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The U.S. Department of Transportation is set to announce plans to require registration for every drone sold:
Have a drone? You're going to have to register it with the U.S. Department of Transportation, according to NBC News.
The federal government will announce a plan within days that will require anyone who buys a drone to register it with the Department of Transportation, NBC reported Friday evening.
A Department of Transportation spokesperson told MarketWatch that U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Administrator Michael Huerta of the Federal Aviation Administration will release more details on Monday at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time.
"The hobbyist drone community has self-regulated itself for decades," said Lisa Ellman, co-chair of the unmanned aircraft systems practice at Hogan Lovells, a New York–based law firm. "But with the technology getting so cheap and improving so much, we have more and more drones."
FAA official Rich Swayze said last month that the agency expects that a million drones could be sold this holiday season.
"A lot of people are buying them and thinking they are toys," Ellman said. "They are not toys."
Florida lawyer Jonathan Rupprecht, author of a book on drone law, said he believes any plan centered around drone registration is a necessary first step toward regulating drones but is curious how the regulation will play out and whether the rule will apply to hobbyists with small drones.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 20 2015, @12:30PM
When this story showed up on slashdot, I started researching drone components to see what the current model du jour was for 250 class multirotors.
It seems the best bet for software is cleanflight or betaflight (a fork of cleanflight with reworked equations) running on a naze32 board. These are only 20 bucks and probably the part that's going to be regulated if DIY drones end up regulated.
You need motors (you can have anywhere from 2 to 8 motors on a naze32 board) and electronic speed control modules for each motor.
You need a radio transmitter (TX) to control the quad (look for a Turnigy 9xr or the equivalent) and a radio receiver (RX) board that connects to the naze board. 2.4 GHz is the usual control band.
For FPV flying you need a camera and transmitter. FPV video usually runs on the 5.8GHz band. Quanum makes a cheap set of goggles and boards that have everything you need for FPV flying for $75. They do look stupid as shit but whatever. FatShark has slightly less ridiculous looking models for a good deal more money.
Uhm, otherwise you need a battery and a frame.
Altogether you can get everything you need for around $300 and it's not that bad to use the naze boards in a project, you can just solder headers to the board and use plugs for ease of maintenance.