mrtnmcc

Repo has been there, but I pushed an update for the latest demos, thanks for the reminder :)

You have to understand this is a relatively sleepy personal project at this point still.

You can find all the software there (for every demo shown on the website), but it's not "build-ready" given the hardware isn't released yet as the website makes clear. The repo is from last year but not generally advertised.

I suppose HN picked up on this project again because of the moon mission this week.

It was discussed a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45790672

phased array is better than whatever that guy was doing!

MoonRF mostly takes care of the hardware and pointing, and then the fun is playing with software and signal processing: https://github.com/open-space-sdr/main

It's open source. Here is the GitHub: https://github.com/open-space-sdr/main

The 1 GB RPi-5 is only $45 still, hopefully it stays that way :)

correct, one Pi-5 for the MoonRF. The beamforming computation is done digitally "on the fly" in round-robin across the sixty QuadRF boards.

unfortunately the ECP5-5G FPGA (with the SERDES/PCIe option), costs way more than the ECP5 (without SERDES). The Pi-5's MIPI interfaces gives you 8 parallel LVDS lanes that can run at 640 MHz each which is manageable for a cheap FPGA.

the licensing of the software/firmware/hardware is shown at https://moonrf.com/updates/#faq

the open-source licenses are listed at https://moonrf.com/updates/#faq

The MoonRF array is a full 1 meter diameter as shown on the page

The individual Falcon turn-around is slow (months of refurb), and the record half-month ones swapped some engines. B1067's 30-reuse is a ship of Theseus rebuilt over 4+ years.

And don't forget New Glenn uses Methane which solves the coking problem for reusability. Coke buildup plagues Falcon more than people realize.

>> I have several hundred [four leaf clovers]. I even have a few five-leaf clovers and a couple of sixers!

That doesn't fit the ratios in my experience.. I find about 1 five-leaf for every 5 four-leafers. They should have nearly 100 five leafers, not merely "a few".

EDIT: I checked and indeed the standard ratio is 4.8 four leaf clovers per five-leaf. https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/73279/distributi...

There are ten 640 MSPS ADCs (I+Q per channel and a cal path, per 4-antenna PCB tile). These are custom MASH ΣΔ designs built from discrete diff pair transistors (cost about $0.08 each) and do noise shaping/decimation to get a clean 50 MHz of baseband bandwidth. The 8x DACs are also ΣΔ, using the LVDS pins of the FPGA and some modulating DSP. Mixers are MAX2850/1, LNA are custom design based on Infineon transistor, and RFPA is a Skyworks part meant for WiFi (have iterated on a few model numbers).

Great seeing you at Pacificon!

We’re starting with the “Quad” tile — a 4 Tx × 4 Rx SDR designed for arraying — and expect to ship the first units toward the end of this year. They're actually quite capable as a standalone SDR. A Quad can interface directly with a Raspberry Pi 5, and we’ve built a combined enclosure for the SDR + Pi setup. You can run SDR software locally on the Pi or stream IQ samples over gigabit Ethernet to a remote PC.

Software support includes GNU Radio, Pothos SDR, and just about any tool compatible with SoapySDR. We’re also doing some fun demos, like visualizing Wi-Fi signal sources in real time ("Wi-Fi camera") and performing mm-scale 3D localization—a prerequisite for the automatic array calibration.

Larger arrays are assembled by simply tiling these Quads into an aluminum/PCB lattice framework, enabling anything from compact 4-antenna MIMO nodes up to 240-element lunar-bounce arrays. The goal is to have full phased-array capability by March 2026.

The broader vision behind open.space is to make advanced RF and space-communications hardware open and accessible—so anyone can experiment with technologies once limited to national labs: moon-bounce (EME) links, satellite reception, terrestrial RF imaging.

Happy to answer questions here.

One thing I'm excited about getting working is mobile moon bounce!

Maybe in a controlled setting they can detect mines, but there are plenty of other reasons for dry soil, i.e. hard to detect consistently without false positives. For tank camouflage that's all you need, something that blends in with false positives.

> Thats insane... To consistently not close the door like that

It sounds like it happened occasionally causing the battery to drain overnight. So not necessarily improper close every time, but a dice roll.

Might as well just put a bunch of dirt on the tank.

Perhaps if you feed ChatGPT the article, it will discern some meaning that currently only the author possesses.

SMS was more reliable for delivery with poor cellular connections, and many people learned to use it for that reason. The US (had) many rural areas with poor reception. So maybe that plays into it?

That theory would seem disproved by Mexico which is also pretty rural, but I believe their cell infrastructure sprung up pretty quickly and later than the US so "old school" sms didn't get the same traction.

Could also do multiple parallel e-beams to a chip (within reason). This might amortize some of the cost.

Giving LLM the ability to query other services like Google should solve much of this. For example ChatGPT can be initialized to be told it can output commands like "QUERY_GOOGLE:What is the current time?" and get Google's response, which it can incorporate. You can actually do this yourself and prove it works by performing the Google search for ChatGPT.

American Individualism is a well studied value w.r.t Europeans, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2011/11/17/the-american-w...

Of course generalizing like this about groups is a cloudy lens at best but it's the premise of OP and may predict voted policy of respective countries.

That said, it's been a number of years since I lived in Switzerland and I see things have changed measurably regarding official EU policy on Chinese trade, https://wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93European_Union_rela...

It's ironic to criticize the way the Chinese handled terrorism concerns against Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang, when the US War on Terror didn't just dehumanize and supress American Muslims-- it killed about 1 million people across the globe.

This is a case of "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

We can all criticize Xinjiang, but not to justify cultural superiority, if anything it works the other way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_terror

Agreed there is nuance, but the Han dynasty had similar borders 2000 years ago.

The Great Wall helped, it wasn't the easiest thing to move around.

Um... Ghenghis Khan was Mongolian. Mongolians are not in any way at all related to the Chinese people/Han people.

The Europeans are not obsessed with taking down China, nor are Europeans ardent individualists as Americans are. Chinese and America have a bigger cultural gap than Europe and China in this respect.

China is about 10x older than the US. We're like a six year old thinking they knowing better than grandpa.

Arguably a more Chinese-style philosophy is prudent now as the world becomes a smaller place. Chinese people have sustained for thousands of years on the same land, without needing to rely on continuously invading new territory. Now the whole Earth is settled, we need to learn how to live together. Not that China is perfect, but we certainly have much to teach each other, and the Chinese have been the better listener so far.

You have to understand that after the cultural revolution, most all Chinese understand that internal rebellion can be very bad (leading to mass famine and death). Hence they largely support strong government regulation, even on speech. Americans think individual independence is a noble "Western value" because the Revolutionary War worked out fine for us. But these experiences each lead to biased extrapolations from the past. For the future, the specific conditions matter for individualism versus collectivism.. on which is the better path.