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this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
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This is the real way to hurt a company. Once an open source version exists, even if it is not as good as the commercial offering, they will have trouble convincing people to pay for what they are selling.
Of course, they should be compensated for their work, but if you can build it yourself then the cost to a company does not need to be much higher than the costs of parts and labor for someone else to do it for you.
One of the things I want to do is build decent applications and release them for free so people can get the same functionality of their paid apps but not need to pay anything.
Main thing stopping me is time.
Dont forget support
Commercial companies will copy it to improve its product and sell
Commercial companies will copy it to improve its product and sell
Not sure if this is a good idea. As far as I know radars operate on a regulated frequency and you need a permit to use in most countries. There was also some incident a few years ago where the beam of a radar station would clearly show up on the cloud coverage maps of weather stations because they used the same frequency.
That should never be a reason not to share open source knowledge!
This is, to be fair, mentioned in the article. Cool project nonetheless!
ITT: A bunch of people who think they know a lot about radar, expect to run their own radar at home, and think they can do it better for cheaper.
Just do like Musk did and only use cameras. It'll be fiiiineeee.
Honestly if I have fun building it then I'll spend 80 to build my own but if I need it right now then I'll probably buy a ready made one. It's basically the difference between my home pc and the mac I use for office work.
Look, if I could point this thing at the ground and get soil moisture at depth, I wouldn't be in this situation ok.
Game changer. This is going to save me so much on my monthly radar bills.
You're lucky to have that. My radar has ads.
"You've reached your monthly tracking limit. To track additional targets, please upgrade to the Defense+ plan."
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Ukraine: "Write that down! WRITE THAT DOWN!"
This doesn't have any practical application in Ukraine.
Ukraine detects FPV drones with numerous distributed and networked microphone/acoustic sensors. You're not going to get any cheaper than a used phone paired with a $2 USB solar panel.
The larger Shahed/Geran and above stuff isn't limited by radar detection. What they need are cheap interceptors to deal with swarm attacks.
Radars are very much in use in Ukraine. There is a whole range of air targets besides FPV drones, there are ballistic missiles, fighter planes, bomber planes, helicopters, gliding bombs, and ships, all of which require a radar to detect.
Acoustic sensors have limited range. By the time it detects a missile, it's already flew one kilometer away, and it's too late to grab your AA gun. Gliding bombs are silent.
Radars have 50+ km range, and allow to shoot bombers and ships from beyond the border with expensive US-provided missiles.
Again, this particular DIY radar has no application in Ukraine. It does not have a 50+km range (10km). It can not direct or interface with an interceptor missile, of any kind, to shoot down TBMs, Shaheds, etc. The critical issue really is how many interceptor missiles Ukraine has and far less about janky early-warning radar coverage.
Acoustics are used for FPVs, which have a tiny radar cross section and can fly at tree top altitude or lower. A basic/crude DIY radar would not be effective there and at $12,000 vs $Free, acoustics win hands down for FPVs. The Gepards (AA gun) have their own onboard radar already for cruise missiles/shaheds. No one is proposing or expecting acoustics to track missiles or bombs. These are two very different problems.
The Russian Navy stays way, way the hell away from the Ukraine coast these days. The drone-boat bombs have them running scared. Even Sevastopol in Crimea is too risky.
If you crack the combination of "actually cheap" and "reliable interceptor", the US military industrial complex is going to build you your very own Scrooge vault.
“actually cheap” and “reliable interceptor”, the US military industrial complex
This is antithetical to the US military industrial contractor complex doctrine.
And then defense contractors will sell it to the government for a 10,000% markup.
But in all reality they would steal it after the inventor commits suicide with 2 rounds to the back of the head
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So what use would a private citizen or business have for a system like this? I'm not sure who the "commercial offerings" are meant for.
Cheap electronic warfare devices?
I might assume it could be handy to be alarmed of strikes if there's a war in your area.
I think that way you will definitely make sure there is a strike very near to your area.
Fair enough
I mean. I like cool electronic gadgets. It’d probably be fun to play with.
This would be a lot of fun for those of us who like messing with radios and antennas
Im mostly speculating but the stuff that comes to mind is hunting, fishing, weather, private space company, shipping company (air and sea), and tbh even military contracting firms are also considered private commercial businesses. Radar is super useful if you can afford it
Mir first thought where "low budget" battlefields and high budget personal security.
Ahh yes.. let me just go hunting with my beamforming radar.. I'll be tracking the rate at which that deer is changing course at over 100khz.
People set up feed traps in areas that its allowed. You could have a cam facing the trap and a radar nearby so you know if its just a single deer that triggered the cam or a member of a herd. Still just speculating. I dont hunt
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Interestingly enough, this project was originally licensed under the MIT license, but Motti was advised that said license does not protect physical hardware, so it changed to the CERN-OHL-PT license. Should you elect to build your own unit, be aware that the frequencies it operates in are almost assuredly highly regulated in your legal jurisdiction.
Also be aware of anti radiation munitions if you decide to operate one of these in a warzone. Radarmen have very short battlefield lifetimes because turning on a radar without lots of electronic countermeasures (hell even with countermeasures) is basically like turning on a spotlight that says “blow me up”.
So, one of the really interesting things to me about this approach is that it offers the same asymmetric value proposition that cheap attack drones do to modern pre-drone IADS.
That is: this is a platform that costs 10-15k, and an AGM-88 of modern manufacture costs almost 900k, and a Kh-31 costs about 550k - and, just as importantly, both require a long time to manufacture. So, you could theoretically make a moderately large distributed array sprinkled over a few square kilometers, and even if they’re ALL turned on, it quickly becomes logistically infeasible to knock them all out without spending a silly quantity on antirad munitions, as well as massively attriting your stocks of antirad munitions. And if you turn like 10-25% of them on at a time and cycle through your array, the problem becomes even harder for the attacker. And if you have some sort of process or mechanism - like, oh I don’t know, figuring out how to do light aerial transport with cargo drones, or even figuring out how to mount these distributed array nodes on the drones themselves, and some sort of lightweight tether for providing power - the problem becomes a MASSIVE pain in the ass for an adversary (especially that last idea, which introduces z-axis and immediate maneuverability, such that the array could feasibly detect and altogether avoid an incoming antirad munition).
And that’s the paradigm of modern warfare - not just drones, but also networked and attritable systems that maintain functionality when elements are taken offline
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Prices for electronics are exceedingly floaty in these ship-shinking days
I don't always make typos but when I do I sound like Sean Connery.
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