Radio seems to be an unofficial theme for The Hackaday Prize, with a few wireless frameworks for microcontrollers and software defined radios making their way into the quarterfinal selection. [roelh]’s project is a little different from most of the other radio builds. It’s a simple spectrum analyzer, but one that works up to 3GHz.
The hardware is a mishmash of chips including an ADL5519 power detector, an Si4012 for the local oscillator, and a MAX2680 mixer. An Atmel XMega takes care of all the on board processing, displaying the spectrum on a small LCD, writing data to an SD card, and sending data over a 3.5mm jack that doubles as either an analog input or a half duplex RS232 port.
Seen in the video below, [roelh]’s spectrum analyzer is more or less finished, complete with a nice looking enclosure. Now [roelh] is working on documentation, porting his source to English, and getting all the files ready to be judged by our real judges.
The project featured in this post is a quarterfinalist in The Hackaday Prize.
I *so* want one of these…
there you go
http://nutsaboutnets.com/models/
it also does refreshes per second instead of seconds per refresh
I’d like one too–but I’d go blind trying to assemble one with all the SMD components involved.
Nice project – with good doc’s, nice videos (without ***gasp*** any shitty background music) – seems like a major contender based on the rules.
+1 on no bgm :) Also, kudos to the builder :) I’ve always loved spectrum analyzers.
This would make the perfect spy gadget if shoehorned into an old Nokia case
Wow, an impressive project.
Rather complex though. A 128×64 oled would be easier to source and controlled over spi or i2c. The boost regulation could be done using pwm and adc on the xmega. The xmega can do the RTC function as well.
When can I order the kit :p to build one