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QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall

#61

Post by geerlingguy »

dfc wrote: post #54
piinbinary wrote: post #48

One day I want to build something like this, except for sound. It would be great to get a heading and distance for where a sound is coming from. This could be both for small scale things (e.g. which part of this is squeaking?) or large scale (e.g. is that booming noise coming from the construction a few blocks away?)

Fluke has made an acoustic imager for a while now. It is used for detecting leaks: https://www.fluke.com/en-us/product/industrial-imaging/fluke...

There are a few knockoff options too, which are not quite as nicely calibrated, but get the job done for much less than Fluke-level prices. Like the FOTRIC TD2.

I think a few people have made homebrew versions too, like this one mentioned on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45137584

Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall

#62

Post by cenamus »

piinbinary wrote: post #48

One day I want to build something like this, except for sound. It would be great to get a heading and distance for where a sound is coming from. This could be both for small scale things (e.g. which part of this is squeaking?) or large scale (e.g. is that booming noise coming from the construction a few blocks away?)

I think you'll be very interested in this awesome project

https://ribbonfarm.com/2016/06/29/the-daredevil-camera/

Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall

#63

Post by somehnguy »

tamimio wrote: post #11
ck2 wrote: post #3

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

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.

Yeah RemoteID is trivial to spoof using an ESP32. Most hobby pilots I know simply don't comply with RemoteID. And bad actors certainly won't purchase a $75 device to add to their drone.

It does become a bit more difficult with consumer grade off the shelf drones because it's built in. Still defeatable by the determined of course.

Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall

#64

Post by rtkwe »

mschuster91 wrote: post #60
rtkwe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices have gone a little insane in the last year though too to be fair to them.

The Pi alone... just today, someone over at Reddit spotted a Pi 5 being sold for 350$ [1]. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/1uso8u1/insanity/

I thought that might just be Amazon resellers capitalizing on marks being too lazy to go off site at first when they were $280 at Microcenter (still crazy expensive). [0] Then Adafruit had them for the same $350! [1] And it really does seem to be driven by the ram too the 4 GB model is only $130 (or $104 at MC).

[0] https://www.microcenter.com/product/702590/raspberry-pi-5?rd...

[1] https://www.adafruit.com/product/6125?src=raspberrypi

Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall

#65

Post by 0xffff2 »

lambda wrote: post #47
Onawa wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought I remembered even seeing public Git repos with passive radar code that ended up getting shut down due to export controls?

Yeah, Kraken SDR removed some functionality due to these concerns, if I remember correctly. Odd, because export controls don't generally apply to published material (like open source software), but maybe they were worried that because they were also selling the hardware they could have issues due to the combo being export controlled. Ah, found discussion of what exactly it was they pulled, it was the passive radar co…

As someone who works daily with export-control-adjacent hardware and software, my experience is that people tend to aggressively self-censor to a far higher standard than export control regulations actually require. The perceived headache of drawing the ire of whoever it is the enforces this stuff (which as I type this comment I'm just realizing I don't know who specifically is responsible for that) is so scary that people don't want to take any risk at all of being targeted.

Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall

#67

Post by bluGill »

mikeweiss wrote: post #41
mlfreeman wrote: post #34

The visualizer reminds me of my thermal camera. I have heard claims of devices (mostly TVs) supposedly coming with secret 5G cell uplinks built in [never heard a specific model mentioned though]. If there were more variants covering more commonly-used RF bands, people could walk around and literally check for once. (incidentally i'm sure three letter agencies have had this sort of tech in their bug-detecting toolkit…

Whos paying the telcos for those 5G connections and also has the FCC been degraded so much that they would allow for undeclared radios in consumer products?

Telcos sell off peak only 5g for cheap. Only to large companies that are willing to work with the limits. Often it is low bandwidth.

Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall

#68

Post by PaulHoule »

fierycatnet wrote: post #66

I just kinda skimmed through it, so it detects drones in sky? Am I understanding this correctly? That might have some defense application considering what's going on in Eastern Europe right now.

Very much so.

I had a friend who'd just gotten out of EE school as a non-traditional student who was working for a company that was making radars for tracking drones maybe five years before the 2022 Russian invasion.

That was an active system, similar in concept to the radars used in air defense system just scaled down and faster acting.

The one in this article is a passive system that sees the transmitter on the drone. The comm link is the obvious weak spot on the drone as it can be detected and jammed, it is fairly inevitable that lethal attack drones that work anonymously will be widespread as a result.

Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall

#69

Post by bluGill »

lambda wrote: post #47
Onawa wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought I remembered even seeing public Git repos with passive radar code that ended up getting shut down due to export controls?

Yeah, Kraken SDR removed some functionality due to these concerns, if I remember correctly. Odd, because export controls don't generally apply to published material (like open source software), but maybe they were worried that because they were also selling the hardware they could have issues due to the combo being export controlled. Ah, found discussion of what exactly it was they pulled, it was the passive radar co…

If you don't self censor in these cases the law will find you somehow. How change so they get you next time.

Not always, but pgp wasn't exported that way until not long before there was good demand for for encryption in e-commerce anyway

Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall

#70

Post by tzs »

piinbinary wrote: post #48

One day I want to build something like this, except for sound. It would be great to get a heading and distance for where a sound is coming from. This could be both for small scale things (e.g. which part of this is squeaking?) or large scale (e.g. is that booming noise coming from the construction a few blocks away?)

Like in this Steve Mould video, "Acoustic cameras can SEE sound" [1]?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtMTvsi-4Hw

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