Welcome to my world of Octopuses*
I decided to get a tattoo. Here is what the final result will look like:
Next Friday, I'll have the "blue colouring" overlaid, so will provide an updated image.
What has the got to do with anything?
A little while back I was experimenting with SDR (Software Defined Radio) USB sticks, antenna's, Raspberry Pis, UBuntu laptops and tracking planes and ships (ADB-S and AIS data)
I recently started working with some software from octo.us : just replace the . with a p & you see the serendipity of the universe!
CXEdge is of special interest ;-)
Then, earlier this week I was having a discussion about the work I did with the SDRs a year ago and how some other people/companies are just about catching up.....
Then today I was introduced to this little device:
They also have a TAK plugin that integrates nicely with Node-Red too:
Now, just need to justify the cost for purchasing a device and experimenting with it:
Website review and explanation:
UPDATE:
okay, so to answer the question, "WHY?"
Go to a skim through this article: https://spectrum.ieee.org/passive-radar-with-sdr
If you cannot be bothered, think of a scenario such as this one: You are using tooling like FlightAware.com to track commercial flights where the planes are transmitting via ADB-S, so you can detect their tags & details and follow their track paths. All standard stuff.
Now, imagine there is a plane that has switched off their transmission beacon (or it is faulty - cough cough), but they are still producing a RF signal that can be detected.
Another possibility isn't too much of a mental stretch, you have a piece of equipment that is used for cleaning pipes. It is very expensive, let's say, £2m. Now, fitting a GPS, GPRS(4G/5G) & battery based tracker to that device is all well and good, but the device will be quite large & will require frequent re-charging, therefore exposing where you have placed the tracking device & a dishonest person will know where to look for such a device and disable it.
Now, switch that device out for an ultra-low-power usage RF device, that can transmit using LoRa and only activates upon movement and doesn't slurp the power due to trying to get lat/lon details from GPS or burn more power connecting to cell towers to transmit data... you just have the RF signal broadcasting up to about a 20-30km range saying, "hello, I am here". Now you've got something to track - yes, you would have needed to know the item was being removed & not stopped the removal of it, but sometimes tracking is better than apprehension.
Now think of the motorhome that I had stolen off my driveway - they ripped that tracker out pretty sharpish, but the ANPR picked up the vehicle several times, so I knew the general "region" or location that it was spotted in - now if I the vehicle were transmitting, I could have easily used a device like this to then pan & sweep the area to detect the signal, either find and apprehend or monitor & observe.
OKAY - simple nudge: now thinking of having flying drones that have an RF transmitter beacon (a simple LoRa device will do), now you can monitor / track those drones when they are out of LoS - a picture is a 1000 words, you figure it out:
Here's some extra links that maybe of interest:
- Tracking a weather balloon via radio direction finding techniques only
- Passive radar peak hold displaying aircraft tracks
- Monitoring air traffic, ADS-B, ACARS and VDL2 simultaneously with the four tuners
- KerberosSDR tracking a drone carrying an FM beacon
- How to set up networked multi unit radio direction finding
- Measuring vehicle traffic activity in a neighbourhood with passive radar
- SignalsEverywhere demonstrating the KerberosSDR RDF Android App
According to this book, it is NOT Octopi for plural, it is indeed Octopuses*. It's a good book, highly recommend having a read:
Don't order the calamari as a starter anymore ;-)
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