blah2

This is fork of blah2, modified to run on a Raspberry Pi 5.

A real-time radar which can support various SDR platforms. See a live instance at http://radar4.30hours.dev.

Features

• 2 channel processing for a reference and surveillance signal.
• Designed to be used with external RF source (for passive radar or active radar).
• Outputs delay-Doppler maps to a web front-end.
• Record raw IQ data by pressing spacebar on the web front-end.
• Saves delay-Doppler maps in a JSON array.

SDR Support

• SDRplay RSPDuo.
• USRP (only tested on the B210).
• 2x HackRF with clock synchronisation and hardware trigger.
• 2x RTL-SDR with clock synchronisation.
• KrakenSDR with 2x channels only.

Services

The build environment consists of a docker-compose.yml file running the following services;

• The radar processor responsible for IQ capture and processing.
• The API middleware responsible for reading TCP ports for delay-Doppler map data, and exposing this on a REST API.
• The web front-end displaying processed radar data.

Usage

Building the code using the following instructions;

• Install docker and docker-compose on the host machine.

Step 1: Update Your Raspberry Pi

Run the following commands to ensure your Raspberry Pi is up-to-date:

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade -y

Step 2: Install Required Packages

Install dependencies required to add Docker’s repository:

sudo apt install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl software-properties-common gnupg

Step 3: Add Docker’s Official GPG Key

Add Docker’s GPG key to ensure downloads are trusted:

sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg

Step 4: Add Docker’s Repository

Add Docker’s repository for ARM-based devices like Raspberry Pi:

echo \ "deb [arch="$(dpkg --print-architecture)" signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian \ "$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME")" stable" | \ sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

Step 5: Install Docker

Update the package index and install Docker:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install -y docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

Step 6: Verify Installation

Check if Docker is installed correctly:

docker --version

Step 7: Enable Docker to Start on Boot

Enable Docker service to run at startup:

sudo systemctl enable docker

sudo systemctl start docker

Step 8: (Optional) Run Docker Without sudo

If you want to run Docker commands without sudo, add your user to the docker group:

sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Log out and back in for the changes to take effect.

Step 9: Test Docker

Run a test Docker container to ensure everything works:

docker run hello-world

Check Docker-Compose: docker compose version

• Install Graph Viz

sudo apt install graphviz

• Clone this repository to some directory.
• Install SDRplay API to run service on host.
• Edit the config/config.yml for desired processing parameters.
• Run the docker-compose command.

sudo git clone https://github.com/offworldlab/retinanode /opt/blah2
cd /opt/blah2
sudo chown -R $USER .
sudo chmod a+x ./lib/sdrplay-3.15.2/SDRplay_RSP_API-Linux-3.15.2.run
sudo ./lib/sdrplay-3.15.2/SDRplay_RSP_API-Linux-3.15.2.run --tar -xvf -C ./lib/sdrplay-3.15.2
cd lib/sdrplay-3.15.2/ && sudo ./install_lib.sh && cd ../../
sudo docker network create blah2
sudo systemctl enable docker
sudo docker compose up -d --build

The radar processing output is available on http://localhost:49152.

Documentation

• See doxygen pages hosted at http://doc.30hours.dev/blah2.

Future Work

• Add a tracker in delay-Doppler space.
• Support for the HackRF/RTL-SDR using a front-end mixer, to sample 2 RF channels in 1 stream.
• Support for the Kraken SDR with all 5 channels.
• Add SoapySDR support for the C++ API to include a wide range of SDR platforms.

FAQ

• If the SDRplay RSPduo does not capture data, restart the API service (on the host) using the script sudo ./script/blah2_rspduo_restart.bash.

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome - especially for adding support for a new SDR.

• Currently have an issue where the USRP B210 is timing out after 5-10 mins and crashes the code. Convinced it's an issue with my usage of the API - contact me for more info.

Links

• Join the Discord chat for sharing results and support.

• Watch a Youtube video showing the hardware and software setup.

License

MIT