World’s First Flying File-Sharing Drones in Action | Hacker News Reader

World’s First Flying File-Sharing Drones in Action

torrentfreak.com

45 pointsevo_925 comments

Why does it have to fly? I mean, it's cool, but surely there's better and less obvious solutions. Also, launching a UAV during a protest? Good way to get yourself shot.

A camouflaged server can be left anywhere. Wifi detectors will pick it up, but if that's a concern than a remote drone is going to be even more likely to get taken out. If you waterproof them, you could toss them down a drain, and hope they stay in place. You could strap them to a vehicle. You might be able to strap them too a medium-sized dog. Obviously, you'd run the risk of getting traced back, but the same could be said for launching a UAV.

There's millions of ways cheap, weatherproof servers can be used.

Never underestimate the bandwidth of several autonomous drones loaded up with ultra-light USB drives :)

Now all we need is a more advanced drone which can generate or pirate its own power. I love the idea of these homing in on power lines, clamping on, and sipping juice like some sort of mischievous electrovorous jellyfish - I'm assuming this isn't practical since AC clamps are metal and rather heavy, and I don't know how much current you can actually get out of them (they're usually just used for measuring current) but it's a cute image :)

There's already work that's been done to supply quadcopters with power over monofilament line to enable instant comm towers. Just have these tethered in random locations, then enable them to "bugout" in the event of a search warrant.

You know, I think you're on to something. I think the frequency for overhead power lines is basically just 50 or 60 Hz, depending on region.

You could probably setup a lightweight tuned secondary coil on the robot, and then use some clever rectifier/zener tricks to get a reliable trickle charge out of it.

Hm.

EDIT:

BAHAHAHA THIS IS TOTALLY POSSIBLE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogowski_coil)! WE CAN HAVE DRONES LIVING OFF THE GRID! FUCK DA POLICE!

:D :D

Oh man, those Rogowski coils are cool :) I've only ever seen the type used on AC clamp meters, which are ferrite-cored and thus heavy.

Yeah, you apparently don't need to have a ferrous core, and you can hook them over something instead of needing a full circle core.

So, like, a little arm with a clamp could totally do this.

EDIT: Looks like the output is something like an impulse train... would need some kind of passive integrator circuit to make something a power supply could use for charging, I'd bet.

Possibly a full-wave rectifier, followed by a passive integrator, followed by your charging circuit?

In my region, a fine for "stealing electricity" has a fine starting at like $30,000. This is normally aimed at grow ops, which tap into the service lines before the meter (usually by an interior cut below grade so it goes unnoticed), however when the government is already abusing its power, I don't think it's a wise idea to actually get into a position where you could be facing a massive fine. So I certainly wouldn't suggest going anywhere near power lines.

I'd suggest solar-cells. If you get the right efficiency-weight ratio, they might actually add to the flight duration of the craft, and when the battery starts dying simply have the UAV target a south-facing roof and ditch. As the UAV would likely already have motion-sensors, simply program it so that any abnormal shakes in this 'sleep mode' and it takes off so no one goes up on a ladder and tries to grab it.

Also using this latter method, they could collect data on how long it takes before they get disturbed to find friendly zones for if they are disturbed in sleep mode.

Considering the outlandish fines being levied for something on the order of ten unlicensed copies of a song, being caught with a drone carrying hundreds or thousands would seem to overshadow electricity stealing fines. I like the solar-cell idea though.

I thought the whole point of the drones wouldn't be to carry pirated data, but simply act as a means of unregulated information communication.

It would be too complicated and convoluted to ensure data went where you wanted it if you're only uploading gigs to a certain drone in a swarm. It would also ensure you're traceable for any piracy you do commit (IP #.#.#.# at _____ this location is sending Lada Gaga Album leak to IP #.#.#.# at ____ location).

In my mind, the swarm should be using a mesh network. Without ISP's assigning your IP based on ones they own, you can literally join the local network with any random IP address and the mesh net handles getting your data between the drones and to your destination. What's better, is if these drones are connecting to open wifi nodes the mesh net doesn't have to be contiguous. A mesh net can be formed by a few open wifi nodes bridging the gap between major cities.

http://vimeo.com/36267881

This is art guys, forget energy supply for a moment and enjoy the idea. A politcal statement, as a counter measure to oppressive use of modern technology.

I can't wait until the government types (or involved parties with money) roll out hunter-killer drones that target these, furthering the oppressive use of modern technology. ;-)

Pretty obviously a hoax, er, I mean, conceptual art project.

I may be in the minority here, but I think that just having the idea counts for nothing, even in art. Their idea is pretty shallow, anyway. They're just assembling pre-existing memes together. Does anyone remember the old "imagine a Beowulf cluster" meme from Slashdot? It satirized a similar fanboy attitude. "Imagine an autonomous flying file sharing device!"

Solving the hard problems of making a crazy idea a practical reality is the only thing that counts in my book. This is not impossible; I've seen people do it time and again, and I've even done it myself.

Or, as Steve Jobs put it, real artists ship.

It's satire. It's making fun of people who think they can control data or stop people from sharing files.

You think to narrow, art is there to inspire you. The core idea is filesharing without boundaries. If someone has a practical idea derived from that, then something was accomplished. This discussion here shows that it is a success.

Why do you use the word meme, do we call art memes now?

To the Slashdot example, HPC is a solved problem. File sharing on the other hand has much bigger ideas and problems behind it, take government control of information as an example.

A really cool idea, but as others have mentioned a tiny bit impractical with only a few dozen minutes of flight time. However, there are actually serious attempts to adress these issues: Cellphone providers are looking into blimps as antennas; A guy I know is working on a autonomous airplane, that can keep itself in air more or less forever (Their goal is acutally to go to mars with this):

"The goal of this project is to design and build a solar powered micro airplane for autonomous exploration. This system, named Sky-Sailor, is fully autonomous in navigation and power generation. Equipped with solar cells covering its wing, it retrieves energy from the sun in order to supply power to the propulsion system and the control electronics, and charge the battery with the surplus of energy. During the night, the only energy available comes from the battery, which discharges slowly until the next morning when a new cycle starts."

http://www.sky-sailor.ethz.ch/

Cool art/tinkering, but one word as to practicality: transit.

I never quite got the long term plan for things like this or Sealand hosting. As one broken clock correctly said, the internet is not a dump truck. To be accessible from "the web", one requires some interactive uplink to the internet. If action can truly not be taken against the server, simply cut its cord. (Yes, it's possible to get some people to use their own radio hardware for communication with uav/minisat/moonserver, but the number of people who idealistically go out of their way to value freedom will always be much smaller than the ones who take the easiest path)

Where I'm going with this is that any salvation must come from software. The whole philosophy of the Internet is that dumbly passing packets back and forth is good enough, and the end nodes should have the intelligence to deal with whatever network failure occurs. I know that programming servers is easy, and centralized sites give the owners publicity and ad money, but the only lasting effect from these things is to create the community and mindshare from which next-gen protocols can be invented.

And what happens after 10 minutes of flying, when the batteries will be drained? Charging the battery takes at least as long as the flying time.

At first I assumed it was a hybrid blimp technology that would float above the weather, it's power is only needed for purposes of changing direction and transmitting with a directional antenna. It can have a large solar panel on top for recharging operating the bare minimum amount needed for operations.

This was of course not true. So anyone with a rifle can just shoot these babies down, and so can rain, and so can battery drainage.

Have them tethered on monofilament, which also supplies power. (This has already been implemented.) Keep the battery charged up in case of an "emergency" where they have to fly to a safehouse.

Well, shit, I guess they weren't kidding.

Huh.

(For folks States-side, for an idea on how to implement one of these this design report has some good info: http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/landing/universityprogram/11_win... )

I'm still not convinced. It still seems like a hoax. It's just too... funny. But really, if censorship becomes ridiculous, this sort of system might be able to circumvent it for the internet as a whole.. well, for the free internet as a whole

2x2200mAh batteries running GPS + 4 motors and other electronics means the flight time is maybe 10 minutes? (For comparison, the iPhone 4S is 1432mAh, running GPS continually on it drains it very fast)

This seems like a cool idea but the harsh realities of battery life, weather, maintenance, etc will most likely prove it unfeasible.

Is there any legal protection against someone just shooting these drones down? They're flying outside national law, so if someone or organization opposed to them could detect them, why not just shoot them down?

Because falling bullets will kill somebody.

Unless maybe you can get 'em with birdshot, and you're careful to make sure nobody's downrange.

This is a joke, right? What's to stop kids or the MPAA from taking potshots at these things?

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