Phantom 4, limiting drone radio signature ?

Posted by hugo delaroux on April 25, 2017 at 12:35am

Hi,

I am currently using UgCS with a Phantom 4 to do mapping in mountain, working great ! (=didn't crash yet^^)

Now I am looking into a way to limit the radio signature of the Phantom during flight. 

1) I am thinking of turning off the RC during the flight - Normally the Phantom should follow the mission until the end and come back, if the mission is well planned. I just want to make sure that the Phantom 4 will keep taking pictures if the RC is off ? (I remember something about the camera being controlled by the phone, but I might be mistaking with the way the Phantom 2 worked...)

2) I am wondering if it's possible to reduce the radio emission of the Phantom, for instance by cutting the video feed ? 

In summary, the best would be to upload the mission to the phantom with UgCS, start the mission and then cut all radio communication. But that might be a bit dangerous if any incident happen, so cutting the RC, and making the phantom only listen every second or so for incoming command should be good too.

Thanks for any input and idea ! I am mostly hoping that someone tried this kind of stuff before^^.

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Replies

  • Mark Fink April 26, 2017 at 6:04am

    Never thought of the hacking potential. I'm more worried about the hawks that live near the orchards I'm surveying. When they hack, it's a very unhappy day. (Safe so far, but a couple close calls...)

  • hugo delaroux April 26, 2017 at 1:57am

    Well the RC wifi is powerful enough to be detected 5km around (well not around but in the phantom direction). So basically anyone could be listening, I didn't find any hacking of phantom 4 yet (there is some for phantom 3 and earlier version), but it's still a risk. And there is some other cases when this kind of options would be useful...

  • Mark Fink April 25, 2017 at 4:10pm

    Hello Hugo,

    I have no experience with this, but I am curious. Why?

    Mark

This reply was deleted.