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/i_used_to_run_fast]

This feels like a DIWHY more than anything else, what is the end goal here exactly? Seems like bored boomer behavior. Why go through all this effort to take grainy pictures of speeders? You gonna email them to the courthouse? 2025 version of an old man shaking his fist on his porch because some kids walked on his grass or something.

[u/Jay-Moah → u/i_used_to_run_fast]

And some home grown radar speed tracker isn’t going to hold up in court.

[u/In-Justice-4-all → u/Jay-Moah]

Lawyer here... You are correct. There is zero chance that would be admisible. In my state... And most... The police need to have the device itself certified as reliable by the state Supreme Court. The court would appoint a special master (think retired judge on recall) to take testimony of experts and of effected parties and amicus curiae. Once certified then it's admissible only under the conditions that that court approved. New model? Nope. New firmware? Nope. So this DIY radar would die on the vine. Cool project though.

[u/grumpy_human → u/In-Justice-4-all]

The video footage would be admiasinel wouldn't it? There are ways to determine speed using visual cues alone. Not saying anyone is getting a traffic citation form this contraption, but in the event of an injury crash etc, any video evidence would be used to determine rate of speed, including doorbell and security cameras. No reason footage from a fake speed camera wouldn't also be used.