Faraday cage

[AndrewS]

Evidently one can prevent magnetic interference by using a Faraday cage. Do you guys have any experience with these things? Thank you.

 

[TN Drone Services]

Can you be a little more specific about what you are asking (I assume you are wanting to know about using it with your drone), but that would not only prevent interference, but also the "right" signals from reaching your drone if I am understanding correctly.

I'm interested in what you're after here.

 

[Anzacjack]

i believe it would block all radio tx and rx and gps but I dont believe it will effect anything related to magnetics

 

[AndrewS]

Well, I've got a client (construction company) who has expressed interest in me photographing a light rail station in an urbanized area. In doing some research I ran across an article that discusses strategies for flying in cities ("Flying Drones in Large Cities –Effective Ways of Tackling Magnetic Interference and Ensuring Drone Safety"). The article states: "Exposure to powerful magnetic interference can “fry up” a drone’s flight controller, and cause your drone to fall from the sky. A simple way of preventing this is by using a Faraday cage. A Faraday cage is nothing but an enclosure that reduces magnetic interference. For instance, wrapping the flight controller with a piece of carbon fiber can act as a rudimentary but effective Faraday shield." Flying Drones in Large Cities - How to Tackle Interference and Ensure Drone Safety - Vermeer.

I'm a relative newbie, so I wanted to learn more about the above strategy.

 

[Anzacjack]

Mmm. I’ve been in this game for quite a while now and have never heard of a flight controller being fried by magnetic interference whilst in flight.
I’ll have a read of your article but I’m guessing it’s just some academic making theoretic scenarios that have never actually happened

 

[Anzacjack]

I would say that the incident quoted in that article was simply radio interference and poor pilot decisions. Not the flight controller being fried by electromagnetic interference.

if you are flying commercially you already know of the rules and should know of pitfalls of flying in an area that may have congested radio waves. I’m assuming you won’t be taking of from rail tracks, so you should not have any issues

 

[Andrzej]

The only case of interference protection I'm aware of is protection of GPS antenna and compass, something like this:

But its goal is to protect against drone's own interference caused by ESC and motors.

External electromagnetic field should not fry anything unless drone is flying inside some really high voltage converter or radar or inside you microwave (BTW microwave housing is a Faraday cage), which is rather theoretical case, and in this case not only controller might be fried but all electronics inside a drone so protecting controller only would not prevent a failure.

Let's assume real life and your drone flies into very high electromagnetic interference area. The first what happens is transmission lost and no radio link with your transmitter. It happens for example when your drone gets too close to mobile telephony base station. In such case drone will start fail-safe procedure and return to homepoint. If you setup return altitude high enough then your drone should be ok. Fail-safe combined with Evo2 excellent OA is sufficient protection.

 

[Deleted member 6303]

You would need to store the unit in a faraday cage to prevent it from an EMP so it can be used as a doomsday device for security. EMP = Electro Magnetic Pulse and if we got hit with a EMP the entire world has a huge problem. The grid goes bye and down!