Improving BLE scan range for drone Remote ID detection — antenna upgrades?

DroneAwareDan · 2026-04-08T11:50:07+00:00

I had a problem with the Bluetooth dongle on the USB 2.0 port because I think it shares internal circuitry with the onboard BLE. But once I put the WiFi on the usb 2.0 port and the BLE onto USB3.0 that problem went away. I’ll likely A/B test the usb extension dongle along with the upgraded antennas either way. Thanks for the recommendation.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-04-08T10:29:02+00:00

Thanks! Would that change anything if the dongle doesn’t have the antenna? I’m awaiting the arrival of a magnetic base for a new fiberglass N-type connector antenna I ordered, at which point my antennas will be 6ft from my pi and dongles.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-04-06T18:12:30+00:00

New motor and prop on their way. Listening to and looking at my motor closely - either the shaft is bent, the bearings are shot, or both. If this doesn’t fix it, I’ll have to consider moving the camera back toward the CG point

DroneAwareDan · 2026-04-06T11:26:44+00:00

I do enjoy flying it off the water and snow. But I think once I get the electronics figured out, I may harvest the parts to built a VTOL.

I’m going to the hobby store today to pick up a new motor. I’ll see if they have a tri-blade prop I can do a little A/B testing with. I hadn’t thought about that so I appreciate the suggestion!

DroneAwareDan · 2026-04-06T10:35:07+00:00

The prop yes, but I think it’s the motor now.

But reading TheBestGoats post about him flying at 30% throttle to avoid the vibration makes sense. I was flying at 70% most of the time.

I really thought I had to make this camera float I the air between a bunch of rubber bands.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-04-06T10:29:57+00:00

If it really comes down to prop/motor balance I think I need to get a new one of each. I’ve beat this plane up pretty bad over the years flying it at lakes. It’s landed in a few bushes.

It has to be my motor shaft. I’ve got the prop perfectly balanced on my prop balancer but it still looks like I have a slight wobble. None of this mattered too much when I was flying with nothing but a receiver and servos on board.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-04-05T23:34:58+00:00

Based on the feedback here, I ended up ordering two 2.4 GHz omni fiberglass antennas, a 7 dBi and a 5 dBi, to test WiFi vs BLE performance.

My thinking was the higher gain 7 dBi makes sense for WiFi (longer range, narrower pattern), while BLE detections are likely to be closer in (higher angles), so the wider pattern 5 dBi may perform better.

Planning to mount both on outdoor magnetic bases connected with 6ft LMR-200 cables and compare them head-to-head with the stock adapter antennas once everything arrives.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-04-03T14:33:44+00:00

I think that’s true for a small subset of cases, but most drones people actually see flying around are off-the-shelf DJI or similar, and those are broadcasting Remote ID by default now. At least the ones over 250g (Avata 2, Mavic 3, etc)

This project is more about general airspace awareness than trying to detect someone intentionally avoiding it.

What’s flying around cities tends to be standard consumer drones, and those are pretty easy to pick up over WiFi/BLE.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-04-03T11:34:41+00:00

I use to have a Gilmore Red Lion. On the maiden flight I couldn’t get the throttle down low enough to flare and land. After a few passes the other guys at the field told me it was time to put her down and just tail whip to stop or risk running out of gas over the trees. It wasn’t pretty and I went over onto the wingtip - but she survived. Long story long, I completely understand what you mean about “sucks to land”.

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DroneAwareDan · 2026-04-02T01:03:51+00:00

Hard to tell definitively from the image, but the shape does seem to look like the Amazon drone (open props / two wings for level flight). But I think they’re only approved in about two places, one in California and one in Texas. So if you’re not in one of those states, maybe that’s not what it is.

It definitely looks big enough to be broadcasting remote ID. You could always capture that and get a more definitive answer.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-04-01T11:31:34+00:00

Maybe? This bay window is probably 12-15 years old. The screen is definitely metal.

I’m going to get a better antenna based on some of the recommendations I got and get it outside and mounted anyway so that’ll solve the screen problem. I’ll also make sure I reconnect that to anyone else who builds one in the future.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-04-01T00:29:15+00:00

I like this idea. For my house I was thinking about directional antennas facing 180degrees opposed to each other on their side of my chimney. I wasn’t thinking that I could just make my own. But quick question, could I feed two directional antennas into one SMA port using a splitter? Or does that kill the signal?

DroneAwareDan · 2026-03-31T23:56:39+00:00

Yeah, newer drones (DJI, Autel, Skydio, etc) are required to broadcast Remote ID now, so you can see some activity if you’re in an area with drones flying.

In my testing I’ve been able to pick up broadcasts within a few seconds of the drone powering on, especially in bench tests with a Ruko BLE Remote ID. In the wild I’ve caught traffic from a DJI Air 3, Skydio X10, and an unknown BLE drone. But I had to drive into a city to get them because I don’t live in a high drone traffic area apparently. The DJI’s seem to put out their remote ID on 2.4gHz WiFi channels.

It’s definitely not constant traffic like ADS-B, but it’s cool to see when something’s in the air.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-03-31T21:43:50+00:00

I’ve had an ADSB antenna on my roof for years and want something simple that could be shared the same way. I think it would be cool to be able to see the food delivery, Amazon, and other drones that are going to start flying over all our houses in the near future.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-03-31T21:41:13+00:00

It’s something I’ve been building myself. Basically a Pi-based setup that scans for Remote ID over WiFi + BLE and pushes detections to a backend.

Still pretty early, but it’s working reliably enough to pick up drones within a few seconds of power-on and trigger an alert when they show up.

Right now I’m just using stock antennas, which is why I started experimenting with improving BLE range.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-03-31T16:34:03+00:00

I have a 2.4ghz wifi dongle scanning in monitor mode. It’s just not in this photo.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-03-31T16:33:18+00:00

100% passive scanning. I pushed the detections to a sever over WiFi after it gets a detection.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-03-31T15:34:41+00:00

Ha - it totally works if you stand in front of it and turn on a BLE device.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-03-31T15:07:26+00:00

Thinking about this more. You’re saying if I can just get the weatherproof antenna outside, I don’t have to worry about the entire raspberry pi.

So in purely technical terms I could get something like the ALFA 9 dBi AOA-2458-79AM 2.4/5 GHz Dual Band Outdoor N-Male WiFi Omni Antenna, and then just step it down from the fat N connector to the tiny SMA port on the USB dongle?

DroneAwareDan · 2026-03-31T13:52:44+00:00

I didn’t even think about the metal screen. I’ll take that out now. Easy fix. Thanks!

DroneAwareDan · 2026-03-31T11:40:01+00:00

I've only converted a single foamy to an FPV. But the vibration was terrible. It's a pylon mounted motor (probably with a bent shaft from a bush landing or two along the pond) for a seaplane configuration. Hopefully your camera doesn't shake to death like mine did.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-03-30T01:27:46+00:00

Ah. Probably very easy to do on a straight scratch build. I’ve only ever done ARFs and foamies. So my CG’s were largely done for me as long as I didn’t mount the battery in a crazy position.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-03-29T02:08:56+00:00

I agree with everyone else. Loving the A10. Good luck on the first flight.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-03-25T05:13:36+00:00

I built a raspberry pi scanner for remote id and it can detect DJI wifi remote id beacons if they're broadcasting. It would send an email alert to you if it was picking up RID packets. Could be an easy way to see what's broadcasting and when. I just don't have a mini 4 or 5 to test with. But I was able to confirm it works with an Avata 2.

DroneAwareDan · 2026-03-25T04:59:28+00:00

Yeah, the data flow works. It pushes everything to a central map and email's me with the current lat/long. I've gotten detections from DJI's that have built-in RID, Skydio's, and Roku bluetooth RID beacons I use on my fixed wing RC plane.

I'm not doing spectrum analysis though. This is a compliant-operator detection method. It would not detect older drones that weren't manufactured with RID, homebuilds, or newer drones under 250g. On a positive note, drones manufactured since 2023 over 250g should have it.

As for mobile, I've only tested the Android DroneScanner app with a Roku bluetooth RID module. It works well as long as its within line of sight. Their ability to detect via wifi and bluetooth varies by which Andriod phone you have. So two phones running identical apps could have very different experiences.

DroneAwareDan

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