What should an ESP32 with a display cost? It seems like the chip itself is a couple bucks, but the combo of ESP32 + display is around $40. Is there a way to do it cheaper? Put it together myself?
An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk
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Re: An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk
#52What should an ESP32 with a display cost? It seems like the chip itself is a couple bucks, but the combo of ESP32 + display is around $40. Is there a way to do it cheaper? Put it together myself?
I got 3 esp32 and a screen on amazon for about 20$. It seemed to be the cheapest I found.
Re: An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk
#53I live a couple of miles from an airport that houses a fire-fighting air tanker base, and I am somewhat terrified of fires- 120K Acres has burned in my area of the state so far this year. I've also been a ham radio enjoyer and had been looking for projects that work with radio. So I built a little antenna that works with ~1Mhz and hooked it to a raspberryPi running dump1090... it's amazing how far I can receive. 50-i…
Can I privately reach out to you?
Re: An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, and even SSR always felt like cheating imo. I wanna see someone build a primary radar on an esp 32.
Gotta admit that's what I clicked through hoping for. I've seen a few projects that use SDR to detect doppler shifts of reflections of broadcast FM radio station off planes as "passive radar". But that doesn't get much in the way of direction info, just approach velocity. I've pondered building something that uses that and correlates it with an ADS-B receiver, to see it it can detect aircraft that are not transmittin…
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Re: An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, and even SSR always felt like cheating imo. I wanna see someone build a primary radar on an esp 32.
Gotta admit that's what I clicked through hoping for. I've seen a few projects that use SDR to detect doppler shifts of reflections of broadcast FM radio station off planes as "passive radar". But that doesn't get much in the way of direction info, just approach velocity. I've pondered building something that uses that and correlates it with an ADS-B receiver, to see it it can detect aircraft that are not transmittin…
Is it bistatic or monostatic?
How do you know that it is doppler and not multipath?
Re: An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk
#56What should an ESP32 with a display cost? It seems like the chip itself is a couple bucks, but the combo of ESP32 + display is around $40. Is there a way to do it cheaper? Put it together myself?
Look into the CYD variants, usually can get for less than $15
https://github.com/witnessmenow/ESP32-Cheap-Yellow-Display
Can also easily integrate with home assistant.
Re: An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk
#57Well, a radar-like display, then. But not a radar.
Exactly. Radar stands for "radio detection and ranging". Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar :
> Radar is a system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (ranging), direction (azimuth and elevation angles), and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It is a radiodetermination method used to detect and track aircraft [...]
> A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwave domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna (often the same antenna is used for transmitting and receiving) and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the objects. Radio waves (pulsed or continuous) from the transmitter reflect off the objects and return to the receiver, giving information about the objects' locations and speeds.
The OP's project only passively receives the digital location information of each airplane transmitted by the airplane itself. The project does not transmit radio waves nor do any physical determination of the plane's location.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_radar (true radar), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_radar (ADS-B, which is what the OP receives)
Re: An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gotta admit that's what I clicked through hoping for. I've seen a few projects that use SDR to detect doppler shifts of reflections of broadcast FM radio station off planes as "passive radar". But that doesn't get much in the way of direction info, just approach velocity. I've pondered building something that uses that and correlates it with an ADS-B receiver, to see it it can detect aircraft that are not transmittin…
I suspect it's possible to build an active radar without exceeding the limits of the ISM bands. Actually, I know it's possible, that's how the automotive radars (used for adaptive cruise control) work. The real question is if someone can get enough range to pick up aircraft.
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Re: An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk
#59From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43261684 :
> Can any aircraft navigation system plot drone Remote ID beacons on a map?
> How sensitive of a sensor array is necessary to trilaterate Remote ID signals and birds for aircraft collision avoidance?
Could aircraft locate birds with CSI Channel State Information?
> A Multispectral sensor array (standard) would probably be most robust.
I started working on adding weather over HTTP (or from a LoRA message from a sender key on an allow-list) to an ESP32-S3 with a 2" eInk screen with Meshtastic InkHUD. I got to testing the output on the SPI display and wrote a codec to do 1bpp 1Hz video on ESP32 and then added gaussian splatting and layers to the codec (which is brand new), so now on paper it says it can do 3D scene rendering from a configurable perspective and rescaling of normed 3x3 tensors for the display size (2x2 tensors for 2D). Haven't tested that yet but I did ask it to add sensor fusion to try to track viewer positions(s) with an Accelerometer or Ultrasonic (which this device doesn't have) or Wi-Fi CSI Channel State information. I started working on the codec, MAV (Mu Animation Video), in ffmpeg and haven't yet implemented enough device simulator pitch/roll/yaw buttons to complete testing of the 3D on ESP32 with gaussian splatting yet.
westurner/firmware: https://github.com/westurner/firmware/tree/add_weather_http_...
There's probably already a flight sim game or screensaver that will render on esp32? It looks like there are a few games in the meshtastic firmware for TFT screens but not for InkHUD eInk at 1 Hz (1 fps)
Re: An ESP32 based plane radar for my desk
#60Well, a radar-like display, then. But not a radar.
Yeah, while this is a neat project, I was expecting something completely different (and possibly illegal I guess, I don't know).