Pulse RADAR using an old TV Dish Antenna

You can use the magnetron from your microwave oven. Even if systen dont work you'll hear them shouting

Not a good idea. Not good for you, probably not good for your targets, and probably a regulatory nightmare.

Have you considered going to Home Depot and buying some motion detectors to use with a home build circuit? Or going to an online electronics supply shop and buying some components for a break beam system? There many ways to detect movement. Exposing yourself and your targets to microwave energy would not be my first choice.

If you get something to work cheap let me know. I would like to try it. Right now I have a motion activated hard wire camera I bought from Brinks. Works pretty good for $150.00. Records several weeks of movement with a picture and a time and date stamp. Problem is I haven't forked out the money I need for a good IR illuminator or taken the time to build my own.

Gavilan

I am talking very low power it is not going to blind anyone. What about the RADAR and hand held RADAR guns the police use though they use laser which is also dangerous. I got hit point blank by highway patrol with a RADAR gun and my RADAR detector went crazy nothing happened to me. I have used microwave and X-ray devices before. But I am asking a technical question frequency of operation not morals. OK give me a break I know I am a Mad Scientist but a microwave oven is much to much power that is dangerous I am talking <1W transmit mode receive is high gain. This project can be made safe I have already given you the Police examples they shoot RADAR right at you they like to hit the front of the car for a good reflection but do you think they might hit your eyes which are sensitive to UV, X-rays, Microwaves etc.

"I am talking very low power" TIC..........IS THAT THE SAME AS "little bit pregnant"? MR. GUY

I answered my own question it is KU-band: Signal frequency range between 11 and 14 GHz that is often used with communications satellites. And Direct TV company is DBS: Digital broadcast satellite. This high-powered satellite uses a Ku-band frequency (12.2 to 12.7 GHz) to deliver programming signals directly to a small (18-inch) dish installed at viewer's home. So make a pulsed Ku band transmitter/receiver and I can make a RADAR detector and process the signature that moves with maybe a DSP PIC device. IR motion detectors suck they go off with just about anything like cars driving by. And if this works I can tie into my flood lamps for a much more accurate motion detector. Don't anybody Patent this I came up with the idea first! LOL BTW if you fly you are getting hit by ground RADAR on the runway. That is how they prevent collisions on the ground. Did you know that some of our Stealth fighters/bombers have a RADAR signatures of a "Bee". Watch Nova instead of the Playboy Channel and learn. Or how about artillery that uses RADAR and tracks incoming shells then mathematically calculates automatically to shoot back where the shell came from to take out the stupid idiots that shot at us to blow up the artillery and the people that operated it. Or this is a good one the enemy looks at you through binoculars to see what you are doing. The US military have a microwave device which is high power and they shine it all over the battlefield. Do you know what happens to those geeks looking through binoculars or just looking period? They need a white cane baby no more eye sight. I think microwaves are fun.

Drill a hole in the center of a salad bowl and poke a shotgun microphone through from the backside then aim device towards path of approach. Figure it out...

Figure it out...

can't help myself.

You'll have to find the focus of this parabola ((y - k)² = 4a(x - h))..er....salad bowl...may not be to0 efficient, and the microphone be place at the focus

http://www.analyzemath.com/parabola/Equation.html

http://www.analyzemath.com/parabola/parabola.html

of course already having a dish you already have this. But this may be of interest to the OP, you have to be careful about this, these are not toys.

p911

Wait a minute I am talking microwaves! I know what a shotgun mike is an I prefer omni which I have done before you can hear in all directions. This is not a football game! LOL

Now what are you talking about?

That last usage (an infrared laser) was outlawed and taken away from the crybabies at the Pentagon... Ah, shucks!!!

And by the way, what are you doing out there?! Running a meth lab?!

Bouncing fuzz ball I finally got your punch line "meth lab" LOL no I am paranoid to be honest with you. And maybe it will scare away the solicitors from ringing my door bell. How would you react if you saw a dish pointed directly at you instead of the sky.

It will only deter once, next time they'll first take it out or dazzle you with aluminum foil confetti.

Just set out pressure sensitivity pads, heat the sidewalk and they'll hotfoot it outta there

Maveric,

Your disc will be far too big for this purpose (if you use 10 GHz band). It will give a unnecessary big gain (transforming mW into dangerous power) and the opening angle of the beam will be too small. I think that looking for an old door opener with a gunplexer (10GHz transmitter and receiver in one housing) and changing the standard supplied horn with a bigger one will be from better help. If you google a little, you'll find certainly a description how to use those things as a proxy-radar.

Greets

Jean Paul – ON7AMI

Look at #4 DBS: This is the freq of my 18" Direct TV dish 12.2 - 12.7GHz No mods needed!!!

Get some black twine and string it about 4 inches above the ground all around the "areas of interest". Run one end into the house, tie it to an empty beer bottle that is sitting on that table by the front door.

Then, when the bottle falls onto the floor you will know that you have a "security" related intrusion.

You will probably want to brief frequent visitors(family members, postman, paper boys) on your enhanced security perimeter detection system.

Good luck

That funny!!!

Watch Caddyshack

Big dish? Really? Wow, that's doing it the HARD way!

Both about the size of a golf ball, a GUNN diode in small cavity/horn antenna or a DRO oscillator with a microstrip patch antenna will generate the microwatts of microwaves you need to make a Doppler radar motion sensor. The microwatts radiated are usually pulsed for microseconds at a very low duty factor. Effective radiation on target is on the order of pico to nano watts making this a reasonably safe motion detection method.

What you want is a DUAL MW/PIR Motion Detection Security Sensor. It will have all the UL/FCC approvals, unlike your radiating dish which would certainly violate one or more FCC regulations and might pose a health risk.

Suggest you start here...

http://www.homesecuritystore.com/c-154-dual-technology.aspx

Gentlemen: Seems that the fundementals are being overlooked. The use of the electomagnetic energy as used in radar must reflect off of a metalic surface, like an airplane or a submarine. Organic compounds like the human person would only be 'cooked' by a radar beam. Don't ever turn on you microwave oven with your pet inside, it won't detect any motion.

Wait a minute! What about weather RADAR I have seen it with my own eyes on a jet going to Stockholm and the Pilate said pointing to his RADAR screen see that storm front we are trying to avoid it. Are clouds made of metal? Or am I missing something and Satellites bounce RADAR of of clouds and the earth but maybe it is Doubler (sp?) RADAR. So how does RADAR detect clouds with no metal airplane to bounce off of?

Weather radar on a plane bounces off water droplets, and interprets the density and speed and direction into those pretty pictures on the screen.

Hooker

isn't that dopler radar.

p911

I guess most of the modern airborne weather radars are now doppler, but back in my flying days they were not so they could only take snapshot of current conditions in the sweep.

Hooker

The key 2 words you said "bounces off" RADAR was used to penetrate the thick clouds of Venus and map the surface like mountains and they were not metal mountains and Apollo 11 the LEM as it was descending used RADAR to see how high they were and to look for boulders but what happened is it became overloaded with reflections from the surface which is dust and rocks no metal and error code 401 showed up on their RADAR screen and that is why you heard the pilot say "over 4 down two" because he was manually flying the LEM. Houston cut in briefly and would say "50 seconds" .... "40 seconds". Do you know why they said that? They were running out of fuel!!! And if they had not landed in time trying to dodge the large boulders they would have been stranded on the Moon. Oh they did not tell the public that but I read about it somewhere after the fact. They almost bought the farm! And how many people who are posting have ever used microwave? Who knows what a Klystron is, a three corner reflector, what is the gain of the antenna at Goldstone CA. I am using words here that the spell checker does not recognize. LOL

Strange. I knew what the "50 seconds" and "40 seconds" call out were on the moon landing. I suspect any of us that worked at NASA at the time knew what it was, and I seem to remember the news reporters mentioning the fact that it was fuel left.

Also, I've been around microwave systems (aircraft installation and use) for a long time, though I'm not a design expert. I did know enough to not stand close in front of a weather radar dish of an operating set if I expected to father children in the future.

And I remember being in one of the first helicopters with a radar altimeter equipped auto-pilot. They didn't look forward at the time, just down. And then we went over a 10 foot seawall. That was a bit of a shock and we made sure not to do that again.

Hooker

Yes I am sure you new about the countdown full consumption. I used to play an HP calculator game that simulated landing on the Moon and fuel consumption and would tell you if you crashed or not. But I was talking about the general public and that it was close that they had only a little full left due to all the manual flying over the Moon. That wasted fuel. I was told by a person who does not believe we ever went to the Moon and that it was all staged. He said that 5% of people do not believe it world wide. He did not back it up with any facts so I just ignored him.

Having worked in a ship yard...a story was a yard on the east coast, a technician went to service the unit and never locked it out. Navy ran test on it while he was there. When the tech disappeared they looked for him....wasn't a pretty site.

Don't know if it was true, but it was enough to reinforce lockout procedures.

p911

Wasn't pretty but the aroma was of something in the oven...

Heard a similar story about the Radar School geeks in Great Lakes in the early 70's, but working on an AN/SPS-1o system. That was the nomenclature they gave us, but what would we know? We were all Crypto Tech types, studying only the first two phases (pre-radar) of the Navy's ET schools. After that we all shipped out to Pensacola to study stuff the rest of the Navy never learned about. Til John Walker and family, anyway (different story, but they should have shot them all. Instead we're paying to keep them alive in prison. Waste of time and money, in my book. But Hanoi Jane shouldn't be walking around loose, either! Back on topic.)

What I know about Radar is that I don't want to be around when the Manic Marauder gets his system up and running.

Standard (old) RADAR only determined EM wave time-of-flight to measure distance to target. Same signal will contain a Doppler shift dependent on target velocity. With proper signal processing (e.g. Weather Doppler RADAR), both distance and velocity can be determined. There is MORE, but not for discussion here.

Any conductive or dielectric discontinuity in free space will generate some RADAR reflection. Metals obviously provide strong reflections. Water(waves to tiny droplets) and humans(mostly water) provide good reflections. A chunk of plastic with a dielectric constant different than its surroundings will also generate a reflection, albeit a much smaller one.

Radar (among other systems) is used for estimating wave height in sea ports. Water surface reflects a portion of the energy. The fraction reflected depends on the radar wave-length, the beam characteristics and the angle between the beam and the water surface.

They are using RADAR to measure from space the height of the oceans thanks to the greenhouse problem and pretty much no more North Pole the northwest passage. Ships are now traveling across the North pole when it melts and countries are fighting for oil rights since you do not have to drill through ice. This planet has had it folks. Go down to southern Chile and look at all the blind cows from UVA & B no ozone layer down there. They probably could cook their shrimp on the BBQ in Australia with no fire!

Wave height is not ocean height. 2 completely different things.

As for the planet's fate: not only damage by mismanagement of resources, half baked ideas are a major contribution too.

What about swells or a whale with its tale sticking out of the water. I am sure they know what they are measuring.

Forget all about that, microwaves are reflected by almost anything. (ask the makers of stealth bombers about :-) Only the fraction (quantity) of energy reflected changes with the material and man reflect good enough, otherwise you would crash against the doors in many supermarkets .

Only if one want to use it as a radar with the possibilities of tracking an intruder, you need much more than just the reflection. The reflection gives just a measure for the distance, you need a way to determinate the direction (angle) too. This can be done with a small bundle turning around (just like the radars we usual see in the films). Or you can use a pair of wide angled radars and a bunch of calculations.

It depends a bit on the distance on witch you want to detect movements, but if we are talking about short range, it is easier and safer to use ultrasonic radar (you then can even use your dish as a reflector to tighten the openings angle of the system).

Maveric, just let us know if you are able to build some electronics and program micro-controlers, I'll give you a hint in what way to work.

Jean Paul – ON7AMI

Thanks for your kind offer. I was going to mention X-band or maybe K Radar which is used to detect "motion" when you approach a supermarket door that is low power RADAR my "exact application" and this smart guy from Belgium figured it out I rest my case. Last time I checked I could not see no burns on my body from going to the store. And I know it is X or maybe K band because my RADAR detector goes bananas! I think it is K because X is pretty much obsolete and I have locked it out of my RADAR detector.

You still get a picture of human beings in negative form, because, surroundings are reflecting while human beings don't.

However tracking a (human) target would require going into 'pulse doppler' mode i.e. detecting a movement through instant comparison with previous image and making the antenna follow the target. That means either a very small antenna that is easier to move for the tiny motors or a different type of antenna that remains static but it can 'steer' the beam. Alternatively antenna manipulation may be left to a superimposed infra-red tracker.

There are small, cheap, pulsed radar sources-detectors used for automatically opening doors in shopping malls for approaching people without bothering to open them for stationaty onlookers.

Hi,

no antenna will ever amplify the total power of a signal, antenna gain is relative to a non-directed radiation. So energy density is going up in the irradiated areas.

Think as being similar to a bad optical arrangement in light focusing.

Back to the original idea: the strip-line suggestion from above will work. But if you want to use your big antenna just for fun, why not.

Be sure not to use real power, may be there is a small missile coming back from a fighter aircraft above - there is a scanner system onboard to detect any maybe enemy radar.

If really tinkering with radar basics: look at the early trials with radar systems for cars anti-collision experiments. The radar doppler from police systems are not too well suiting your needs but may do.

A medium system would need:

a transmit-receive system with 10 GHz bandwith capable of transmitting moderate power and receiving and amplifying ultralow power, (parametric amplifier?),

a correlator that compares the received signal with the outgoing signal to detect the time lag between these and is converting this into distance,

a pulse generator that is generating chirp pulses (insects, dolphins and radars use these as optimum use of energy and transmitter power),

basic reading about radar is highly recommended.

RHABE

Yes I agree I do not design something unless I have studied it. That could be dangerous plus if I sell it on eBay I want it to be idiot proof.

And all you really need is a motion detector of a security spotlight. But......... dropping all the pollytittycally correct cautions (when did an African ever bother with being poolitically correct any way!) Slap the best of each post together with the worst and you shouild end up with a neat system.....

• IR motion detector connected to spotlights
• Pre-recorded warnings on tinny speakers from a gruff soviet voice (they have the coolest Hollywood tone) telling the visitor to visit on another continent
• Your big dish with FOUR microwave magnatrons linked in parallel hooked up to sweep accross the garden. If you get the focal distance right it should burn a black trench into your lawn and leave the concrete garden path glowing.
• Above the front door mount a zipp gun that waves around menacingly. And have a string of explosive fobs buried next to the walk to simulate a warning string of 20mm cannon shots.

Oh then just stand by, you will receive a call from the Pentagon offering you the Chief of Homeland Defence's job.

You are too much funny IR motion detector really suck I have one and it picks up everything but a person approaching my door unless you are right next to it.

Mave, you must be a nut case....

With that dish and a microwave beam you're going to fry some poor bastard's brain and gizzards! I really feel sorry for any person walking down the public sidewalk or even up your own sidewalk......call them dead meat after they get zapped!!!!

Hey, is anyone thinking about Federal REGS and licensing regarding this type of transmission and the public's safety? Hello, is there anybody out there????? FCC?????

Not a good idea at all using in an urban environment!!! BUT, it may have beneficial uses for Mave if he's guarding his Met Lab or Pot farm out in the boonies!!! **LOL**

I am a nut case what do you think I am on disability for? As far as frying someone show me your references. As far as the FCC is concerned do supermarkets have FCC license I do not think so! I have one a General Radiotelephone Operator License and that is not a HAM license. So if you want to call me a nut case you are not being objective since I asked a scientific question and am trying to learn about RADAR what is nutty about that. In my opinion I think you just paid me a complement because most people I can think of like proving the world is not flat and they went of sailing around the world and proved everybody wrong. They were considered nuts too. Thanks for the compliment!

guys, if mav is trying to set up a getaway from a lab or garden, he would want WAY more time than a 50 meter headstart. We'd be talking about motion sensing cameras in the tree tops, and what gauge wire to run a few miles back to a computer that sounded an alarm if the cameras field of vision changed by x percent,etc... He's probably kinda like me,lives in a part of the country where you never can tell whats gonna come up missing next, if not kept under your bed,lol. Someone stole my new stove pipe a few years ago from my back yard, where i was working on getting my woodstove ready for winter. I left for a few hours, and the stovepipe,a bag of aluminum cans and a water heater were gone when i got back. $5.00 a foot for stovepipe, and some jerk sold it for scrap.

Dear agenius,

Can't you see that some of us (by our replies) are trying to pull this "CRACKPOT'S" leg some? LOL

Lighten up a little please!

OK I just rated you Good answer. You should see how many posts this thread has! I guess I said something to piss people off. I did not mean to. This is almost as bad as my Electric Fence post for Keeping a cat from attacking my two cats!

Mav,

You have an electric fence post? You should think of up-dating. I have a gas-engine fence post, that way you are not hindered or otherwise encumbered by an extension cord when using your fence post. Please stop me before i post again.

Packdrill-out

Yea but I am going to use Solar Power and batteries so there. You must have a big fence I am using two step on the chicken wire and get a shock type technology.

Watts that?

i was lightend up. I know you are messing with mav, you didnt see me post anything worrying about regs,fcc or frying the neighbors,did you. Remember, i'm the nut with a piece of cement board in my basement window, with a stovepipe running out it. No need to ruin a perfectly good wall, when you can just pop out a window to run a woodstove in the basement. and yes, it is a codes illegal 55gal barell stove.

I forgot to add that you might as well string up Claymore mines and trip wires all around your domain....very effective against anyone, including little kids casing a bouncing ball onto your property.....

Hey, anyone want a hamburger??? ***BILL THE CAT "ACKKK ACKKKACKKK"***

That is pretty cool I just bookmarked that site thanks. Now I can give a cop a ticket!

Let us know how you get on if you build one.....

Yes I have a website still in early construction phase in my profile that I will use to exhibit unique designs like this one if it works.

The only possible reason to use a dish (that can only focus transmission and reception) is if you wanted to have information on the position (angle really) of the intruding object, and in that case the dish should be on a predictable moving patterrn and some advanced logic processing used . Unless you want to detect Russian missiles this is not recommended. A plain ultra-low power transmitter-receiver pair at any legal frequency will do the job I think you have in mind, just use separate antennas with in-between shielding so that receiver will be able to receive only your back reflected (from targets) signal and detect it's changes

Hi,

have a look at the mobile TV transmission trucks!

They feed dish-antennas with waveguides that are impedance matched to the air by a conical end-piece - sometimes called a horn-antenna.

Take apart your microwave until you see the exit pin of the magnetron: a ceramic cylinder (near 1cm diameter in household 3GHz magnetrons) that has a metallic endcap.

Let undisturbed the transformer and the diodes, the interlock switches to be used later after you completed your system.

Look at the waveguide manufacturers to set the needed dimensions and where to insert this pin - that is a high voltage antenna with a longitudinal standing wave pattern on it.

As you will not be exact with the location of the pin in waveguide nor the necessary depth you will need a 3-stub-tuner to reduce reflections (back into the magnetron).

Focusing with a dish is not perfect as the wavelength is pretty long, but without doubt you will get 1KW within a 10cm diameter spot (100 times the suns irradiance at the earth at clear sky) - if nearly all necessities are ok.

There is a rumor about 1 W - nonfocused - maybe harmful to our eyes (1 mW if focused).

So burn the trees in your surroundings or boil the rattlesnakes but have some flat water boiler inbetween of variable thickness and PE or TEFLON walls to act as an absorber to adjust for the outgoing energy. Three sheets of graphite arranged as in an iris in photo-lenses will do the same and need no refill. (These absorbers to be inserted at the output of the waveguide to air matching horn).

Same system to be used to extract the backscattered energy but another pin to be inserted into a branch of the waveguide n x(half wave) before the pin of the magnetron. This will extract all the energy you put in unless you have a very fast switch that switches the branch of the waveguide from absorbing to reflecting at pulse emission.

Start your system with only 1 Watt by reducing the transformer's output voltage and the on-time. Tinker until working satisfactorily. Look at the surplus market for a suitable VSWR - measurement-instrument.

Would be a pretty powerful mosquito burner, be cautious with the high-intensity mosquitoes with metallic shields. Microwaves are restricted near any explosives or ammunition.

Get some basic books on microwaves, radars, waveguides, switching, ultrafast electronics - universities are a likely place to learn - usually takes 4 years of study plus 8 years of experience and then a crew of 3 to 11 persons with different skills.

Good luck and take care!

RHABE

RHABE

the alarm industry gave up on radar 40 years a go. Unless you spent the money on electronics the unit will not see the difference a fly walking on the antenna or a few tractor trailers moving on the road 1000ft away

go buy a infrared device at a alarm supply house for 10 to 20 dollars

Your comments are so far from the truth as to be unreal, but this may be to do with your location, not just lack of knowledge. If you lived in Europe or USA/Canada, you would know that this is not true.

In the countries mentioned and probably a few others as well, RADAR is often used in large buildings because it can be "tuned" to see movement through walls......

Also you only have to buy and use a RADAR detector for your car to know that everytime you pass the same building, that the RADAR detector will "shout".......

If the Police were clever, they would put their speed detection RADAR right in front of such a building!!!!

Have a great day anyway!!

Hi MM, it just struck me, if you get the Radar working just right, all visitors to you will never Father or Mother any more children - a sort of "Halfway House" in the Darwin awards scheme, if you understand what I mean!!

That probably isn't true... However, you can warm the insides of a person's intestines, which stimulates peristalsis, causing a very bad case of the poopy-pants!!!

The Japanese use that one for crowd control.

The final results (screwed up testicles or poopy pants) depend on the frequency......as with most anything in this world!!

What about ovaries? Sunny side up?

Do they have a sunny side???? Deep thought asked me this when I was Hitchhiking around.....

Aahhh..... the brown note.

Hey just had what passes for an idea in my mind.

You know how the Japanese are always publishing news releases about their latest high tech toilets with so many features that you just couldn't possibly do without? Like two or three times a week, there's a toilet with a built in cleaning spray of water, gentle, warm air,bum dryer, sound to hide sounds of natural functions. But phoenix mentions the brown note, light bulb appears over my head. Microwave peristalsis inducer built into toilet. Have different power settings for different degrees of impaction,

1. Mild, 2. medium, 3. high, 4. Mt. ST. Helen. 5. secret rendition

phoenix, you triggered the idea, you get a cut, get maniac maverick mansion to build it so he will finally have something to do with his satellite dish or salad bowl , whatever. Oh yeah, get that Brainiac guy to help . THe one with all the advice about systematically and diligently learning science stuff for years so you can design your own motion detector.

Yeah right, if I had all that motivation i wouldn't be living in my mother's basement . eating Twinkies,wearing my Official Star Trek ,Yeoman Expendable red shirt.

Just shoot me,

Packrat

phoenix, you triggered the idea, you get a cut,

After what Thomas Crapper did for humanity, with his name to live on in infamy...............no tank you

oh yah you forgot number 6.) super nova......oh heck lets include 7.) the big bang

after 2.) a sign lights up...Don't go in there

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0FTzUhdg3w

Check out parallax.com

They have small x band motion detectors for around $30.to $40.

Complete works on a board.

A great company to buy from.