Intellectually, everyone knows that we exist in a fancy soup of RF vitality. Mobile, WiFi, TV, public service radio, radar, ISM-band transmissions from all the things from thermometers to storage door openers — it’s throughout us. It might be nice to see these transmissions, however alas, most of us don’t come from the manufacturing unit with the right tools.

Fortunately, aftermarket equipment like RadioFieldAR by [Manahiyo] make it doable to visualise RF alerts. Because the identify suggests, that is an augmented actuality system that permits you to examine the RF world round you. The core of the system is a tinySA, a pocket-sized spectrum analyzer that acts as a broadband receiver. A particular antenna is linked to the tinySA; sadly, there are not any specifics on the antenna apart from it must have a label with a picture of the Earth hooked up to it, for antenna monitoring functions. The tinySA is linked to an Android telephone — one which helps Google’s ARCore — by a USB OTG cable, and a particular app on the telephone runs the present.

By slowly shifting the antenna round within the subject of view of the telephone’s digicam, a warmth map of sign energy at a specific frequency is slowly constructed up. The video under reveals it in motion, and the outcomes are fairly cool. If you happen to don’t have a tinySA, worry not — [Manahiyo] has a model of the app that helps a plain previous RTL-SDR dongle too. That ought to make it simple for almost anybody to do that out.

And for those who’re feeling deja vu about this, you’re most likely remembering the [Manahiyo]’s VR spectrum analyzer, upon which this mission is predicated.

[via RTL-SDR.com]