How-To: Coffee Can Radar

Education Technology
How-To: Coffee Can Radar

The MIT Open Courseware (OCW) radar materials from Dr. Gregory L. Charvat (and peers) that Matt blogged about back in February have just been released! This is hands-on education that my father, for one, spent a few years of his life (and no small amount of money) to acquire at a fancy university in the late 1960s. It covers information which, not too many years before that, was so secret just talking about it to the wrong person could get you imprisoned. Now MIT is giving it away to everyone with the internet access and education required to access, read, and understand it:

Are you interested in building and testing your own imaging radar system? MIT Lincoln Laboratory offers this 3-week course in the design, fabrication, and test of a laptop-based radar sensor capable of measuring Doppler, range, and forming synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. You do not have to be a radar engineer but it helps if you are interested in any of the following; electronics, amateur radio, physics, or electromagnetics. It is recommended that you have some familiarity with MATLAB®. Teams of three students will receive a radar kit and will attend a total of 5 sessions spanning topics from the fundamentals of radar to SAR imaging.

[Thanks, Matt Mets!]

10 thoughts on “How-To: Coffee Can Radar

  1. James B says:

    Dang.  I get my coffee in 5 lb mylar bags.   (I do want to check out their amplifier circuit)

  2. James B says:

    Dang.  I get my coffee in 5 lb mylar bags.   (I do want to check out their amplifier circuit)

  3. James B says:

    Dang.  I get my coffee in 5 lb mylar bags.   (I do want to check out their amplifier circuit)

  4. James B says:

    Dang.  I get my coffee in 5 lb mylar bags.   (I do want to check out their amplifier circuit)

  5. Kathy L. Sato says:

    oh heck yes – I did the MTI algorithms for TR-2 when it was being developed!

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Tagged

I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I am a long-time contributor to MAKE magazine and makezine.com. My work has also appeared in ReadyMade, c't – Magazin für Computertechnik, and The Wall Street Journal.

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