Drones

FAA NPRM: Effect of remote ID USS on Smart phone Batteries

Preliminary results: Battery drain impact of a Remote ID USS app on a smart phone

Summary: Adding a Remote ID USS data logging app to a smart phone being used to control a quadcopter is likely to increase the battery drain by 10 to 15 percentage points over 30 minutes of flying. The quadcopter control app itself may drain 30-40% of the battery over 30 minutes of flight; adding Remote ID USS mostly adds the power drain of additional GPS usage and cellular data transmissions.

The FAA envisions using a smart phone to relay data about a flight into an Internet-based Remote ID USS (logging database). This data includes information about the operator, including the operator’s location, and for Standard ID, the location of the small UAS. Remote ID only requires operator location and restricts the small UAS to flight within a 400’ radius of the operator.

I created a simple Android app to read the GPS location, once per second, and to transmit data over the cellular connection, once per second (data and destination simulated and not representative of an actual Remote ID USS). This simulates using a control app on the phone to both find the location and relay the data.

This app was run on a Google Pixel 2 phone, outdoors, for ten minutes, and connected to the Internet using T-Mobile service, which in my backyard, is a “2-bar” signal.

In ten minutes, this resulted in 13% of the battery’s capacity drained. A 30-minute logging sequence would presumably represent a 39% battery consumption.

In a second test, I used a Yuneec Breeze, which uses an app as the control interface for the quadcopter. Running this app for ten minutes drained about 10% of the battery, or an estimated 30% in 30 minutes.

Continue reading FAA NPRM: Effect of remote ID USS on Smart phone Batteries →
Drones, UAVs

Hysteria: The Colorado Mystery Drones Weren’t Real

The mysterious drone sightings that captured national attention were a classic case of mass hysteria.

Source: The Colorado Mystery Drones Weren’t Real – VICE

Most of the widely publicized “drone sightings” and even “drone collisions” turned out not to be real. But these fake news reports served two purposes:

  1. They created mass hysteria that resulted in more people reporting seeing “drones”. Years ago, we had “UFO sightings”. Today, every light in the night sky is a “drone” and every plastic bag blowing in the wind is a “drone”.
  2. These false reports, hyped to an extreme, result in calls for more regulation.

Read on to learn about how the FAA may have helped generate hysteria in order to get Congressional permission to over regulate, and potentially shut down R/C model aviation in the United States.

This week,  the FCC apparently rejected the AMA’s request for an extended comment filing period, and in their rejection letter hint they want to roll out this rule making as fast as possible, potentially intending to ignore public input. 

Continue reading Hysteria: The Colorado Mystery Drones Weren’t Real →

Drones, UAVs

FAA NPRM: 36% of all filed comments are the AMA’s form letter

I previously explained why filing form letters with the FAA NPRM on Remote ID is a waste of time.

On January 7th, the AMA sent out an email blast asking members to urgently file comments and conveniently provided a link to a form letter.

As of today, 36% of all filed comments in the NPRM are the AMA’s poorly executed form letter. Ryan, posting on a FB FPV group page found that 2,506 comments of 7,020 filed so far are copied from the AMA’s form letter.

Some allege that the AMA’s poor performance on this existential issue is that their main focus is on being the affiliated CBO whose membership is required for FRIA certified air fields. In other words, its a cash cow.

Drones

#FAA NPRM: Read this assessment by an aviation/UAS lawyer #RemoteID #NPRM #UAS #UAV

See  RID – Somebody’s Watching Me?

By Dawn M. K. Zoldi, (Colonel, USAF, Retired), attorney and expert on UAS law.

She identifies many of the issues I previously described including the failure of the FAA to meet the requirements of the Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act – and proposes a solution with some similarities to my proposal.

She discusses data retention issues (a topic I have in my notes but have not had time to write about on this blog), and privacy issues including the 4th amendment.

Drones, R/C aircraft, UAVs

EAA says “Proposed Remote ID Rule Contains Concerning Requirements” regarding #FAA #NPRM

2 Comments

The EAA is the Experimental Aircraft Association, a global organization of aircraft builders, innovators, hobbyists and aviation enthusiasts:

EAA is very concerned that the FAA’s proposed rule on remote identification of unmanned aircraft systems could have a severe detrimental impact on traditional model aviation, and is preparing a full package of comments on the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.

Source: Proposed Remote ID Rule Contains Concerning Requirements

Read the entire linked post from the Experimental Aircraft Association, a leading aviation group concerned with all aspects of aviation including home building aircraft, education, flight and much more. They call out problem areas in the FAA’s NPRM on Remote ID, including the indoor flight restriction problem that I first identified on this blog.

Note their ending comments:

EAA will provide guidance to members who wish to comment in the coming weeks. When you do comment, please be respectful and use rational, fact-driven arguments in your own words. Form letters and emotional comments have much less impact on the regulatory process. More updates will be provided as they become available.

By comparison, the R/C modeling association, the AMA, urged members two weeks ago to quickly file comments and offered a form letter to send or use as a template. Which was absolutely the wrong approach, as I have described in posts on this blog (see here and here).

Keep an eye out for the EAA’s guidance and  check out the guidance from others such as Drone U. (Downloadable information is located here).

I am proud to be a member of the EAA; I have stopped following the AMA on this critical issue (I am also a member of the AMA).

(I am in the midst of a two week period where I have almost no time to spend on the NPRM – I do have notes on more NPRM issues but will not have time until the middle of next week to resume research on these items.

For example, what is the real world impact on smart phone battery life of a once-per-second real time tracking system?

Smart phones extend their battery life by keeping electronics switched off as much as possible. This NPRM would require that the GPS be active continuously, the cellular transmitter be fired up every second, and the display and CPU/GPU likely in use simultaneously for running the R/C model control software. The display, the cellular transmitter and the GPS receiver are among the greatest power drawing components on the smart phone. This real time reporting requires the phone be operated in a maximum high power state continuously for the duration of flight. It is possible, especially in marginal cellular coverage areas, that the FAA’s Internet-based real time tracking system could use 30-50% of the phone’s battery in 20 to 30 minutes of flight. You’d have to recharge your phone’s battery before a 2nd or 3rd flight later in the day, creating yet another obstacle to flight. If I have time, I would like to test this and measure the impact on batteries.

I wrote my 2012 Masters thesis in Software Engineering on power management issues in Android phones.)

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