Open Hardware Weather Radar
summary
Builds an experimental microwave radar system using LimeSDR and FPGAs with frequency doublers and power amplifiers targeting ISM bands around 2.5, 5 and 10 GHz for moisture sensing; prototypes include PCB front ends, antenna panels and a 100‑element GPS passive radar testbed in the lab. Field work deployed sensor nodes over Nairobi and a Twitter bot (HewaniKE) for real observations; achieved around 20‑minute nowcasting in trials but no full phased array production unit is yet complete.
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chapters (22)
- 0:00Introduction
- 9:10Civilian Solid State Radar
- 9:37Project Timeline
- 13:03Bootstrapping
- 14:44Upsides
- 15:55Challenges
- 17:28Casting Approach
- 17:57Pie in the Sky
- 18:55Honeycomb Approach
- 19:42Ren
- 20:55QPE
- 23:38Hailstones
- 24:21Meep
- 25:11Open Hardware Radar
- 26:14Blade RF
- 26:26Frequency Doublers
- 26:55Frequency Doubler
- 27:12Power Amplifiers
- 27:37Antennas
- 28:11Realistic Antenna
- 28:40Funding Challenges
- 30:14Questions
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