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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

#231

Post by clouedoc »

RealityVoid wrote: post #92
embedding-shape wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that sees the transmitter on the drone. The comm link is the obvious weak spot on the drone Isn't most drones run by fiber optic nowadays around the front-lines though? Can't really jam those, but maybe still detect it somehow?

According to CivDiv's channel about 70% of the drones used are still RC FPV drones. They are cheaper longer range and have a slightly simpler supply chain. Fiber optic cable prices have exploded because of the war.

glad to see someone giving a source. a lot of people here heard of fiber optic drones and decided that now 100% of drones in Ukraine are using those

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

#232

Post by fleventynine »

mrtnmcc wrote: post #95

QuadRF 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…

Is the RTL for the FPGA available to be tinkered with?

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

#233

Post by NetMageSCW »

Ylpertnodi wrote: post #224
mrtnmcc wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't support passive or active radar beyond basic near-field sensing. We also proactively submitted a detailed report to the State Department earlier this year showing we don't exceed any of the USML criteria for ITAR controls. Separately we have an ECCN determination under EAR. This does rule us out from exporting to a few places (Cuba, Iran, Russia, North Korea, Syria, and some regions of Ukraine). But we are a…

> does rule out..... some regions of Ukraine The occupied ones, presumably. But why is Ukraine broken up? Surely, you will be dealing with a government, and they'll know what to do/ where there current borders are.

Why would they be dealing with government and not some hobbyist on the wrong side of the border?

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

#234

Post by NetMageSCW »

tamimio wrote: post #37
brk wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also appears to have a fairly narrow detection angle. This might work for spotting a drone when you already know roughly where it is, but that problem becomes infinitely harder when you have to scan the entire sky. RF drone detection has been a challenging problem for quite a while. Lots of solid state radar/RF detection products have emerged in the space, but it is not a trivial problem. And that is for drones wi…

> RF drone detection has been a challenging problem for quite a while. Correct, there is no bullet proof cuas system to this date. > anything flying autonomously is even harder to detect Not just autonomously, because even in autonomous mode you would still need other RF like gnss, but you can fly drones without any rf signature at all and utilize a pre captured images saved on board to navigate the drone accurately…

GNSS is passive and can’t be tracked, the transmitters are all in orbit.

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

#235

Post by NetMageSCW »

vatsachak wrote: post #19
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #14

> 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 pol…

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

Only if everyone wants to work on it, which seems unlikely for this project and we already know is a fail for security issues in open source.

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

#236

Post by NetMageSCW »

timonoko wrote: post #219
wiredone wrote: post #192

Outside of spotting ukrainian drone operators in bunkers, why would you need or want this?

I want this. I have Wifi door lock too far away from base station. It was often stuck in a loop trying to connect to neighbours' Wifis. By try and error I managed to block those using metal foil, but it was hard work.

That would seem to be a design flaw in the lock. It shouldn’t be trying to connect to random WiFi.

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

#237

Post by bluGill »

ireflect wrote: post #190
bluGill wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is interesting. Do you have any specific examples?

No. I did see in the 5G design that that type of thing was a consideration. It may well be that phone companies aren't selling like that, however it certainly would make sense that they would be looking for companies who want a deal. Most of the cost of service is fixed, and a large number of customers want service during particular peak times and so they can serve that peak data even at off peak times such as when everyone's asleep and so if they could sell that time only that is a little bit more money. It only makes sense if those buying off peak times do have other alternatives that they would turn to instead.

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

#238

Post by tamimio »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #234
tamimio wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RF drone detection has been a challenging problem for quite a while. Correct, there is no bullet proof cuas system to this date. > anything flying autonomously is even harder to detect Not just autonomously, because even in autonomous mode you would still need other RF like gnss, but you can fly drones without any rf signature at all and utilize a pre captured images saved on board to navigate the drone accurately…

GNSS is passive and can’t be tracked, the transmitters are all in orbit.

Not tracking, jamming. A drone that has no rf dependencies as I mentioned above plus its small footprint is unstoppable, the only current limitations in drones is the endurance.

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

#239

Post by timonoko »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #236
timonoko wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want this. I have Wifi door lock too far away from base station. It was often stuck in a loop trying to connect to neighbours' Wifis. By try and error I managed to block those using metal foil, but it was hard work.

That would seem to be a design flaw in the lock. It shouldn’t be trying to connect to random WiFi.

I blame micropython. Because it is reprogrammed by me myself. Original was much worse, because it always asked from China if it can open the door.

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

#240

Post by mrtnmcc »

mallets wrote: post #150
mrtnmcc wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I actually designed the I/Q calibration for many of Analog Device's transceivers (AD93x), and indeed it is a fun problem. If you're interested in what was done for QuadRF, you can read: https://QuadRF.com/cals/txqec.html (Warning: Math!)

Oh wow, the AD936x series was impressive for its I/Q calibration. Still is I guess, because there's been no compelling alternative even a decade later. As I mostly deal with single channel applications, I get to use double superhet and avoid runtime calibration. Not an option here, Zero-IF has too much in the Pros column for multichannel.

Yes once you have runtime IQ compensation figured out in digital, its essentially free and easily puts your image rejection ratio into the -50 to -60dBc range. I don't have a write up on the RxQEC, but it's rather trivial: you periodically compute the 2x2 IQ correlation matrix, then take the sqrt (e.g., Cholesky) and multiply your incoming Rx samples by that inverse. You can extend that further for widerband by using FIR taps but here the baseband matching is good enough to go with "single tap"
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