My DIY radar speed camera: Mullet Edition—Business in the front, party in the back.

[u/nutstobutts]

I've found a nice way to hide my radar speed camera on the street so I can start testing it. From the front, it just looks like every other slow down sign. In the back, is where the party is at.

I cut a small hole in the sign for the camera and attached it all (radar, camera, wifi, and solar panel) to the back. Of course the solar panel looks way out of place. Without it no one would ever see the radar unit, so I think I will power it with a long cable instead. Right now I'm using a second sign to hide it from the rear.

Performance wise, it's working far better than I expected. The radar has a range of about 130ft-180ft (about 40-55 meters).

Attached are 2 photos it took automatically. One is of a white SUV driving from left to right which is about 180ft away.

The second is a white sedan driving towards the camera, this car registered 14 MPH when the photo was taken.

I still need to figure out the best speed and timing for the photos to get the car much closer to the camera. A video would be nice but I think images will be easier to manage.

Of course this thing is nowhere near ready and still needs quite a bit more work. I'll open source everything in a few weeks once I fix some glaring problems. I'm also combining all the dev boards into one board, so it'll be about 3 times smaller than what you see in the photos.

[u/nutstobutts]

All the rage in here will help me work faster and open source this even sooner

[u/smithers102 → u/nutstobutts]

OP you should use the radar to trigger a child size doll to fly out onto the road in front of them.

[u/PhilZealand → u/smithers102]

…with a big rubber mallet to bang on the hood as the car drives past

[u/John_mcgee2 → u/nutstobutts]

Me personally, I’m stoked you’re doing this. People need to know 20-30% of crashes involve speeding cars. That’s crazy when you consider only 20% safe speeding at any given time.

Anywho, I guess if you’re camera is real stealthy and no one notices it’d be a nice way To find out if that 15-20% figure is too low. I’d guess they can tell what it is when walking the dog.

Side note. Biggest actual safety improver is footpath separated from roads which you already have so don’t let the Dystychiphobia take too much of your time.

[u/MrAffinity → u/nutstobutts]

Bunch of car loving cagers in this thread