Cell phone control question

[DuaneM]

I was wondering if it's possible for someone to take control of your drone by using a cell phone while your flying it with your cell phone?

I don't use a cell phone on my drone, but I know people do. I know there are a ton of apps for this, so can it be done? Have you ever heard of it happening?

 

[RENOV8R]

Hahaha never heard of that and in fact, I'm the last person on the planet without a cell phone. But really when you think about it. would be pretty hard as those quads that are controlled by wifi have an extremely limited range. Dude would pretty well have to be standing right beside you

 

[oscar88]

Can be done on any unprotected network, I'd assume, only less, since I doubt the drone has web-browsing capabilities or anything like that. If it receives commands via wi-fi, it all depends on what the transmission of those commands look like. If you can find the transmission method, you can then write a program that sends those transmissions.

 

[Diven]

I have a Wingsland S6 drone, and this drone is controlled by my phone, I just download a Wingsland S6 App and through this App to control my drone; many drone are designed control by phone, but if your drone doesn't support that, it will be very trouble.

 

[DuaneM]

I live near a free wifi hotspot from Xfinity and it's not protected. Anyone with Xfinity at home can use this hotspot while in the same field as I am (it has a very strong signal). If they happen to have the same app as I was using for controlling my drone on their phone, say the Wingsland S6 app, can your drone be taken over by another person using the app while watching on the sidelines?

With a very old radio scanner, a person would have the ability to scan all the frequencies, including any and all cell phone frequencies. All "newer" radio scanners have been built without those capabilities because of privacy concerns, even outlawing them. (I don't remember when this happened, but I know they did all this at least 30-40 years ago). If someone had an older scanner, they could find the frequency quite easily and tune to your drones radio frequency and download (or already have) an app on their phone to universally control any drone.

Do you know of anyone that has tested this theory? My cell phone is too old to use any apps made in the past 5 years, so I can't test it out.

I'm also thinking that my little toy drone (WLtoys V686G) may have been taken over by someone using the same controller from a house next to this field. WLtoys has a bunch of drone models using the same controller as I have and it doesn't support "signal jumping" even though it's 2.4ghz (I think). It went a little nuts about 10-15 times without me controlling it! I know it wasn't just "one of those things" because they were doing a better job at piloting it than I was!

I know the FPV camera is locked on one 5.8ghz signal and can't be changed, so people can view what my toy drone camera is looking at. They do this for crowds at drone racing events. Any FPV monitor or goggles that have scanning abilities should be able to find the video signal.

I'm just a curious guy with a few questions looking for a few answers .... (input smiley face here)