It is crazy for me to see super secret military tech from 30 years ago commoditized to a system cheaper than gaming console. What a time to be alive!
QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall
111–120 of 249 posts
Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall
#112One 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?)
Steve Mould did a cool video on this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QtMTvsi-4Hw
Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
interesting on amazon: fluke $25k flir $10k td2 $1k These are the kinds of things you look at and think - maybe I DO need night-vision, or a soldering iron with a cpu, or a thermal imager, or a steerable endoscope or now an acoustic imager....
If you own your home I'd say you need a thermal imager. Just the ability to diagnose clogged pipes is priceless.
https://x.com/ThermoInstagram/status/909356506059026432
Also for checking if microwaved food is ready.
Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Brute force wide band jamming would be easy too and would make hopping ineffective. Unless drones use self tuning antennas to overcome losses, they can't hop too far away from the antenna resonance frequency, which makes jammers job easier.
Jamming broadband is a lot more energy expense than frequency hopping. Orders of magnitude.
But the jammer can be plugged in to the grid or a diesel generator. Being on the ground without flight requirements grants access to such resources.
Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That might have some defense application considering what's going on in Eastern Europe right now. This is a bog-standard phased-array RDF calibrated for WiFi freqs; that stuff is already in every single defense show. Also, that's why there's jamming everywhere (to blind that kind of things) and why many UAVs are now tethered to optical fibers instead of being RF-controlled.
Yeah I think it is at every defense show, but that doesn't mean it makes it to the front lines. Defense show = super expensive. This is cheap.
> Defense show = super expensive
Really depends; there you can see both Lockmart exhibiting multi-billions project, and 150m after some Serbian company selling jet engines for UAVs for a couple hundreds.
Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall
#116QuadRF creator here. Happy to answer questions! We have a quick demo video as well: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QvniJk3uNyA Along with a deeper dive video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zdJ9Tbm8ALg We didn't give Jeff great direction on camera alignment calibration or setting the radio gain but he seemed to mostly figure it out. We're improving the UI based on his suggestions (it's open source so you can customize…
Cool project! What is the max detection range?
Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jamming broadband is a lot more energy expense than frequency hopping. Orders of magnitude.
But the jammer can be plugged in to the grid or a diesel generator. Being on the ground without flight requirements grants access to such resources.
But such a jammer is expensive and a magnet for HARMs that only need that RF signature as guidance.
Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jamming broadband is a lot more energy expense than frequency hopping. Orders of magnitude.
But the jammer can be plugged in to the grid or a diesel generator. Being on the ground without flight requirements grants access to such resources.
Yes. That makes it fat, expensive and vulnerable target. There are videos of them being blown up regularly.
Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That might have some defense application considering what's going on in Eastern Europe right now. This is a bog-standard phased-array RDF calibrated for WiFi freqs; that stuff is already in every single defense show. Also, that's why there's jamming everywhere (to blind that kind of things) and why many UAVs are now tethered to optical fibers instead of being RF-controlled.
Yeah I think it is at every defense show, but that doesn't mean it makes it to the front lines. Defense show = super expensive. This is cheap.
Homing in on sources of electromagnetic transmissions has been a thing since at least the BV246 in 1943.
The first phased array systems date back to 1905.
We have had some time to productionize this.
Hell, the "PA" in "PATRIOT missile" stands for "Phased Array".
Re: QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall
#120QuadRF creator here. Happy to answer questions! We have a quick demo video as well: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QvniJk3uNyA Along with a deeper dive video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zdJ9Tbm8ALg We didn't give Jeff great direction on camera alignment calibration or setting the radio gain but he seemed to mostly figure it out. We're improving the UI based on his suggestions (it's open source so you can customize…
Cool project! What is the max detection range?
It really depends on the transmitter strength, but if you set the Rx gain high on the QuadRF, we get within 2dB of the thermal noise detection limit.. so about as good as is possible with a receiver this size. I believe a few km is easily doable with a consumer drone but we haven't focused on it.