Long range drones

[Bombastinator]

I know nothing about starlink.  I get that the system weighs way way more than 250g, but does it have to?  My idea is a controller drone with a starlink that does the really long range, and a few wifi controlled things which already easily can be way under 250g the hard part is the unlicensed aspect of the controller link.

[Eigenvektor]

Not sure what the laws are in your area. Around here, aside from weight, flying a drone out of sight also requires a permit.

 

Legal stuff aside, I would expect satellite reception for StarLink requires a certain antenna size. That might make mounting it on a small drone difficult.

 

Afaik the antenna also needs to track satellites actively. Due to their low orbit they move relatively quickly in relation to your position. Placing an antenna that needs to track a satellite onto a fast moving drone will likely require fairly sophisticated and fast tracking that includes the drone's own movements into the mix.

 

I would also be worried about battery life. Since you now need additional computing power and actuators to keep the antenna pointing towards the satellite.

[Bombastinator]

39 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Not sure what the laws are in your area. Around here, aside from weight, flying a drone out of sight also requires a permit.

 

Legal stuff aside, I would expect satellite reception for StarLink requires a certain antenna size. That might make mounting it on a small drone difficult.

 

Afaik the antenna also needs to track satellites actively. Due to their low orbit they move relatively quickly in relation to your position. Placing an antenna that needs to track a satellite onto a fast moving drone will likely require fairly sophisticated and fast tracking that includes the drone's own movements into the mix.

 

I would also be worried about battery life. Since you now need additional computing power and actuators to keep the antenna pointing towards the satellite.

Afaik it’s all FAA stuff so line of sight is probably an issue everywhere and was on I wasn’t aware of, which sort of puts the kibosh on a legal item.

 

afaik the starlink dish is something like 2 feet from what I have seen.  A drone would probably have to be built to encompass it with a hoop gimbal with one direction of freedom, and the drone motors themselves covering rotation.   Starlink is not a single satalite system and the mass of them (there are hundreds or thousands) all travel very quickly.  I suspect there is more than one in range at any given time.  I do not know what electronics the starlink dish contains or what the dish has to be made out of, so I don’t know if this is even vaguely possible.

 

the USAF has a drone called called the global hawk that has all this internal.  It almost the size of a manned aircraft though.  It’s also designed to fly far, high, and fast as well as use a different satellite system. I am wondering if it’s possible to do just this feature as a hobbyist level device.

 

one thought would be a spherical helium balloon in the center to house the satalite dish and the. It would be a lot like one of thos superheavy log systems loggers use that have 4 helicopters that spiny around the outside with lifting wings at male sort of a heavy lift helicopter.

[Kilrah]

You're not going to need starlink with the distances you can reach with an energy source that fits in 250gr anyway.

Some have used cellular modems.

 

 

12 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

do not know what electronics the starlink dish contains

There are teardown videos around. Large beamforming antenna, mounted on a powered gimbal, with power-hungry electronics...

[Bombastinator]

Just looked at tear downs there was a channel callled mike on space that had one.  It was an agonizingly long drawn out “unboxing” video that was about 90% unnecessary garbage that left me wanting to throttle the man, However, He apparently remove all the gimbal stuff and just set the thing flat on the roof of his car and it worked fine.  That was the v1 though.  He then did a tear down of the v2 which appeared to be not a dish at all, but a large pc board with a particular type of ipc chip studded all over it. 

 

[Eigenvektor]

20 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Afaik it’s all FAA stuff so line of sight is probably an issue everywhere and was on I wasn’t aware of, which sort of puts the kibosh on a legal item.

EASA in my case, but probably doesn't make too much of a difference. I would expect such a drone's pilot to require an actual pilots license with instrument flight (IFR) and other additional certifications in the mix. Maybe research into RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems).

 

If you're flying out of sight, you'll need to pay even more attention to flight control zones, no flying in or around airports, no flying close to cities etc. And you'll need to be able to do that remotely (i.e. you need to be aware where your aircraft is at any time). If you want to stay above board, you'd likely also need to provide detailed plans for various failure modes of the aircraft, e.g. how do you deal with an out-of-fuel situation.

 

20 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

the USAF has a drone called called the global hawk that has all this internal.  It almost the size of a manned aircraft though.  It’s also designed to fly far, high, and fast as well as use a different satellite system. I am wondering if it’s possible to do just this feature as a hobbyist level device.

I would start with a remote controlled car before going into the third dimension. Figure out how to get reliable satellite reception on a vehicle moving in 2D before you add the third dimension. Should also have less legal issues to deal with.

 

From an engineering standpoint, energy consumption is likely going to be the biggest hurdle that you need to overcome before anything else. The more energy your system needs the more fuel you'll need to carry. More fuel means bigger size and more weight, which in turn requires more fuel. I suspect your drone will need a certain size before the whole fuel / weight / payload ratio pans out.

 

Global Hawk is a fixed-wing aircraft. That doesn't just make it fly faster and higher than your typical consumer multi-copter, it also gives it much better fuel economy / range. And it uses fossil fuels, rather than a battery, which means greater energy density / weight.

 

For smaller ranges the mobile connection @Kilrah suggested should be much easier to do. It should also introduce less latency, be more energy efficient and much more readily available on the consumer market. Unless your drone has the range of a Global Hawk you don't really need satellite reception and all the additional difficulties it comes with.

 

If you decide to go with fixed-wing for the fuel economy, that will come with its own set of problems. A quad-copter that loses reception can hover in place and try to reacquire connection. A fixed-wing aircraft? Not so much. It'll need to fly in circles (and still correct for drift by wind)

 

A quad-copter that starts to run out of fuel can theoretically hover in place and go down slowly, your plane will need some kind of runway. On the flip side, should its engines fail it can at least glide, a quad-copter is very likely going to crash (fairly certain autorotation does not work for most quad-copters)

[mariushm]

If you want to learn about Starlink this one is pretty much the best video out there :

 

 

 

Besides the huge power consumption (maybe 40-100 watts), I think there's also things in the software that would disable the receiver if it's at certain elevation or certain speed.

I'm not sure, I think they plan to allow some to work on camper vans, maybe trucks (but maybe not when in motion), trains and possibly even planes, but those could be custom firmware, special licenses etc 

 

The device has to adjust itself to "catch" signals from multiple satellites and from time to time, it will adjust the whole antenna and those motors consume power. As far as I know, it also has to relatively not shake or wobble, otherwise it has a harder time picking the signals due to how the system works

 

 

imho if you want long range, I'd think of Lorawan ... which should give you at least 10-20 miles of range, maybe more ... and maybe coupled / backed up with a 3g/4g modem  / sms  (ex drone could send gps locations as a text every 5 minutes if it's down, or once a minute while it's moving and it's connected to network) , some phone companies will give you data transfer only plans so you could use one "modem" as bi-directional serial link etc etc

 

 

 

[Bombastinator]

I was thinking in aspect to the Ukraine war. Put it in a big drone, lans it on some obscure roof area where no one looks, and then switchblade all the Russian troops in the area.  Boom.  Instant breakthrough.  S.H.I.E.L.D hellicarriers exist, it’s just that they’re about 3 feet across.  Or a bit smaller.

[Bombastinator]

58 minutes ago, mariushm said:

If you want to learn about Starlink this one is pretty much the best video out there :

 

 

 

Besides the huge power consumption (maybe 40-100 watts), I think there's also things in the software that would disable the receiver if it's at certain elevation or certain speed.

I'm not sure, I think they plan to allow some to work on camper vans, maybe trucks (but maybe not when in motion), trains and possibly even planes, but those could be custom firmware, special licenses etc 

 

The device has to adjust itself to "catch" signals from multiple satellites and from time to time, it will adjust the whole antenna and those motors consume power. As far as I know, it also has to relatively not shake or wobble, otherwise it has a harder time picking the signals due to how the system works

 

 

imho if you want long range, I'd think of Lorawan ... which should give you at least 10-20 miles of range, maybe more ... and maybe coupled / backed up with a 3g/4g modem  / sms  (ex drone could send gps locations as a text every 5 minutes if it's down, or once a minute while it's moving and it's connected to network) , some phone companies will give you data transfer only plans so you could use one "modem" as bi-directional serial link etc etc

 

 

 

I watched this one, which claimed that the motorized gimble was largely unnecessary at least for short term stuff.  There is apparently also something called a roaming account.