up at a field, armed, thinking they have come across some sort of training camp.

  11. Red – The AMA does not set laws nor does it regulate remote control aircraft anyplace but at AMA fields. I’ve never heard of one single town not letting R/C clubs start up beause they were afraid of home grown terrorists. Usually it’s because they don’t want to deal with the noise and danger of the larger glow and fuel powered R/C planes. About the only law possibly broken here is the setting off of fireworks, which really depends on what state the maker of the video is in.
    “groups of guys show up at a field, armed, thinking they have come across some sort of training camp.”???? Really???? I don’t think so.
    Maybe we should stop selling vans since they are the real thread because the terrorists can load them up with explosives and take down entire buildings….
    It’s people like you that are killing innovation and creativity.

  12. Hi, FYI I’m the guy who made the above vids.

    #1 The aircraft is foam, and it is at least as safe as tossing a baseball around.

    #2 The AMA is a bunch of old farts who don’t make or enforce laws. They only make rules for fields that they own.
    This is all done on private property with perfectly legal fireworks bought at a nearby fireworks stand. So basically the AMA can kiss my vertical stabilizer :)

    Also, next up is airsoft or paintball vs some helium balloons maybe. Having a few thousand acres of playground has it’s benefits.

  13. Bushman,

    You are so awesome, I want to have your baby.

    Also, I am a young EE who flies RC planes in his spare time. I’m very much interested in reproducing this project – any chance you could write up some technical docs or give tips on what cameras, frequencies, tips/tricks/pitfalls, etc??

    How are the rockets launched? With those little igniters used for estes rockets?

    Huge fan,

    Vanquish

  14. Hey, some asshole named J Albert (probably a government dick trying to keep this controlled) has taken down your first video. How about you claim copyright on EVERYTHING he has uploaded, as a revenge? ^^
    YouTube is a piece of shit. They block everything, even when someone is only *claiming* something. No need for proof. Basically worse than Nazi Germany.

  15. Multiplex EasyStar. Probably using an Ardupilot (Arduino UAV). There is a lot of info on UAVs at diydrones.com and also some threads on First Person Video (FPV) There is not a lot of info on an FPV/UAV combination as there isn’t a need for FPV when the flying is autonomous. Anyone that posts anything about dropping or firing anything is quickly chased off the forums so you won’t find that kind of information there.

  16. Very easy installation of video-piloting (No gyro controlled pan/tilt tied to the video-goggles), but VERY ILLEGAL shooting of fireworks from an RC Plane.
    Can result in some really hefty fines.
    Small airplane, too.

Leave a Reply to aztraphCancel reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.