If you’re looking for an interesting project to work on this weekend, you can turn a Raspberry Pi into a device that will drop Wi-Fi controlled drones right out of the sky with just a tap of your finger.




This post is part of our Evil Week series at Lifehacker, where we look at the dark side of getting things done. Sometimes evil is justified, and other times, knowing evil means knowing how to beat it. Want more? Check out our evil week tag page .

The device concept, from Brent Chapman at Make, uses a Raspberry Pi, a touchscreen, and a couple of simple Bash scripts that execute some basic network commands. When you tap the touchscreen, the Raspberry Pi finds the drone’s unsecured Wi-Fi access point (used by the pilot to control the drone via smartphone or tablet), telnets to the drone’s default gateway address, and shuts down the system from the inside without the pilot knowing. Chapman’s guide also includes steps on how to build a Wi-Fi signal booster out of a large can so you have a much longer range for your drone disabler.


Keep in mind, this will only work on some models of Wi-Fi controlled drones, and you should only experiment with this tool on your own personal drones safely. Even then, Chapman explains that you do so at your own risk. You can find the complete guide at the link below.

Build a Wi-Fi Drone Disabler with Raspberry Pi | Make

Photo by Bill Morrow .