Neat! SDRs have been available at reasonable price points for some time but the processing power to engage with wifi and other digital signals has been somewhat elusive. Assuming RAM can be purchased in the future, I think we might see a lot more prosumer-targeted devices for doing raw signal analysis in the future.
> If the open source community can come up with something like this, just imagine what governments are capable of.
Since ~2022 and accelerated by the Russian aggression against Ukraine, governments are now behind both private and open source for frontier technology.
The companies that captured government contracts in the last century can’t move fast enough to bring tech into the government and national technology policy and funding is collapsing compared to the private sector
if it can spot/track drones that is a marketing opportunity for airports around the world that have to deal with drone nonsense which shut down flights for days
Most major airports will already have a counter-UAS system, it's a huge industry.
One big issue with radar is that it has the same problem pilots and human observers do: it struggles to distinguish drones from anything else in the sky (birds, balloons, planes, etc.). This is an active and improving research space, but by and large with radar, when your pilots report a drone, you still don't know how to figure out if it's the typical mis-identification or something real.
If would likely need to track them well (not sure from this article/video if that's the case?) to be useful in that scenario...
Drawing a splodge in roughly the location (not sure if there's range info either? I doubt it if it's passive) overlaid on the video likely won't cut it...
There are more way advanced systems for cuas, where they infuse radar and visual and acoustic plus now AI to minimize the false positives, but practically speaking, they are not bullet proof and still fail. RID (remote ID) is a way to have a cooperative communication and was mandated in US, but there are ways too to spoof it and cloak it.
Neat! SDRs have been available at reasonable price points for some time but the processing power to engage with wifi and other digital signals has been somewhat elusive. Assuming RAM can be purchased in the future, I think we might see a lot more prosumer-targeted devices for doing raw signal analysis in the future.
Historically these have been quickly shut down without much of an explanation.
I wonder if this tool can help with EMC compliance testing. My TinySA needs an LNA, so I wonder if this has the required noise floor.
And yet since rtl-sdr times we have passive radars as an option as well https://www.rtl-sdr.com/tag/passive-radar/
The visualizer app reminds me of the same UI / output you get from acoustic cameras.
The original quote for a single tile was $50-$100
They came out at $500
Being off by a bit is fine. Being off by 5x to 10x is.. Yikes.
Prices have gone a little insane in the last year though too to be fair to them.
It looks like it has 4 tiles on it, no?
Yea its mimo 2x2.
Point still stands that they initially said it would be $50-$100. And its going for $500.
It should be more specific, it spots RC drones operated on ~5.8ghz, it won’t spot RC on 900mhz, nor cellular enabled ones.
Is that a limitation of the antenna? I though QuadRF uses SDR so can see many frequencies, not just the wifi things like ESPARGOS [0]
From documentation, QuadRF: Operating frequency range of 4.9 - 6.0 GHz (C-Band).
0. https://espargos.net/
for lack of directonality?
for lack of frequency tuning
> If the open source community can come up with something like this, just imagine what governments are capable of.
Since ~2022 and accelerated by the Russian aggression against Ukraine, governments are now behind both private and open source for frontier technology.
The companies that captured government contracts in the last century can’t move fast enough to bring tech into the government and national technology policy and funding is collapsing compared to the private sector
That’s new in history
Open source is the future. If everyone can work on it, we get better results for cheaper.
Open source doesn't mean the end of competition, since we are a competitive species.
I think the future economy is going to be some sort of UBI + large open source projects
The democratization of asymmetric power and warfare. I cannot opine whether it is a net positive or negative, but it is very cool.
"The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed." -- William Gibson
if it can spot/track drones that is a marketing opportunity for airports around the world that have to deal with drone nonsense which shut down flights for days
Most major airports will already have a counter-UAS system, it's a huge industry.
One big issue with radar is that it has the same problem pilots and human observers do: it struggles to distinguish drones from anything else in the sky (birds, balloons, planes, etc.). This is an active and improving research space, but by and large with radar, when your pilots report a drone, you still don't know how to figure out if it's the typical mis-identification or something real.
Yes, primary radar has been useful for detecting airspace incursions since 1939. Nothing new here.
If would likely need to track them well (not sure from this article/video if that's the case?) to be useful in that scenario...
Drawing a splodge in roughly the location (not sure if there's range info either? I doubt it if it's passive) overlaid on the video likely won't cut it...
There are more way advanced systems for cuas, where they infuse radar and visual and acoustic plus now AI to minimize the false positives, but practically speaking, they are not bullet proof and still fail. RID (remote ID) is a way to have a cooperative communication and was mandated in US, but there are ways too to spoof it and cloak it.