If you’re looking to get into flying first-person view (FPV) remote controlled aircraft, there’s an incredible amount of information available online. Seriously, it’s ridiculous. In fact, between the different forums and the countless YouTube videos out there, it can be difficult to sort through the noise and actually find the information you need.
What if there was one location where FPV folks could look up hardware, compare notes, and maybe even meet up for the occasional flight? That’s the idea behind the recently launched DIYFPV. In its current state the website is a cross between a social media platform, a hardware database, and a tech support forum.
Being able to look up parts to see who has them in stock and for what price is certainly handy, and is likely to become a very valuable resource, especially as users start filling the database with first-hand reviews. There’s no shortage of social media platforms where you can post and chat about FPV, but pairing that with a dedicated tech support section has promise. Especially if the solutions it produces start getting scrapped by show up in search engines.
But the part of DIYFPV that has us the most interested is the interactive builder tool. As explained in the announcement video below, once this feature goes live, it will allow users to pick parts from the database and virtually wire them together. Parts are represented by high-quality illustrations that accurately represent connectors and solder pads, so you won’t be left guessing where you’re supposed to connect what. Schematics can be shared with others to help with troubleshooting or if you want to get feedback.
The potential here is immense. Imagine a function to estimate the mass of the currently selected electronics, or a simulation of how much current it will draw during flight. It’s not clear how far DIYFPV plans on taking this feature, but we’re eager to find out.
Enjoy it while you can. Probably by 2030 multirotors, parts and RC equipment in general (except for shit-tier children toy stuff) will be as restricted (if not more) as lab equipment and certain chemicals which can be used to “manufacture drugs”.
And if not outright banned then it might be that each BLDC motor, high capacity battery, ESC, RC transmitter etc. will have its unique serial number registered with some state agency.
All it takes is one misguided person who will take inspiration from ongoing war in Europe and use multirotor to attack a large gathering like parade or concert.
Governments know they’re effective weapons.
There’s plenty of footage floating about the internet of multirotors killing people in Ukraine.
Any such regulation would just torpedo the average quality (and in turn safety) of such parts in the country as people import more grey market Chinese junk.
I doubt your hypothetical bad actor would want to leave the paper trail of going through particularly legitimate channels anyway.
What argument is that? People who like to use drones for killing others will do that with or without restrictions. And as I know, the crazy americans allow owning even real weapons, don’t they?
People are quite adaptable as we just learned in New Orleans.
Germany suffered a similar attack, but there people can go to prison longer for being critical of the attacker, so you have that.
People can go to prison for being critical of someone guilty of murder? In what way?
We’ve been trying that (extremely valid) argument regarding guns for decades… We have had “lawmakers” in every single state feverishly working to “ban” guns in order to “make the streets safer” for the past few decades. Their efforts have directly led to people 3D printing entire submachine guns in their home and making the metal parts in a bucket of salt water using electrolysis… Not a single part of these guns can even be tracked any more. All a direct result of these legislative geniuses… It’s rather hilarious. If they try to “ban” drone parts people will just start winding their own BLDC at home. What will they do then? Ban copper wire? LOL
‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
“‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”
The US has been a gun culture from day one and there wouldn’t be a US if that wasn’t true. Because of that, ownership is a constitutional right and it’s not about hunting. The senile husk leaving the White House mocked the public use of firearms against tyrannical government by saying they wouldn’t have nukes or F-15s, that implying that the government would use such weapons against its own citizens. My response would be to ask if the Viet Cong or, more recently, Taliban had nukes or fighter jets.
How not to die from guns in the US based on statistics:
Don’t kill yourself with one (57% of the deaths are suicides and other countries with very restrictive gun laws have higher suicide rates)
Stay out of the “bad part of town” (most of the remaining gun deaths are gang warfare over turf/drugs)
The mass shootings hyped in the international news are statistically rare in a country with 347 million people and the FBI’s definition of a “mass shooting” is four or more people being killed in the same incident which therefore includes a lot of gang warfare which doesn’t make the international or, often, even national news because its not rare and is mostly a case of criminals shooting each other.
Walrus is absolutely correct for a simple reason: by definition criminals don’t obey laws! Short of banning and confiscation, laws won’t fix the illegal use of drones any more than laws will fix the illegal use of guns. HOW can people not see that?
This isn’t a new idea. It was the whole premise to “The Dead Pool” Clint Eastwood film. Parts will still be available for hobbyists. It’s a bit like banning ammonium nitrate because it’s not used for it’s intended purpose.
3d printers are still legal
There’s no putting this cat back in the bag.
Microcontrollers aren’t going away. BLDC motors are too useful for tools and small vehicles.
Nobody’s coming for your lithium cells either.
There’s enough free/open source software on GitHub and the like that can do the job. And if that gets taken down, there are similar-enough examples of a PiD loop that a half-competent person of sufficient motivation could make their own.
Expect improvements in drone detection/tracking tech, and evolving laws on ways to take them down.
I half expect legal carveouts about “shooting down” aircraft for civilian drones – with reasonable justification and choice of weapon (ie, use airsoft or something that won’t come down and hurt people)
History sadly shows that they can come for whatever they want. Your house, your land, your family, …
Lithium cells are not exempt.
Sure, there is no shortage of fools out there (they’re too easy to assemble with unskilled labor), so someone will have this idea.
But it’s fairly impractical to actually carry out such a restrictive strategy, especially since it’s quite possible to build a quadcopter without using high performance parts, using repurposed trash.
And quadcopters aren’t necessarily the best option to weaponize, anyway. They’re merely flexible. Straight fixed-wing drones carry a much bigger payload and don’t need complicated parts, as the very same war shows us…
Killing people is always too easy. It’s only hard to make tools that are good at general-purpose flexible opportunistic killing. In a similar sense, it’s easy to kill LOTS of people. It’s much harder to ensure killing one specific person despite whatever may intervene. Shaheds kill lots of people. FPV quads can be used to target one specific person and succeed despite dodging, but are generally harmless outside of a very short blast radius.
Regulating things that are primarily useful for killing is one thing, but regulating widely-used generic things is another, especially when such regulations can easily cripple the ability to ENFORCE the regulations.
Note that vehicles (ICE -or- electric) are actually very effective killing machines, and no amount of regulation is likely to change this, nor will they likely disappear from common usage due to this risk.
That’s setting aside any discussion about regulatory effectiveness. I note that murder is broadly regulated, yet illicit murder flourishes despite all attempts to stop it.
Completely agree. The damage potential for so many technologies and items remain completely unexploited, it is limitless. I am still waiting to see the headline about someone exploiting these new “smart/connected” vehicles to commit robbery or worse – You can make a lot of newer cars come to a halt simply be stepping in front of them (or using a flip-up cardboard cutout of snake plissken? lol). The only reason that we haven’t seen that yet is because nobody’s decided they need to do it. Where does that need to commit crimes using new methods come from? Our “lawmakers” of course! These so-called lawmakers are directly responsible for the feeding of and evolution of crime.
“I am still waiting to see the headline about someone exploiting these new “smart/connected” vehicles to commit robbery or worse”
A fast take on the Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas is that the occupant may not have been conscious (or alive) when it pulled up to the hotel!
As soon as I learned who the person in the car allegedly was, vs. the videos of the low-velocity explosion (completely expected from fireworks and liquid fuels in a vehicle with tons of windows, the literal opposite of a pressure vessel), I immediately assumed that the vehicle autonomously drove itself there… That entire situation reeks and I don’t even consider myself an amateur conspiracy theorist… Absolutely bizarre circumstances. Crazy world we live in. Fortunately, we can still buy bacon – as long as that is true, my belly will be happy, and a happy belly is a happy me xD
As if, this is just FUD with absolutely no basis on reality. All because people are resourceful in war torn areas where small tech can be used as a weapon.
2030? It’s almost here: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-considers-potential-rules-restrict-or-bar-chinese-drones-2025-01-02/
“China accounts for the vast majority of U.S. commercial drone sales. In September, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the department could impose restrictions similar to those that would effectively ban Chinese vehicles from the United States and the focus will be on drones with Chinese and Russian equipment, chips and software. She told Reuters in November she hopes to finalize the rules on Chinese vehicles by Jan. 20. A decision to write new rules restricting or banning Chinese drones will be made by the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who takes over on Jan. 20.”
What a crock. Just more sensationalist “sky is falling” nonsense from the conspiracy corner.
Yeah … but politicians seem to fall for the “sky is falling” and add more rules… See that already with FAA rules for drones (which our model airplanes fall under). Flying R/C isn’t what it used to be where you had to have skills to fly within line of sight. Might be time to give up our hobby which would be a shame …. Note that it only takes one incident for the hammer to fall. We see that with guns as well. One bad apple … and the politicians are off and running….
Funny, i just unsubscribed uavfutures on youtube due to his annoying marketing for this. “once this feature goes live” – seriously?
Check the blog post entries, everything has 50+ replies in the past day for a brand new site. It’s entirely pre-populated with bots to make it seem like an active social media site.
@Tom Nardi – is this a SupplyFrame affiliated site? It certainly seems like one, and it’d be nice if HaD would be up front about any affiliation here.
Thanks. Holding out hope maybe it’ll work out.
Better forums exist already – https://greyarro.ws/ and nice map: https://dronescene.co.uk/
Without the need to push heavy on the youtube likes…
A better approach is to find technical means to make such threats “not invisible”. The solution to dark-night muggings isn’t to outlaw black clothes, it’s to invest in streetlights.
Most drones (and all simple drones) use radio control systems. The effective solution is to focus on how to both disrupt control signals when needed and how to localize/multilaterate them. If you do this, the operator is no longer invisible and anonymous. If drone attacks become a serious enough threat, it’s easy enough to develop automatic-response systems to partially offset failures in human threat-response.
This has the added advantage of working equally well against parties not subject to effective regulatory embargo, such as those backed by state actors or well-funded terrorists based outside of the state doing the regulation.
Incidentally, it’s really impressive how intuitive and immediately useful it is to combine realtime MLAT and augmented reality presentation. Works pretty well even with “dumb” direction-finding, but when available, TDOA MLAT is far more effective, and it’s only expensive “for an individual”…
All that will do is force further rapid development of the drone control systems. Remember, aircraft can navigate from simple RF beacons… Combine such a simple concept with dead reckoning and some basic AI/object recognition and I am sure someone could develop a consumer level drone that continues to carry out its mission whether or not a base control signal is lost. There is simply no way to mitigate “threats”. This world has never been safe, and it never will be. Humans are dangerous, this is a part of human nature. The only way to mitigate/reduce the danger is to systematically and aggressively eliminate humans who seek to do harm to others for the sake of personal gain/vengeance/ideals/etc. That is literally the only technique which would result in long term net increase in safety for the general public, and it will never happen. Therefore we will never be safe and we just have to accept that and learn to take care of ourselves no matter what happens. Look at the history of the modern world – People still found a way to be happy even in the dark ages!
Wow Guy’s!?! I just wanna learn to fly these cool little drones ied like to build my own so I know my aircrafts inside and out. And feel good about it.
It is a great achievement to be able to fly even at this small leval..