Lithuanian startup launches open-source network to detect Shahed-type drones

Or it is a public stunt? I am naysayer engineer. Build acoustic detection system for anomaly detection in manufacturing line. It worked with studio level equipment with lots of noise filtering measures. First challenge was to have microphone listening to the right place and getting reliable signal. Second challenge was to amplify the right signal to a level where the features could be extracted. I doubt an old android with dirty microphone can detect anything reliably.

Shahed drones have increased in altitude from ~500m at the beginning of the Ukraine war to 2000-3000m, which is a 4x reduction in noise on the ground. The higher the drones are, the less noise they make at ground level, and the less effective this ground-based microphone system will be. The drones have moved to elevations to make them more difficult to target with ground based weapons. Reductions in ground noise are a secondary effect.

The latest versions of Shahed can reach 5000m in altitude, which would largely be inaudible on the ground.

For those interested there is an open source radar based phased array project here: https://github.com/NawfalMotii79/PLFM_RADAR

I may have even discovered it from hacker news, I forget now.

There are extremely sensitive differential pressure sensors available from Sensirion that aren't overly expensive.

If these Shahed drones have a propeller they should have a brutal signature between 0-250Hz as they are moving a lot of air.

Use one differential side and connect it to a kitchen funnel for directional listening the other one to a plastic bottle with a very very small hole in it. It will pick up everything high frequency that's different to the environmental pressure.

This way I was able to detect washing machines that had a physical link to house walls for many hundred meters (machine spinning -> house wall shaking -> pressure waves) away.

Add this with some GPS PPS frame timestamping and you should have a nice tracking network that doesn't require a lot of bandwidth. But maybe the setup must switch to analog differential pressure sensors as these Senirion-I2C sensors do not have a Sync ping for super precise timestamping.

I wonder how this system can be protected from spam - if anyone can send data there, enemy can, too

SpaceX received a $4 billion military contract to do this, but with radar and from orbit.

Wouldn’t a purpose built Esp32 with microphones aimed at the sky do a better job? It would be always on, better directional targeting.

Sounds like a simple app with mic input being sent to a yamnet-like audio classification model for a single target detection. Hardly anything innovative?

AFAIK started by a fellow HN’er

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Baltics are very involved in the war in Ukraine, for instance, Slovenia started NAFO.