Today's video is the first in a new series of videos on Radio Direction Finding. We'll be kicking off the series with this advanced and awesome tool called the KrakenSDR and use it to track down a signal.
A single radio can be quickly located. A cluster of radios on the same frequency is much more difficult because you need to be able to isolate the different radios and track each one by one. Not impossible, just requires a bit more effort.
Well just need to write a plug-in to time send. Say turn on and send for 5mins each hour on an overlap with each node, but offset the times each hour based on maybe a static setting. It wouldn’t be full proof, but would make it more annoying to find.
Keysight has been doing something like this for about 20 yrs except there are not 5 receivers in a single box, but multiple receivers that can be synchronized together via GPS and ethernet. It uses the same principle call time distance of arrival or TDA. Think of it as a big array of receivers that all report to a PC to analyze the data and report back the direction of the signal and approximate location. I’m surprised no one hasn’t done this before using SDR dongles or HackRF modules. All that needs to be done is to make the LOs and clock on the digitizer’s coherent to a GPS standard.
Cool new topic, hardware expensive but hey that’s how professional equipment goes lol. So it’s trying to micro triangulate with those 5 inputs, and then outputting to the user more like a compass/wayfinder. Nice that’s it’s more direct than having to drive in a circle around the target while taking radio measurements to triangulate lol
It doesn't "micro triangulate". It determines the bearing based on the phase difference of the received signals. That just gives one bearing. The bearing alone doesn't tell you where the transmitter is. You have to take multiple bearings along a baseline that isn't in the same direction as the target in order to get bearing shift. That shift is what allows you to locate the transmitter. This is how triangulation works in any bearing determining DF system.
@@poland153 Circling isn't required or even desirable. All that is needed is a baseline down one side of the target long enough to swing the bearing significantly farther than the average bearing error plus the minimum bearing resolution so the solution will converge with the desired accuracy.
Someone has made a good COT converter for ATAK which works well. I've fed it into a tak server and distributed the output so others can see the direction and location of an RF source. Plenty of room for improvement but for a small price, it's a fairly good capability
This Should Be Made In Some Sort of Sport Where You Need To Track Down Transmitters For SOme Prices Or Products :) It Would Be Pretty Cool To bring Together People With This Interest !
A lot of ham radio clubs do this and call it "fox hunting". They'll do it at a lot of ham fest around here. Definitely look into some of the ham radio groups in your area and see if they do any fox hunting and join in on the fun! Even if you don't have a ham radio license, you can join in since this activity doesn't require any transmitting.
I want one of these so bad! I wish there was a way to use offline mapping to make it a truly offline tracking solution. I know that you can just use the lobes as you demonstrated.
do not know much about sdr, but wonder is it possible to find fpv drone pilot, and even, is it possible to find location the drone itself? and if somebody has the same device, can this device find location of your device?
Finding the drone pilot should be a bit easier than the drone. If the drone is transmitting location data in clear-text, that data could be intercepted. As far as locating the same device, assuming you're talking about SDR, that is not possible with most SDRs as they receive signals only and don't transmit.
There are much cheaper and simpler ways. Just use a beam antenna for vhf and higher, or a loop on HF. Any directional antenna will give you a direction toward the transmitter.
@@The_Comms_Channel As a fox hunter with decades of experience using many different DF systems I think I can challenge that assertion. I notice you just assumed one of the towers was the transmitter, and you didn't determine which one of them was actually transmitting. The Kraken system isn't much different from doppler DF systems we've been using since the 80s.
Yes, this wont pinpoint exactly which tower, but you're not going to find the general location of a signal miles away within a few minutes like this will. As mentioned earlier in the video, we'll be covering the traditional methods where we'll use attenuators, harmonics to narrow down a signals location once we get to the general location of it.
