Comments on: Man arms DIY drone with paintball handgun and shoots human cardboard cutouts

By: Preston Sturges

Preston Sturges — Sat, 15 Dec 2012 02:35:00 +0000

Maybe it should be able to fire a volley of small estes rockets, each one tipped with an ounce of C4

By: benher

benher — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 19:17:00 +0000

“How very.” Sorry I know you’re trying to be serious, but this made me laugh so hard I snorted drones out of my drones.

By: benher

benher — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 19:04:00 +0000

Oh now, phrases like that just hurt my feelings.

By: benher

benher — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 19:03:00 +0000

Gears… turning… like turbines…

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 00:17:00 +0000

Peter Jackson.

By: Alex Schneider

Alex Schneider — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 20:39:00 +0000

I’ve identified the masked man. It’s Lorne Michaels. Who else could produce a 4 minute video with about 15 seconds worth watching.

By: Punchcard

Punchcard — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:41:00 +0000

Beat me to it. Yeah, you have the sizes correct though the value I found was the .5 g I listed.

By: Glippiglop

Glippiglop — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:11:00 +0000

A gun would be unnecessary for most cases unless the target was known to always be indoors. In fact the gun is undesirable because you would have to get reasonably close to the target and they would see/hear you coming and time is needed to line up a shot.

I think the ideal payload for a home made device like this would be a large incendiary device (e.g. a big petrol bomb). Just hover high above the target and drop the payload. This way, accurate targeting is less of a concern (lots of splash damage). The drone can operate at much greater distance and be very hard to detect.The danger is that it would be almost too easy to make, requiring minimal mods to the existing drone design to function effectively. If you had them, I’d think dropping grenades would be feasible too.

By: Brainspore

Brainspore — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 17:34:00 +0000

That’s no way to assassinate someone with a hover-drone! A professional would have flew up to their victim’s non-bulletproof window, released a couple of poisonous space-centipedes through a carefully cut hole while the victim slept, waited around for the plot to fail, then allowed the drone to carry a Jedi Knight straight back to the attempted assassin for no good reason whatsoever. (God, I hate George Lucas sometimes.)

By: Sean Nelson

Sean Nelson — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 17:08:00 +0000

Can anyone walk up to one of those fixed wing RCs and just take off without hours or days of practice? These “DIY Drones” are a lot more stable than the RC craft you mention, especially for a beginner. Having an on-board computer that provides a layer of abstraction from the technical details of flight gives these devices much wider appeal.

By: Sean Nelson

Sean Nelson — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:51:00 +0000

Imagine someone replicated this guy’s design with live ammo and killed someone. At the very least, they may face some stressful scrutiny. The voice changer and mask probably won’t protect them from that, but if it makes them feel better. . .

By: Sean Nelson

Sean Nelson — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:49:00 +0000

It’d be a shame to evade the police only to get nabbed by the black swarming FCC vans

By: nixiebunny

nixiebunny — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:37:00 +0000

If your goal is to shoot someone, the ham license isn’t necessary.

By: Lemoutan

Lemoutan — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:30:00 +0000

Well, OK as far as it goes. But all it shows is a bunch of targets hit by paint. What if there’d been only one target? How many shots were taken – the whole bowl-load? I’m getting no sense that he hit anything at all he was actually aiming at.

By: Peter James

Peter James — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:29:00 +0000

I think he was using “airsoft” sized paintballs (11mm/.43 cal, I think he said in the video), as opposed to “traditional” paintballs (.68 cal I think? it’s been a while). I think that the 11mm’s are around .75g http://www.mcarterbrown.com/forums/ask-experts/70868-quick-question-whats-weight-43-cal-paintball.html and I’m guessing the ~3g you found was for the larger size.

By: Brad Gall

Brad Gall — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:20:00 +0000

Standard transmitter will get you about 500 meters. Upgraded 2.4Ghz will get you about 1k depending on signal interference. If you get a HAM license and a UHF transmitter you can get a couple of Kilometers. The real issue is battery life, you’re only looking at about 20 minutes on a standard multi-rotor.

By: orwell

orwell — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:34:00 +0000

a wookie can distract a drone long enough for it to be made inoperable…

good against cardboard cutouts is one thing, but good against the living?

By: Over the River

Over the River — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:17:00 +0000

His video again proves having the ability to make cool things does not translate into having the ability to make a cool video about it.

By: Over the River

Over the River — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:14:00 +0000

Totally in violation of the Catneva Convention

By: Jerril

Jerril — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:08:00 +0000

Just glue some gears on it, and call it steammmpunk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFCuE5rHbPA

By: Jim Saul

Jim Saul — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:05:00 +0000

The shock may damage it, but those multi-rotor copters seem to be able to recover pretty handily from anything that doesn’t shut them down.

For proof of concept, it really needs only to get in place to fire once to make the point that remote killing and assassination is now within the reach of a DIY hobbyist club.

Though even older RC could position an explosive, this really is an impressive and chilling demo of what we all knew was coming eventually.

By: SamSam

SamSam — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:05:00 +0000

No. The mass of real ammo and the recoil are both far greater with a real gun. The recoil alone would probably knock this thing off course or crash it, and would certainly make the aim far wilder even on the first shot.

That’s not to say that you couldn’t build a copter that was strong enough to stay relatively stable (or quickly get back on course) with a real firearm, but paintball != real gun.

By: Chris Merkel

Chris Merkel — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 14:54:00 +0000

Not an original idea – credit goes to Johnny Knoxville: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mJKQQq0eu8

By: bkad

bkad — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 14:49:00 +0000

But maybe they aren’t in the USA.

By: bkad

bkad — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 14:47:00 +0000

Why the mask and the voice disguise? Is any of this illegal? My US-raised intuition is “nothing in that video breaks the law”. The narrator even makes a point of reminding people that these are not things you should do at home.

By: DreadJester

DreadJester — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 14:14:00 +0000

Hummm, Milo Danger sounds a whole lot like Jessie Ventura…. It’s not so much the sound of the voice but the accent and speech patterns. Also seems like something right up his ally to do.

By: jsd

jsd — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 14:13:00 +0000

Hipster. I’ve been RC flying for years, and the mainstreaming/technological progression of the hobby is good for both long time hobbyists and new fans. Honestly, if people at local RC fields and meetings weren’t so damn insular and shut off to beginners, I really think the hobby would be much more popular today.

By: GlyphGryph

GlyphGryph — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 14:04:00 +0000

I think the issue is that almost all classic RC aircraft need to be directly controlled in some way, These copters, in my experience, tend to be a step removed from that, interpreting commands into a sequence of events with the correct result.

Essentially, they aren’t piloted, they are just directed, which I think is the biggest difference in most people’s minds – an unskilled person can still easily use one of these.

I enjoy flying my classic ‘copter, but it’s very different experience.

OR maybe that’s not it at all, I don’t know.

By: Thomas Schmidt

Thomas Schmidt — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 13:06:00 +0000

Not to worry. There are clever ways of dealing with recoil. Some of them would even improve the accuracy.

By: peregrinus

peregrinus — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:43:00 +0000

OK ok, the hunter killer stuff is obvious. And the self-replicating bit – even my young kids ask is it hard for robots to be blown up, re-assemble and replicate. Us adults scary? Wait for the kidz to grow up thinking that this isn’t even strange.

But! Think of the side-angles! Imagine the benefits to the graffiti community! 10 of these and you can have incredible murals in impossible places! Yay! Wait, no – boo!

Fruit-pickers, fear for your jobs. Window cleaners, you’ve had it. Painters and decorators, time’s up.

I’m going to have one sitting on a charger near my motorbike. When a thief tries to nab it, the thing’s gonna follow them and have fun!

The important thing here – it’s a marker in the hyper-speed development stemming from years of research, yielding across the board all sorts of funky things.

Except, of course, we will also have Skynet to deal with. The bell of inevitability rings with doom.

Bagsy be Arnie.