Materials

This list is intended to serve as a starting place for some suggested materials to build the baseline version of CHART.

Materials for building the horn

• 4 36” x 48” Double walled cardboard sheets. Refrigerator boxes work well. Check with your local appliance store.
• About 75 square feet of aluminum foil.
• Hot glue gun with hot glue. For example.
• Tape.
• Aluminum foil tape. For example

Materials for the probe:

The links here are small kits because you won’t find individual components on stores like Amazon. If you have a local electronics/hobbyist store, you might try there, but even the small kits are not too expensive.

• Panel mount SMA connector with bulkhead solder cup.
• 1 small scrap aluminum (a soup can lid covered in aluminum tape works well).
• 1 SMA male-to-male right angle connector.
  • Alternatively, some of our builds include male-to-female right angle connectors and adaptors because that is what we had on hand.
• 6.3cm solid copper wire.

Materials for the electronics chain

• Nooelec filter and low-noise amplifier
• (optional) SMA style termination load
• SMA cable - Long enough to run from monitor to wherever you want to take data. Note: if you go with the RTL-SDR kit linked below, you do not need this cable.
• RTL-SDR. This can be purchased stand-alone or as a kit for more hacking. The kit comes with the SMA cable you need, but you will need a male-to-male SMA adaptor.

Materials for the computer

• Raspberry Pi. We recommend the RPi 400 for convenience. This kit comes with a keyboard, mouse, power cable, HDMI cable, and SD card which otherwise would need to be purchased separately.
• Micro SD card reader for loading the software onto your RPi’s SD card.
• A portable computer monitor
• Ethernet cable (Optional, if not using WiFi option)
• USB portable charger for powering the pi and monitor.

Recommended extras

• Multimeter with continuity functionality
• Soldering kit
• Small radio antenna