Build Your Own Drone Tracking Radar: Part 2 CW Radar

This is the second video in a new 5 part series where I will show you how to build and program your own radar. At the end, we'll use it to locate a small drone. In this video, we'll explore the fundamentals of pulsed radar, and then continuous wave (CW) radar. We'll conclude with a demonstration and examination of the Python program to implement this.
0:00 -- Hardware Selection
2:44 -- Pulsed Radar
5:18 -- Range Resolution
7:52 -- Continuous Wave (CW) Radar
10:22 -- CW Radar Demonstration
11:12 -- CW Radar Software
18:18 -- Conclusion

Here are the links used in this video:

Technical Support Questions on any of these products from Analog Devices should go here:

MIT Lincoln Labs Coffee Can Radar:

Luigi Cruz's CW Radar Video:

Pluto and PYSDR-IIO getting started:

[bvanderveen]

This is great, quickly commenting just two minutes into the video… I dunno what your paranoia levels are but one thing you might consider is removing the family portraits from the frame / background of your videos. Just a thought. Excited for this series. Thanks!

[lohikarhu]

Jon : respect.
Clear presentation, good speaking style, a really "proper" AE 🎯

[maverick]

So glad we got part 2 already!! Keep up the good work

[RCrosbyLyles]

Clean, crisp, efficient, understandable, and easy to listen to. Great stuff, thank you!

[AerialWaviator]

Great presentation. Right sized lesson, with clear easy to follow details. Can see how this will build into more advanced topics, and like this approach.

[DontEatFibre]

Either you are very knowledgeable, used a huge amount of time thinking out the material presented, here or both.
This is so well paced and presented making it a pleasure to follow.

Thanks for your time and effort.

[grandpateal]

Dude your videos are awesome, some of the stuff is over my head but you do a great job explaining some really complex things.

[Parkhill]

The gadget that made police radars practical was the microwave circulator. With that, one antenna could be used to transmit and receive. In WW2 it was common to put a yagi antenna on one wing, and another on the other wing, to provide isolation. Back then UHF FMCW was used for dive-bombing attacks. The ships were large, so the antennas and power were small.

[johnde]

I don't understand it all (yet), but this is super interesting and well explained. Thank you!

[InstaKane]

Awesome, thanks John, super specialist knowledge 👏

[lagcisco]

incredible content Jon, thanks for sharing your knowledge

[TheEmbeddedHobbyist]

Had an interest in rf since trying to get my head around waveguides etc, and turning radar alarm heads into radios using fm radios as the rx audio section.
Great start to the series looking forward to the next.

[LydellAaron]

7:14 from my reading, that copper part looks like a magnetron. Excellent demo. I'd like to hear about Analog Devices frequency counting devices at 9:28.

[marcbonomini]

Super impressive, like the kind that annoys the people at the pentagon.

[ramishawwa]

That's one reason why I suggested Plasma Antenna, since you can emit very high peak power and ultra short pulses unlike normal antennas! Plasma antennas are perfect for pulsed Radar only problem is not many know about them since usage is usually in top secret projects that being said many of us out there that experiment with it would never look back at using any other type of antenna especially if you want to be stealthy and not get in trouble with FCC. Trust me, until you try out one, you won't understand what you're missing on it's a whole new ball game with plasma!!! 😀 oh and btw you don't need a phased array, Plasma Antenna can do everything a phased array does with 360 degree directional capability.

[Praetoros]

This is super cool! Saving up to get the hardware and build it myself!

[ericsmith]

Sort of an advanced topic but what about an ISAR to image vehicles on a freeway?

[deplorablesecuritydevices]

Thank you for sharing your wealth of knowledge!

[Perryman]

Would it make sense to separate the gui python into its own .py file?

Really enjoying the series so far! Thank you for walking through the code line by line. It makes it a lot more clear what’s going on.

[jean-francoisavon]

Can Starlink hardware be converted/hacked into a radar? After all, it is already a 2d scanning phase array... maybe it can be hacked into working at different frequency than original Starlink system?