Blinking lights is a lot of fun, but if you’re getting an EE degree the amazing stuff becomes a bit much more involved. In this case, building your own radar is the thing to do. Here’s a coffee can radar setup being shown off by a group of UC Davis students. regular readers will recognize the concept as one we looked at in December. The project was inspired by the MIT OpenCourseware project.

One of the cans is being used as a transmitter, the other as the collector. The neat thing about this rig is that the analysis is carried out on a PC, with the sound card as the collection device. The video after the break shows off the hardware as well as the results it collected. about a minute and a half into the clip they show a real-time demonstration where a student walks in front of the apparatus while another takes a video of the plot results. As the subject moves away from the receiver the computer graph changes accordingly. The rest of the video covers some operational theory and pcb assembly.

[Thanks Gregory]