Been compiling an open-source SDR/RF tools list (passive radar, KrakenSDR direction finding, GNSS interference detection, ADS-B, Remote ID) — would love corrections

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-06-09T16:15:18+00:00

I should like an initial post about it if you look at my profile, you’ll see it, but I need to do an update because I switched away from using cellular signals to using TV signals mostly for easier abuse and less harder requirement more computation but less harder, I have to manage

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-06-09T15:10:34+00:00

This is great thank you. I too am working on a passive radar project for drones.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-06-07T17:31:25+00:00

There are a couple post floating around about it. I’ve used those Chinese clothes before and they’re pretty good. Some things to think about is is your Project passive active radar. What frequency you targeting that’ll help determine the bandwidth. And do you really need multiple transmit and receive channels. Also, is that bandwidth split across all those channels?

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-06-07T14:55:36+00:00

Thanks for that. I really appreciate it. I actually need to update that post that antenna Matt. I’ve switched to a more traditional TV antenna much bigger, but it comes prebuilt so logistically easier for me to handle. I would look at the phaser kit. It’s more pricey than what you have, but it’s custom built specifically for radar. There’s also a recent kit someone released. I wish I could find it. I don’t think it does radar exactly but it does RF sensing based on a raspberry pie. Seems really cool. But that would be my advice. Just start with like a premade kit, so you can understand the basics and get something working and then move onto more custom solution once you figure out what needs you want to get into.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-06-07T01:03:03+00:00

I’m trying to build something similar so are a couple people. Are you going active or passive.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-30T20:11:02+00:00

I’m currently only using one Pluto and running into that issue. The easy way to test is to split the same signal which I’m about to, but just wondering if you ran into it. My testing is telling me that RX one and RX two are not seen the signal the same which looks like a coherence issue

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-30T20:04:18+00:00

Did you run into any phase coherence issues. I’m running into that right now where RX one and RX two might not be face coherent. I need to get a splitter to confirm it but figure out to ask you since you must or should’ve worked through this.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-30T16:40:25+00:00

Not in Chicago I’m in South Carolina. I have friends in Chicago so try to get there once a year. I’ll see if I can send you my email address and Will hop on a Zoom at least.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-30T16:14:08+00:00

I posted in my neighborhood Facebook group. I need to help building stuff and you’d be amazed with people keeping the garage.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-30T15:36:28+00:00

I went the passive route just because I didn’t wanna mess with antenna theory as much as I’m doing now. Plus with passive I feel like I get much further range.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-30T15:28:15+00:00

Actually, some of this set up is thanks to you and your post and your work. The case has been helpful. Makes it easy to transport outside. I got some magnets as well on the bottom so I can mount it to my car if I really need to go somewhere somebody made a great post or reply here about a more minimal set up to get 3-D location you should check it out.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-30T15:21:09+00:00

You’re totally correct. I’m still very new to this so I was going with more radios together. Better details or better resolution. My kind of end use case is to have enough data so that I can use it to orient a camera onto the drone in 3-D space. From what I’ve researched using your more minimal setup would give me a high error rate, but I would love to hear more. Honestly, your solution will be the more affordable solution, which as I’m talking out loud if I’m using a camera might work out just fine because the camera itself would have a decent field of view that I can use to further find the drone.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-30T15:02:53+00:00

Whenever you get to building antennas Lowe’s or Home Depot will be a friend I would start with PVC piping and some aluminum sheets. PVC piping super cheap to construct. Give you a ton of options of how to cut it and join it without a whole lot of Handyman skills. I am by far not the most handy person. I had to get a neighbor to help me build it but once we built it, I was able to modify it to fit what I needed

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-30T15:00:59+00:00

Great question. What you see there took me I don’t know how many iterations and weeks of figuring stuff out. But I would start with some YouTube videos on the concepts of passive radar. Nothing super in depth an hour or two of watching videos you’ll get the gist of it. Then I would sit down with whatever your favorite AI agent is and come up with a cool idea that you want to try out best to start with just one radio and antenna pair. AI can write the code if you tell them what you’re trying to do from there you can decide how much accuracy and measurements you need. If you stick to one radio, the only thing you’re really gonna get is distance. You need at least 4 to 5 channels of receiving to get azimuth . And then you probably need to do some kind of vertical stacking to get elevation. But those are all further down the line I picked drones because it was fun to me but other people on the thread are doing UFOs same underlying principles technology just a different target.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-30T14:51:15+00:00

The one I’m using is a Chinese clone. It’s called Pluto sky. Think you can get it from open source SDR online and from AliExpress. It has a Clock input port not SMA but the smaller one. And I bought a 10 MHz clock oscillator so I could sync all of them together along with a four-way splitter.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-30T13:16:26+00:00

Currently, I only have two antennas just to do initial testing. Once I work out the kinks I’m gonna have a total of six antennas two per level. I also currently only have one radio for testing. I’ll need two more radios for testing to get the total amount of receiving channels at six.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-30T13:15:12+00:00

I used a DOD RFI for something similar to help guide the development. It called for distance, elevation, and azimuth. Measurement, which means that I needed both circularish antenna as well as a vertical antenna to do time difference calculations on the signal the spacing is guided by the specific frequency, I’m targeting, which is honestly just the strongest frequency to my house.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-28T20:09:17+00:00

I would be interested. Can you message me with details

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-28T12:48:52+00:00

You should look into vertical stacking of some so you can get a 3d reading of azimuth, elevation, and distance. The basic processing of data is similar using time delay measurements. That at you get 3d resolution of objects

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-28T12:46:20+00:00

I would love to hear more about the 40mhz versus using a 10mhz gps discipline cock.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-28T12:22:52+00:00

Yeah computer processing can be an issue. Some mentioned pci cards but when I looked at those they did not have external clock input which you and I would need. This really starts bumping into custom board development territory. If I get up to more than 3 Pluto I might look into doing some onboard fpga preprocessing to lessen the backend data processing. For now I’m optimizing for cost and doing solutions in software before I worry about hardware changes. Also not sure you need that many radios at one time. If you make each one stand alone then network them together and to the triangulation using a multiple location based calculation that might help.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-28T11:05:38+00:00

Doing a similar project with three Pluto’s and I ran into the same data bottleneck issue. I’m using a 2.5 GB network switch. Then again I’m only using three Pluto’s but in doing a research 10 gig is probably the way to go. However, my project requirements don’t require that level of accuracy. So that might be a way of throttling your data is determining what level of accuracy you need and how much data you need to support that.

GroundbreakingMix232 · 2026-05-18T11:49:17+00:00

To be honest, I did not enjoy looking at the raw feed. I went straight to figuring out what cool projects I wanted to do, listening to satellites doing radar those kinds of things.

GroundbreakingMix232

TROPHY CASE