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Hacksmith Industries: Security Drone

2023-03-11 | By The Hacksmith

License: See Original Project

This project was created by Engineering Superheroes of Hacksmith Industries.

DO NOT ATTEMPT to Re-Create

The Hacksmith team recently moved to a new headquarters. Unfortunately, the new shop was promptly burgled within the first few days of arrival. The team wanted to improve the security at the new HQ and keep thieves away from their trove of materials, electronics, and Make It Real creations.

With all this in mind, Ben and Darry from Hacksmith Industries set out to beef up their facility’s security and came up with a design for a drone that can detect intruders, patrol the grounds, and ward off would-be burglars. See what they came up with in the video below!

While the Hacksmith guys used their drones to chase burglars, we here at Digi-Key will only be using ours to chase around our friends and people that we already know. Make sure, if you’re doing this one at home, that you only use this system around people that you know for some safe, simple fun with drones!

 

How Does It Work?

The grounds at the facility are very large, so drones were a natural fit since they can monitor a big area with a bird’s eye view. The design started with stock drone kits that were then loaded with as many features as they could carry.

Warding Off Intruders

Several features were added to the drone to scare off intruders. First, Hacksmith Industries added 120W LED spotlights to the design. These spotlights put out 15,000 lumens and can be controlled remotely via computer. Next, they added some very loud speakers! They can adjust the volume with a knob before it takes off, so once in flight, the drone’s speakers only have one volume: uncomfortably loud!

Finally, the drone needed a way to mark its victims without injuring them. This was accomplished with airsoft cartridges filled with paint that could be activated by the pilot. The first version used a servo motor but it had issues having enough pressure to set the cartridges. After switching the servo to solenoid and watering down the paint to make it spread better, the drone was fully capable of covering baddies in paint.

Charging

All the features above took a lot of juice from the drone’s battery, so it needs to be able to charge remotely when nobody is there to plug it in themselves. This charging system would need to be large enough for the drone to land on but needed to charge the battery faster than a normal wireless charger. The Hacksmith crew designed a custom PCB with a large conductive surface area that the drone only needed to touch with a pin. The pad also heats itself so it doesn’t get covered in ice and snow.

Navigation

The drones can communicate with the security camera system that was already at the facility and both can be controlled from a laptop. There are three drones in total: two with paint launchers, speakers, and lasers, and a spotter drone with high resolution and thermal cameras. The spotter’s video feed can be monitored remotely on a computer or smartphone.

When the security system detects an intruder, the drones will take off and head to the area where the intruder was spotted. Once in the area, the drones follow a predetermined path until they detect the target and proceed to shower them with bright lights, loud speakers, lasers, and paint!

Schematic and BOM

 

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