Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Weirded Out By Your Neighbor's Drone? Create a NoFlyZone.org

I'm amused at this and haven't decided whether to put my address in the database or not.

What the website noflyzone.org does is ask your name and address and email address and it will look it up and create a "Geofence".

While I'm not too happy about having my email address used, I have a gmail account for that sort of thing, it seems pretty simple.

The theory behind it is as well, but of course, it will only protect you from the honest neighbor.  Dishonest folks will bypass that sort of thing, or at least they can at this point.

What happens is that a Drone has software to guide it.  You can't go over a certain height.  You can't fly over an airport.  You can't fly over a military base.

That sort of thing.

How does it do that?  There is a database of excluded areas in the software that lets your shiny little toy go up and spy on the neighbors.

Now to be fair, there are good uses for these things.  Exploring your own property, taking footage of a festival, and other public events.

Here's little Johnny's little league practice from 40 feet up!  Ok, here's little Johnny's little league practice until that pop fly took the drone out.

Anyway, it all looks at the GPS data, the same data that your phone tells you to turn down that blue road on the map that is really a river, and says that this particular area is not allowed.

The theory is great, but if you have someone who is frustrated by the limitations, there's nothing to say that they can't take the time to reverse engineer the database, select all the data, and hit the delete key.

Oops, no more limitations.

So like I said, it's just for the honest, like you and me.

Well, maybe you.  I don't have a drone.  Although I can think of some amazing video to be shot like the fireworks display that got videoed a while back up in West Palm Beach from the middle of the display.

And if you didn't get anything else out of my blather, have a look at the video.  It's truly beautiful and gives you even more Ooohs and Aaahs than a normal fireworks display!

Like the video says, make sure you watch it in HD!



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