Drones are being heralded as the next great advancement in home delivery, but these low-flying machines can pose a risk to your privacy and your sanity. YouTuber Make it Extreme has devised an ingenious way to take down these pesky aerial nuisances; he has constructed a net gun. Resembling an Acme device from an old Warner Brothers cartoon, this net-shooting gun can catch a drone in one shot. Or if taking down drones isn't your thing, you can always use the contraption to try to capture animated roadrunners.
According to Eric Limer for Popular Mechanics: "The gun has a very simple principle. Using air pressure and four barrels, the gun shoots a net that is weighted on its four corners directly at the drone in question. A direct hit tangles the drone and brings it down hard, but without completely destroying it. After all, drones are pretty tough.
Given that this design requires a lot of metal and machine work, it's not quite DIY for the average tinkerer, though it probably wouldn't be too hard to bring this design to life using materials that are easier to work with like wood and PVC. For further simplification, it need not even be a net that you fire—we've got ample proof that a cloud of streamers is more than enough to tangle any drone that gets too close. So if you're looking for an engineering project to sink your teeth into, the homemade drone chaff gun is just waiting to be invented."