Tagged: quadrf

QuadRF Now Crowdfunding on Crowd Supply for $499

Back in June and January, we posted about QuadRF and ScaleRF (previously known as open.space) and their mission to unlock affordable open-source Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) bounce communications for the amateur radio public.

Their core product, QuadRF, is a 4-element coherent antenna tile with built-in SDR and processing on a Raspberry Pi 5. Apart from being able to be chained together to make a massive coherent beam-steering antenna capable of working with EME, a single tile can also be used for C-band (4.9–6.0 GHz) direction finding and spatial signal visualization. QuadRF can also transmit, enabling point-to-point communication and the creation of mesh networks.

Recently, their product was launched on the CrowdSupply crowdfunding platform, and it has already far exceeded their $100,000 funding goal. The QuadRF kit is priced at $499 and includes the required Raspberry Pi 5, a tripod, a 32GB microSD card, and a power supply. The QuadRF Mobile expansion pack costs $149 and lets you take the QuadRF on the go. They are also selling a QuadRF six-pack for $594, although as this is designed for research, it does not include the enclosure, antennas, Pi 5, or phased-array structure. 

QuadRF - A 4x4 MIMO SDR tile for spatial RF vision & beamforming that scales as a phased array

QuadRF: 4-Element Beamforming SDR Tile Coming to Crowd Supply

Back in January, we posted about open.space and their mission to unlock affordable open source earth-moon-earth (EME) bounce communications for the amateur radio public. Recently, we've seen that the project has been renamed to ScaleRF, with the EME system renamed to MoonRF, and the invisual tile renamed to QuadRF. They've also put out a new update post with a lot of interesting information and demonstrations. In the latest update, they also announced that the QuadRF 4-element tile will soon come to Crowd Supply for crowdfunding.

MoonRF is a software-defined radio-based tiling system that enables users to easily create large phased arrays by combining multiple smaller 'QuadRF' tiles consisting of four tile elements, a custom SDR, and a built-in Raspberry Pi 5. Although the ultimate goal is to produce a large system capable of working EME bounce communications, they show that a single QuadRF tile has considerable utility on its own.

An interesting application they show is the ability to visualize and track RF signals using a single QuadRF and their augmented-reality smartphone app. QuadRF appears to be limited to the C-band (4.9–6.0 GHz), but many modern devices, such as smartphones and drones, operate at these frequencies, and in the video, they are able to track these devices with perfect accuracy.

They also show that QuadRF has built-in web browser access to various programs, including a wireless camera decoder for drones.

Quad RF: A Closer Look