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/paul_h]

Here in Scotland, I have people doing 50 on my 30 mph urban road . Nearby Wales has a portal for citizen uploading of speeding (and dangerous driving) footage - https://gosafesnap.wales/. Apparently, Scotland gets an equivalent portal soon. Citizens just need dashcam footage, not radar coupled devices, so it will be quite accessible

[u/trophicmist0 → u/paul_h]

How can they possibly enforce the speeding side? Most people don’t even realise their car speedo is up to 10% off, let alone their Chinese dash cams.

I feel like the only thing this’ll lead to is more conflict and road rage.

[u/paul_h → u/trophicmist0]

It has been done, past tense, in multiple jurisdictions. I would guess the leeway figure of 10% is raised to 20%