Intellectually, we all know that we exist in a complex soup of RF energy. Cellular, WiFi, TV, public service radio, radar, ISM-band transmissions from everything from thermometers to garage door openers — it’s all around us. It would be great to see these transmissions, but alas, most of us don’t come from the factory with the correct equipment.
Luckily, aftermarket accessories like RadioFieldAR by Manahiyo make it possible to visualize RF signals. The core of the system is a tinySA, a pocket-sized spectrum analyzer that acts as a broadband receiver. A special antenna is connected to the tinySA; unfortunately, there are no specifics on the antenna other than it needs to have a label with an image of the Earth attached to it, for antenna tracking purposes. The tinySA is connected to an Android phone — one that supports Google’s ARCore — by a USB OTG cable, and a special app on the phone runs the show.
The tinySA is just acting as a SDR receiver listening to a specific frequency you’re interested in, and then sending the varying signal strength via the OTG cable to the Android phone and app. Very interesting, there is a version of the app that will also support a plain old RTL-SDR dongle, so you may not even have to buy a tinySA.
There is also a video at the linked article below, showing how it works in practice.
See https://hackaday.com/2023/03/04/inspect-the-rf-realm-with-augmented-reality/
#technology #radio #tinySA #AR #frequencies