There aren’t many Hackaday Prize entries playing around in RF, save for the handful of projects using off the shelf radio modules. That’s a little surprising to us, considering radio is one of the domains where garage-based tinkerers have always been very active. [Luke] is bucking the trend with a FM continuous wave radar, to be used in experiments with autonomous aircraft, altitude finding, and synthetic aperture radar imaging.
[Luke]’s radar operates around 5.8-6 GHz, and is supposed to be an introduction to microwave electronics. It’s an extremely modular system built around a few VCOs, mixers, and amplifiers from Hittite, all connected with coax.
So far, [Luke] has all his modules put together, a great pair of cans for the antennas, everything confirmed as working on his scope, and a lot of commits to his git repo.
You can check out [Luke]’s demo video is available below.
The project featured in this post is a quarterfinalist in The Hackaday Prize.
SpaceWrencher!
Aww, it was fixed. Is coax the best interconnect for this? Genuinely curious, I don’t know much about GHz transmission.
The only other options are rigid coax (basically a tube with a wire in the middle held by spacers) or microstrip line (seen them done on flex PCB, but have no idea on transmission characteristics)…
or wave guide, but a 5 GHz it’s much larger than the components themselves.
All I hope is that this dude is not transmitting radio waves illegally. That would not be cool at all.
5.8GHz is part of the ISM band and aside from some power restrictions it is unlicensed. http://www.afar.net/tutorials/fcc-rules/
Well, the guy is in Australia, so the FCC rules don’t apply.
This is quite iffy issue, because even in the ISM bands you usually cannot transmit willy-nilly. Lot of countries require certification that your equipment conforms to the regulation before you can legally operate it. Which can be complex and expensive affair, even more so when it isn’t an off-the-shelf bought equipment (where the seller/importer has presumably done most of the paperwork already).
Personally, I wouldn’t touch a radar with a bargepole, because even though I have a HAM license, it doesn’t fall under the permitted modes of operation and the last thing I need is a fine – the state administrations tend to be quite heavy handed on these issues.
Australia has different, but arguably as strict radio laws. Every developed country has and needs them.
only an ameritard would say that shit.
Kudos to Luke! Well done and looks like an interesting project. I learned quite a bit and have yet to finish reading :)
Nice work. Great to see a radar project in the competition!
Excellent project! My applause. Nuff said!
Oh Geez. comments stopped. Prodding at 108.28 GHZ
Chaff anyone?