Game changer. This is going to save me so much on my monthly radar bills.
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
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My German U-boat neighbors are seething right now.
The sonar git is still private.
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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."
There are companies that offer RaaS, basically radar rentals.
Source: my company had a customer who rented a weather radar for a year to do a study on weather patterns in South America
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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.
Military tech companies will be perfectly fine. They typically have 10+ year contracts, and military equipment has a huge price margin in exchange for being reliable and field-serviceable, and the main disadvantage of DIY radar is reliability (unless you also recruit the guy who built it into the army).
It will probably impact civilian market more, where the same companies will try to sell you an unnecessarily hardened machined aluminium box full of cheap Chinese electronics, camo painted for an additional ten thousand bucks.
Their next commercial offering might just be cheaper.
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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.
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.
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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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.
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This doesn’t have any practical application in Ukraine.
How can you be so dismissive? Of course it has practical application in Ukraine.
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.
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.
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The fact that Aeris-10 offers a true phased array system and ±45° elevation/azimuth adjustments are seemingly its differentiating factors. Prices for electronics are exceedingly floaty in these ship-shinking days, but a brief estimate pins the bill of materials at $5,000 for the 10N and $7,200 for the 10E.
So for $21,600 I could attempt the goal of the main characters in Twisters.
Does that price include the Pepsi cans?
Yes but not the 5¢ deposit if you are in CT-HI-IA-ME-MA-NY-OR-VT. MI 10¢. CA CRV.
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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.
This is, to be fair, mentioned in the article. Cool project nonetheless!
That should never be a reason not to share open source knowledge!
by coupling this with the open source stinger project i saw last month do i suddenly have my own patriot defense system?
Nah, that missile was visual tracking. Not radar guided. Also, way too small to intercept anything going high and fast which is generally what the patriot is for. Intercepting an aircraft requires a really powerful motor to give it enough speed and altitude to catch a plane.
This radar could maybe be used with a semi active radar guided missile, where the ground radar lights up the target and the missile just has a detector that homes in on that, which is what early patriots used. But it’s only got a 20km range which isn’t really enough for an anti aircraft system, unless all you’re worried about is something slow and low to the ground like a helicopter or cesna. Need enough time for the radar to detect, identify and lock the target, fire the missile, and have it track to the target, and something moving fast and high will be in and out of the range of the radar before all that can be done. Especially if the target is high up at 10km, which would half the effective range.
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Motii claims that military surplus radars can be had for $10k to $50k,
What, really? Who is buying military surplus radars?
I bet more than one billionaire has them on their doomsday compounds. Who am I kidding, they buy the new $250k system.
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morocco mentioned 🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦🇲🇦
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.
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
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250,000. WTF….
You can by a Garmin boat Radar for 10-15K that has a 100 mile range…
What is the point of this mess.
This is a phased array radar system, which is significantly different than the mechanical radars used by boats/ships. A phased array system typically supports near real time tracking of multiple targets since the radar signals are controlled through solid state beam steering.
Mechanical radars like those on boats can only update targets as quickly as the antenna rotates, which can be as slow as 20 RPM for some consumer brands. They are very different beasts. Comparing the two is like comparing a car to a train…
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Nice, more instructions to send to revolutionaries in Myanmar.
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