Creator here, thanks for posting. And feel free to ask me anything!
Do you have a list you would be willing to share of trusted manufacturers & suppliers that you reference for different products or materials?
At least in the last video it seems like he used both PCBWay and JLCPCB for manufacturing
Yep! The choice of JLCPCB after having used PCBWay is what inspired the question.
Love your channel! Do you have any plans to eventually open source your projects? (Both in terms of hardware and software)
I'm personally especially interested in 'Latent Reflection'. I've tried to make something similar never got to a point where I was happy with the output the AI model gave me.
I love your works, what kind of background do you have?
CS background, but I've always been a "bricoleur" on the side
Cool project. I was going to say, the end resulting light should be a pretty saturated spectrum, given that many RF sources just keep pumping out waves, and the those waves propagating and bouncing around.
I think one fun application would be a light which represents your wi-fi strength around the house. Obviously in a smaller apartment that's really not a problem, but in larger houses it would be fun to see.
Another application would be to find hidden RF sources / leaks. I have a home recording studio, and for the life I could not find some RF source that kept adding noise / interference. I could roughly detect the frequency of the noise, but not its origin. I guess if I had a couple of RF sensors I could try to triangulate my way to it.
Yes, in the parisian apt. where I filmed the RF landscape is wild
But tuning in to the specific wifi channel you router use you could even use this piece as a signal strenght plotter!
That’s what I was thinking, the project should yield a few different useful tools. That was a great video.
Cool project. Here's some OT: where do people learn to make these videos? Fast paced but calm narration with chill music and sped up action mixed with regular speed. It's a matter of consuming a lot of this content until the form clicks, or you need to go to influ-school?
Yo. You have to make videos. Then, seeing videos that you like, you secretly try to “steal” those ideas you articulated.
Just don’t tell anybody you’re a copy-cat.
It’s beautiful. I think I’ve seen something similar in a Ukraine war video where they use a device that lights up on specific frequencies that drones use.
FANTASTIC!!
I was just thinking about this the other day, and wondering about directionality...
For example, if you had a camera facing a space, and the receiving antenna was within that space... and you were able to (somehow?) from the antennas perspective, see the "direction" the frequency was coming from..
And then map the different specific frequencies within the desired bandwidth to colors... and of course intensity map like you have in the slit device..
And then "look through the camera"... you would see a live three dimensional overlay of all signals within range (colored!) "interacting" with the antenna... but kind of more the "looking through the camera" sort of view, like you could "see" how those waves were interacting..
And then wouldn't it be interesting to put a tin-foil hat to one side of the attennas.. and see how the waves change in real time... etc.!!!
(I guess it takes three antennas, to triangulate the field? Maybe all three can still be mounted on a single device in close proximity?)
The title is: This ESP32 Antenna Array Can See WiFi
And every time I see something like this I like to remind to myself and imagine what spherical grid of Starlink satellites linked by laser is really capable of instead of mere internet as it is advertised.
If you buy three (or more) Phillips Hue bulps you can have them respond to motion detected by things moving around and disturbing the radio waves they use to communicate. So they must have pretty much the kind of map you want, but I dont know how easy it is to export it.
> and you were able to (somehow?) from the antennas perspective, see the "direction" the frequency was coming from..
You can kind of do that quite easily at low frequencies, by measuring the phase of signals coming in from a pair of aerials. If you put two aerials a quarter of a wavelength apart and switch between them very quickly at audio rate, then you'll get a tone when there's a difference in phase. If there's no tone the two signals are exactly in phase - the two aerials are exactly the same distance from the transmitter.
If you look on some police cars you'll see a group of four aerials about 15cm apart stuck to the roof which used to be used for "Lojack" style trackers.
There are a whole bunch of circuit diagrams floating around for doing this kind of thing, with the simplest being Ye Olde 555 timer and a couple of PIN diodes!
Sawing the first shot, I thought the LED candle on the coffee table was the device. That would have also been cool, having flickering affected not by wind, as with real candles, but by radio waves.
His other projects are so interesting. I love this one
What would really finish it for me, though, is if, when the button is released, the device shows a website, with URL visible, with a photo of the criminal, with added facial recognition and lookup of social media to find their identity.
What fun!
The narration is very nice. Any idea of what the data could be? He mentions that it's legal for him to store but illegal to sell abroad and ranges from "bad to very bad".
A much simpler and less cool project would be to convert a slice of the RF spectrum into an RGB value with lowest frequencies mapped to red, highest to blue, and the resulting color being how we would perceive the mix.
That would still be cool - but what I really like about this is that it says something quite interesting about human existence, how we live, and in particular how we live in cities when we are in proximity to each other.
Very cool, was there a conversion or look up table to convert db to gamma for more accurate human visualization?
Very cool! I was having a conversation with my colleagues yesterday about building something to detect when you get scanned by a SAR (synthetic aperture radar) satellite (we're in earth observation), but you'd have to get a directional antenna to not be drowned out by terrestrial radio signals.
I once had a antenna with a lamp on it. It was used to detect best place for the radio. It just rectified the energy it received and used a very tiny light bulb
I just watched all the other videos of their pieces, and all of them are absolutely amazing conceptual explorations of our relationship with technology. Really amazing stuff
The bit in the phone project where he cuts out the poem authors intro seems a bit scummy though, all that work he's making uncredited... then he finishes the video by showing him signing the piece.
I guess it's a good commentary on how tech people value other peoples work.
Indeed, and the final result isn't particularly good as an art piece.
I wasn't surprised by that, I studied in one of the best schools in France and that attitude was prevalent amongst students.
All those inductors... Isn't there a cheaper way to drive those lights, e.g. using DC voltage+pwm?
Those inductors are cheaper than what PCBWay charged for making that wooden box, I don't think their cost matters much here.
Yes each LED channel has an inductor. I needed this because I wanted the LED to be constant current driven, to reduce flicker and improve their longevity
(and they cost like 5ct each)
I'm glad we can all agree this is really cool
I cannot find the YT video but an artist in residence did a short film with scratch-over of footage in an RF lab which tries to give a visual impression of the waves emitted by things present.
We're bathed in EMF. It's what light is, but aside from that we use electricity so much now, we're in a sea of radiation in other frequencies too.
you have everything right in front of your eyes, next if you add a transformer which convers these light signals into what they actually are then Voilà, you can see what's travelling in the air (Photos, conversations, music)
Except it’s encrypted with TLS
not far away
Remember the days when you could just make art, without having to be a Content Creator?
Respect to the artist, I know I couldn’t do it.
This is such a neat project. The idea of translating invisible radio waves into visible light is mesmerizing — it feels like giving your surroundings a new sensory dimension.
This is fantastic. But the idea where you use a camera that can only see the wifi signals in the room like visible light is even more stunning. It would be even better if you could block out all light from the visible spectrum and only see the GHz band.
Incredibly cool. I was really hoping to see the more ‘edge’ cases - take the light out to the middle of nowhere, walk towards it and away from it with just your phone or a Bluetooth speaker, see it react to your approach. The bit at the end about it shifting over the course of the day is cool, but I wish the effect was more visually apparent - it mostly just looked like random noise the whole time to me.
I wanted to take it war driving around paris and the countryside, maybe i'll make a separate short video for that
The sounds were so cool -straight out of sci-fi movie.
Traditional fix for coil hum is a blob of glue from a hot glue gun.
It is fun making it part of the show though.
very very cool !
Let's call this what it really is: it's an art project. It's not 'just' a cool technical work.
Why do you need another source of irritation in your room?
I don't think anyone is arguing that you NEED this. But it's the intersection of technology and art, and says something about the way we live. You can view it as nothing more than an irritation, but I think that's a shame.
Creator here, thanks for posting. And feel free to ask me anything!
Do you have a list you would be willing to share of trusted manufacturers & suppliers that you reference for different products or materials?
At least in the last video it seems like he used both PCBWay and JLCPCB for manufacturing
Yep! The choice of JLCPCB after having used PCBWay is what inspired the question.
Love your channel! Do you have any plans to eventually open source your projects? (Both in terms of hardware and software)
I'm personally especially interested in 'Latent Reflection'. I've tried to make something similar never got to a point where I was happy with the output the AI model gave me.
I love your works, what kind of background do you have?
CS background, but I've always been a "bricoleur" on the side
Cool project. I was going to say, the end resulting light should be a pretty saturated spectrum, given that many RF sources just keep pumping out waves, and the those waves propagating and bouncing around.
I think one fun application would be a light which represents your wi-fi strength around the house. Obviously in a smaller apartment that's really not a problem, but in larger houses it would be fun to see.
Another application would be to find hidden RF sources / leaks. I have a home recording studio, and for the life I could not find some RF source that kept adding noise / interference. I could roughly detect the frequency of the noise, but not its origin. I guess if I had a couple of RF sensors I could try to triangulate my way to it.
Yes, in the parisian apt. where I filmed the RF landscape is wild
But tuning in to the specific wifi channel you router use you could even use this piece as a signal strenght plotter!
That’s what I was thinking, the project should yield a few different useful tools. That was a great video.
Cool project. Here's some OT: where do people learn to make these videos? Fast paced but calm narration with chill music and sped up action mixed with regular speed. It's a matter of consuming a lot of this content until the form clicks, or you need to go to influ-school?
Yo. You have to make videos. Then, seeing videos that you like, you secretly try to “steal” those ideas you articulated.
Just don’t tell anybody you’re a copy-cat.
It’s beautiful. I think I’ve seen something similar in a Ukraine war video where they use a device that lights up on specific frequencies that drones use.
FANTASTIC!!
I was just thinking about this the other day, and wondering about directionality...
For example, if you had a camera facing a space, and the receiving antenna was within that space... and you were able to (somehow?) from the antennas perspective, see the "direction" the frequency was coming from..
And then map the different specific frequencies within the desired bandwidth to colors... and of course intensity map like you have in the slit device..
And then "look through the camera"... you would see a live three dimensional overlay of all signals within range (colored!) "interacting" with the antenna... but kind of more the "looking through the camera" sort of view, like you could "see" how those waves were interacting..
And then wouldn't it be interesting to put a tin-foil hat to one side of the attennas.. and see how the waves change in real time... etc.!!!
(I guess it takes three antennas, to triangulate the field? Maybe all three can still be mounted on a single device in close proximity?)
Yes it has been done: https://youtu.be/sXwDrcd1t-E?si=V75bEPMT8qGbo1wG
The title is: This ESP32 Antenna Array Can See WiFi
And every time I see something like this I like to remind to myself and imagine what spherical grid of Starlink satellites linked by laser is really capable of instead of mere internet as it is advertised.
See also: https://youtu.be/o6WHhqDHSQ4
If you buy three (or more) Phillips Hue bulps you can have them respond to motion detected by things moving around and disturbing the radio waves they use to communicate. So they must have pretty much the kind of map you want, but I dont know how easy it is to export it.
This is sort of that idea with sound:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL2JK0uJEbM
> and you were able to (somehow?) from the antennas perspective, see the "direction" the frequency was coming from..
You can kind of do that quite easily at low frequencies, by measuring the phase of signals coming in from a pair of aerials. If you put two aerials a quarter of a wavelength apart and switch between them very quickly at audio rate, then you'll get a tone when there's a difference in phase. If there's no tone the two signals are exactly in phase - the two aerials are exactly the same distance from the transmitter.
If you look on some police cars you'll see a group of four aerials about 15cm apart stuck to the roof which used to be used for "Lojack" style trackers.
There are a whole bunch of circuit diagrams floating around for doing this kind of thing, with the simplest being Ye Olde 555 timer and a couple of PIN diodes!
Sawing the first shot, I thought the LED candle on the coffee table was the device. That would have also been cool, having flickering affected not by wind, as with real candles, but by radio waves.
His other projects are so interesting. I love this one
https://rootkid.me/works/exhibit-a
Oh, that is fantastic.
What would really finish it for me, though, is if, when the button is released, the device shows a website, with URL visible, with a photo of the criminal, with added facial recognition and lookup of social media to find their identity.
What fun!
The narration is very nice. Any idea of what the data could be? He mentions that it's legal for him to store but illegal to sell abroad and ranges from "bad to very bad".
It's in teh description: "launching a fully functional darknet marketplace (http://spectretjag3wni6fzt445qwgokqlxnfz7fxkicj5efxjywlinibm...) that offers a trove of illegal data for sale across borders"
A much simpler and less cool project would be to convert a slice of the RF spectrum into an RGB value with lowest frequencies mapped to red, highest to blue, and the resulting color being how we would perceive the mix.
That would still be cool - but what I really like about this is that it says something quite interesting about human existence, how we live, and in particular how we live in cities when we are in proximity to each other.
Very cool, was there a conversion or look up table to convert db to gamma for more accurate human visualization?
Very cool! I was having a conversation with my colleagues yesterday about building something to detect when you get scanned by a SAR (synthetic aperture radar) satellite (we're in earth observation), but you'd have to get a directional antenna to not be drowned out by terrestrial radio signals.
I once had a antenna with a lamp on it. It was used to detect best place for the radio. It just rectified the energy it received and used a very tiny light bulb
I just watched all the other videos of their pieces, and all of them are absolutely amazing conceptual explorations of our relationship with technology. Really amazing stuff
The bit in the phone project where he cuts out the poem authors intro seems a bit scummy though, all that work he's making uncredited... then he finishes the video by showing him signing the piece.
I guess it's a good commentary on how tech people value other peoples work.
Indeed, and the final result isn't particularly good as an art piece.
I wasn't surprised by that, I studied in one of the best schools in France and that attitude was prevalent amongst students.
All those inductors... Isn't there a cheaper way to drive those lights, e.g. using DC voltage+pwm?
Those inductors are cheaper than what PCBWay charged for making that wooden box, I don't think their cost matters much here.
Yes each LED channel has an inductor. I needed this because I wanted the LED to be constant current driven, to reduce flicker and improve their longevity
(and they cost like 5ct each)
I'm glad we can all agree this is really cool
I cannot find the YT video but an artist in residence did a short film with scratch-over of footage in an RF lab which tries to give a visual impression of the waves emitted by things present.
We're bathed in EMF. It's what light is, but aside from that we use electricity so much now, we're in a sea of radiation in other frequencies too.
you have everything right in front of your eyes, next if you add a transformer which convers these light signals into what they actually are then Voilà, you can see what's travelling in the air (Photos, conversations, music)
Except it’s encrypted with TLS
not far away
Remember the days when you could just make art, without having to be a Content Creator?
Respect to the artist, I know I couldn’t do it.
This is such a neat project. The idea of translating invisible radio waves into visible light is mesmerizing — it feels like giving your surroundings a new sensory dimension.
Very appropriate soundtrack too:
https://youtu.be/B_gLxVZuk60
Uranium by Radioactiveman
I had to dig deeep in my soundcloud to find it!
This is fantastic. But the idea where you use a camera that can only see the wifi signals in the room like visible light is even more stunning. It would be even better if you could block out all light from the visible spectrum and only see the GHz band.
Incredibly cool. I was really hoping to see the more ‘edge’ cases - take the light out to the middle of nowhere, walk towards it and away from it with just your phone or a Bluetooth speaker, see it react to your approach. The bit at the end about it shifting over the course of the day is cool, but I wish the effect was more visually apparent - it mostly just looked like random noise the whole time to me.
I wanted to take it war driving around paris and the countryside, maybe i'll make a separate short video for that
The sounds were so cool -straight out of sci-fi movie.
Traditional fix for coil hum is a blob of glue from a hot glue gun.
It is fun making it part of the show though.
very very cool !
Let's call this what it really is: it's an art project. It's not 'just' a cool technical work.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46729428
Someone makes a kickstarter out of it please
I love your poetry on a phone project so muchhhh
Very cool!
Why do you need another source of irritation in your room?
I don't think anyone is arguing that you NEED this. But it's the intersection of technology and art, and says something about the way we live. You can view it as nothing more than an irritation, but I think that's a shame.