4 ms·

Build your own drone tracking radar [video]

119 points by outrun86 3y ago

FredPret 3y ago
I love things like this. The guy is currently on episode 2 / 5 on this radar thing. Drones have the potential to really become a cool real-life e-sport over time. It'll even be a direct analogue to modern combat, much like early sport was.
showerst 3y ago
I’ve been following these as he releases them; just a quick warning that he’s using a $2,500 radar module that’s often backordered. It’s an awesome tutorial but definitely in “serious hobbyist” territory if you want to follow along for real.
- ranger207 3y ago
  Yeah I've been reading about radar recently and this popped up at the perfect time, so I was excited to have a tutorial to building my own... until I saw the price tag. Once I have some time though I'm going to look into the MIT cantenna radar mentioned in the first video
  - emusan 3y ago
    If you're interested in the cantenna radar you might also find Henrik Forsten's radar interesting: https://hforsten.com/6-ghz-frequency-modulated-radar.html https://hforsten.com/6-ghz-frequency-modulated-radar.html. It uses largely the same high-level design, but is a bit more integrated as a single unit (rather than a series of minicircuits components). I've built the MIT radar before and it is a great way to learn the basics of radar! In either design you can likely get away with <$500 worth of materials. Henrik has follow-up blogs adding and modifying this design for more functionality, it's a pretty neat project to follow!
    - thmsths 3y ago
      Quick question regarding DYI radars. What's the legality of it? I would assume the radar frequency bands are reserved (I could not find much information on this with a quick google search). I wouldn't want to get a visit from the FCC because my hobby project is interfering with the nearby airport. In the project you linked he is using WiFi bands, but they come with their own restrictions (the very low power limits immediately comes to mind).
gonesilent 3y ago
KrakenSDR had to pull its radar software due to ITAR.
- syedkarim 3y ago
  Passive radar is ITAR-controlled. Terrestrial (non-airborne) active radar is not controlled, in many cases.
burningion 3y ago
Have been using TI’s AWR1443 for mmWave radar development. It’s a bit less pricey than the board mentioned here at ~$300. The software stack is a bit rough though. You can buy another board for $700 to stream raw radar data out for analysis. https://www.ti.com/tool/AWR1443BOOST https://www.ti.com/tool/AWR1443BOOST
corethree 3y ago
There's a market in smaller militaries for stealth hobbyist-level drones. This type of tech is a game changer for military applications that don't have large budgets. I would imagine you start out R&D for such things with this type of radar.
- holoduke 3y ago
  The market is not limited to smaller militaries. As we can see in the Ukraine war both sides are using tens of thousands of cheap 500 dollar fpv drones. Those are by far the most successful new warfare tech introduced in a new war. All the existing expensive drones and also expensiven AA proved to be quite worthless compared to cheap drones.
  - corethree 3y ago
    it is limited to smaller militaries. Mainly because the "bigger military" I'm referring to doesn't purchase commercial products. They purchase from specially vetted and procedure following "defense contractors" that charge a 100x premium. They'll never be using such a product. Russia is not a "big military" not when China spends 4x as much as them. And China is a small military too, they spend around 4x less then the next biggest military. You'll have to guess what I mean by "smaller militaries" from these details I've provided.
    - holoduke 3y ago
      If you count artillery units or tank units Russia and China are not small. One Russian tank costs the same as 20 German ones. In a real war price is what counts. That's one reason why Europe and the US cannot win the Ukraine war. Everything is just too damn expensive. It's not a military show or a bunch of sandal terrorists anymore. It's real.
      - dmurray 3y ago
        > One Russian tank costs the same as 20 German ones. Wait, what? Are the Russian tanks better, or is Russian manufacturing so inefficient they cost 20x more? Or should this be the other way round.
ducktective 3y ago
So without an array of camera systems in some indoor environment, drone research is a non-starter right? And I assume the IMU route or Radar-based approaches can't provide sub-centimeter accuracy...
- krisoft 3y ago
  > without an array of camera systems in some indoor environment, drone research is a non-starter right? No, that is not right. For practical reasons many people working on control algorithms for multicopters do use facilities like you describe. The indoor nature helps managing risk to third parties and decouples your experiments from the weather. Many experiments are helped by an external ground truth localisation data, and camera based systems are relatively cheap and relatively simple way to achieve that. That doesn’t mean that multicopter flight control is the only thing worth researching about drones. Nor does it mean that every possible experiment requires a sub-centimeter external pose tracking solution.
btreecat 3y ago
Having specific XP with counter sUAS systems, radar is unlikely to be a working solution given the range, speed, size, and cross sections were talking about for a realistic deployment. Fun idea but likely not going to handle the the claimed use case.

119 points by outrun86 3y ago

I love things like this. The guy is currently on episode 2 / 5 on this radar thing. Drones have the potential to really become a cool real-life e-sport over time. It'll even be a direct analogue to modern combat, much like early sport was.

showerst 3y ago

I’ve been following these as he releases them; just a quick warning that he’s using a $2,500 radar module that’s often backordered. It’s an awesome tutorial but definitely in “serious hobbyist” territory if you want to follow along for real.

ranger207 3y ago
Yeah I've been reading about radar recently and this popped up at the perfect time, so I was excited to have a tutorial to building my own... until I saw the price tag. Once I have some time though I'm going to look into the MIT cantenna radar mentioned in the first video
- emusan 3y ago
  If you're interested in the cantenna radar you might also find Henrik Forsten's radar interesting: https://hforsten.com/6-ghz-frequency-modulated-radar.html https://hforsten.com/6-ghz-frequency-modulated-radar.html. It uses largely the same high-level design, but is a bit more integrated as a single unit (rather than a series of minicircuits components). I've built the MIT radar before and it is a great way to learn the basics of radar! In either design you can likely get away with <$500 worth of materials. Henrik has follow-up blogs adding and modifying this design for more functionality, it's a pretty neat project to follow!
  - thmsths 3y ago
    Quick question regarding DYI radars. What's the legality of it? I would assume the radar frequency bands are reserved (I could not find much information on this with a quick google search). I wouldn't want to get a visit from the FCC because my hobby project is interfering with the nearby airport. In the project you linked he is using WiFi bands, but they come with their own restrictions (the very low power limits immediately comes to mind).

gonesilent 3y ago

KrakenSDR had to pull its radar software due to ITAR.

syedkarim 3y ago
Passive radar is ITAR-controlled. Terrestrial (non-airborne) active radar is not controlled, in many cases.

burningion 3y ago

Have been using TI’s AWR1443 for mmWave radar development. It’s a bit less pricey than the board mentioned here at ~$300. The software stack is a bit rough though. You can buy another board for $700 to stream raw radar data out for analysis. https://www.ti.com/tool/AWR1443BOOST https://www.ti.com/tool/AWR1443BOOST

corethree 3y ago

There's a market in smaller militaries for stealth hobbyist-level drones. This type of tech is a game changer for military applications that don't have large budgets. I would imagine you start out R&D for such things with this type of radar.

holoduke 3y ago
The market is not limited to smaller militaries. As we can see in the Ukraine war both sides are using tens of thousands of cheap 500 dollar fpv drones. Those are by far the most successful new warfare tech introduced in a new war. All the existing expensive drones and also expensiven AA proved to be quite worthless compared to cheap drones.
- corethree 3y ago
  it is limited to smaller militaries. Mainly because the "bigger military" I'm referring to doesn't purchase commercial products. They purchase from specially vetted and procedure following "defense contractors" that charge a 100x premium. They'll never be using such a product. Russia is not a "big military" not when China spends 4x as much as them. And China is a small military too, they spend around 4x less then the next biggest military. You'll have to guess what I mean by "smaller militaries" from these details I've provided.
  - holoduke 3y ago
    If you count artillery units or tank units Russia and China are not small. One Russian tank costs the same as 20 German ones. In a real war price is what counts. That's one reason why Europe and the US cannot win the Ukraine war. Everything is just too damn expensive. It's not a military show or a bunch of sandal terrorists anymore. It's real.
    - dmurray 3y ago
      > One Russian tank costs the same as 20 German ones. Wait, what? Are the Russian tanks better, or is Russian manufacturing so inefficient they cost 20x more? Or should this be the other way round.

ducktective 3y ago

So without an array of camera systems in some indoor environment, drone research is a non-starter right? And I assume the IMU route or Radar-based approaches can't provide sub-centimeter accuracy...

krisoft 3y ago
> without an array of camera systems in some indoor environment, drone research is a non-starter right? No, that is not right. For practical reasons many people working on control algorithms for multicopters do use facilities like you describe. The indoor nature helps managing risk to third parties and decouples your experiments from the weather. Many experiments are helped by an external ground truth localisation data, and camera based systems are relatively cheap and relatively simple way to achieve that. That doesn’t mean that multicopter flight control is the only thing worth researching about drones. Nor does it mean that every possible experiment requires a sub-centimeter external pose tracking solution.

btreecat 3y ago

Having specific XP with counter sUAS systems, radar is unlikely to be a working solution given the range, speed, size, and cross sections were talking about for a realistic deployment. Fun idea but likely not going to handle the the claimed use case.