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looorg writes:

Travel like it's 0 AD. Plan and travel your next road trip along the old Roman road network. As if they had Google Maps.

https://www.euronews.com/culture/2026/07/02/ancient-romes-version-of-google-maps-how-long-to-reach-the-beach
https://omnesviae.org/

A digital tool lets users explore the Roman Empire's road network and, using historical data, estimate how long journeys between cities took 2,000 years ago.

A Dutch engineer has reconstructed, with the help of academic sources and ancient cartography, the road map that linked up the Roman Empire. The result, accessible from any browser, including on mobile phones, allows users to plot routes between cities of Antiquity and find out how many days the journey would have taken on foot or on horseback.

The tool is called OmnesViae and is based mainly on the Tabula Peutingeriana, a medieval copy of a Roman map that depicted the cursus publicus, the Empire's official road network.

As the western part of that document has been lost, the data for that area come from the Antonine Itinerary, another record from the Roman era. Behind the project is René Voorburg (source in Spanish), who drew on the work of historian Richard Talbert on the Tabula and on the location data from the Pleiades Project. The code and database are open access and can be consulted on Codeberg.

Original Submission

jelizondo writes:

A very interesting article was published in Phys.org about how modern life might be outpacing our mind, which evolved to deal with a simpler world:

The human brain evolved for a world of familiar faces, immediate threats and small social groups. But the world around us is changing far faster than human biology can keep pace. That mismatch may help explain some of the stress, loneliness and constant comparison people experience today.

The review, co-authored by Dr. Jose Yong, senior lecturer at James Cook University, Singapore, and Dr. Sarah Chan, research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities at SUTD, is published in Behavioral Sciences.

Evolutionary mismatch describes what happens when human instincts shaped in one kind of environment are forced to operate in a very different one. Humans evolved in smaller, close-knit groups, where danger, belonging, status and trust were read through familiar people and everyday face-to-face signals. [...]

Social media makes this mismatch especially visible. The urge to understand our place within a group may once have helped people maintain trust and cooperation among familiar faces. Today, that same instinct can be triggered by an endless stream of curated lives, achievements and status signals.

At the center of the paper is competition. Modern environments can intensify the feeling that others are judging, outperforming or leaving us behind. [...]

"Competition is not new, but modern life can make it feel constant," said Yong. "An evolutionary perspective may help explain why people respond so strongly to comparison and the fear of falling behind, even when those signals come from strangers or screens rather than a small social group."

The paper draws on existing research and theory rather than new data. It presents evolutionary mismatch as one way of understanding modern social and psychological problems, alongside psychological, social and economic explanations. These ideas will need to be tested through real-world research.

That matters because the response to modern stress cannot rest only on telling individuals to be more resilient. If environments are activating old instincts in new and unhelpful ways, then cities, workplaces, digital platforms and communities also need to be part of the solution. [...]

"Stress, loneliness and anxiety are often treated as personal or lifestyle problems," said Chan. "But they may also reflect a mismatch between the environments people live in and the conditions our minds and bodies evolved to navigate. That means we should think not only about individual resilience, but also about how cities and communities are designed."

None of this is an argument for returning to a simpler past or a suggestion that modern life is inherently broken. It is a case for designing the present more thoughtfully. Understanding where modern life conflicts with the conditions human beings evolved to navigate could help researchers, designers and policymakers create cities and communities that feel less alienating and more supportive of everyday well-being.

More information

Jose C. Yong et al, Evolutionary Mismatch, Stress, and Competition: Making Sense of Psychosocial Problems in the Polycrisis Era, Behavioral Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.3390/bs16050650

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.slashgear.com/2204680/dot-law-change-no-brake-pedals-self-driving-cars/

Autonomous vehicles have been a big talking point in the United States as Waymo spreads to more cities and Tesla's Cybercab service launch looms overhead. In June 2026, the Department of Transportation (DOT) proposed changes to federal regulations that would allow the growing number of autonomous vehicles in the United States to forgo brake pedals.

As it stands, automakers building autonomous vehicles without brake pedals or other components must request an exemption from the federal government — and if granted, these vehicles must be limited to 2,500 per year. This proposed change will get autonomous vehicles on the road faster, with fewer obstacles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is on board, with Administrator Jonathan Morrison stating that autonomous vehicles are the greatest innovation "since the Model T."

"NHTSA is tearing down pointless barriers to innovative designs while strengthening the fundamental safety requirements that matter and holding AV developers accountable for safe performance," Morrison said (via TechCrunch). The public has until July 27th to comment on the proposal before the DOT officially approves these changes.

Right now, most autonomous vehicles have a steering wheel, accelerator, and brake pedals, but even popular brands like Waymo have been considering ditching these components — federal regulations are the only thing in the way. One company that would benefit greatly from the DOT's changes is Tesla, given the upcoming Cybercab.

Currently, Tesla's robotaxi service has remained a small operation in Austin, Texas, with human monitors in the front seat. CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly blamed regulatory red tape for the delayed rollout of the Cybercab, which was first revealed at the "We, Robot" event in 2024. The NHTSA has been consistently investigating Tesla's Full Self-Driving mode for false claims and possible shortcomings, which could be prolonging the process. California has also claimed that FSD is engaging in false advertising and demanded that it change the name.

Early Cybercab prototypes featured no steering wheel or pedals, as well as a cabin with just two rear seats. The first production Cybercab came out of the Giga Texas facility in April 2026, despite a delay in the unsupervised driving feature. Now, a new Tesla document states that the controversial vehicle typically won't have a steering wheel, accelerator, or brake pedals. This means Tesla will need DOT's changes to go through to avoid more delays in its Cybercab services.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

A philosopher has put forward an argument for rethinking how particles are defined within the standard model of particle physics:

The standard model of particle physics may be due for a philosophical remodel, including rethinking what qualifies each of its particles to count as a particle to begin with.

Whether a particle is involved in making up matter or carrying a force, it or its constituent parts has a place in the standard model of particle physics. In this way, the standard model is similar to the periodic table of elements – it tabulates the building blocks of our world. But George Hobart at the University of Bristol in the UK now argues that this tabulation may need to be revisited, and even changed, to make for a more sound model of physical reality.

At the heart of his reasoning are particles called neutrinos, which are notoriously elusive because they only interact with other particles very weakly through gravity or across very short distances through the weak nuclear force. Additionally, their mass isn’t precisely known, nor can the standard model predict it through the so-called Higgs mechanism that explains the masses of all other particles.

There is another oddity, too. The standard model tabulates three different neutrinos – the electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino – each of which has a more massive "big brother" particle that it shares a name with: electron, muon and tau. While an electron can’t spontaneously become a muon, an electron neutrino can, for example, randomly turn into a muon neutrino.

Hobart says it helps to visualise the standard model as an actual table with all the neutrinos in one row and their big brothers in another. "We have no evidence for the big brothers being able to swap horizontally; we have very good evidence that they can’t. But for some reason, the neutrinos... they are able to swap horizontally."

Hobart says that to a philosopher, this begs the question of whether categorising the particles in this way makes sense. From numerous experiments, we know that neutrinos exist and what properties all the other particles in the standard model have, but there are multiple ways to turn that knowledge into a system of understanding, or an ontology.

canopic jug writes:

Derek Thompson has republished excerpts from an almost 100-year-old report on what the US was like in the 1920s. He includes some of the charts and summaries.

One hundred years ago, on September 26, 1929, President Herbert Hoover gathered a group of social scientists at the White House. He asked them to begin research on the most detailed report ever produced on the state of the nation. Four years later, running more than 1,500 pages long, Recent Social Trends was published, offering an unusually granular look at life in the mid-1920s.

The document is almost entirely forgotten. But today, for America's 250th birthday, I'm blowing the cobwebs off this sucker and taking readers inside its yellowed pages for a look back at what life was like in the U.S. exactly 100 years ago, when the U.S. was celebrating its sesquicentennial anniversary.

Derek observes some interesting parallels between US society around both the sesquicentennial and the recent semiquincentennial.

A scanned version of Recent Social Trends in the United States: Report of the President's Research Committee on Social Trends is available online having been scanned at the University of California back when scanning old material was still allowed, though there are paper copies there and elsewhere. For now.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Linux 6.18 arrives with a few desktop tweaks, while the neglected x86 edition remains stuck on Debian 11:

The distro formerly known as Raspbian has received some modest tweaks – and a whole new kernel version.

Raspberry Pi Ltd is a little capricious when it comes to version numbering for Raspberry Pi OS, and although this release contains a fairly significant change, it doesn't seem to have a different version number. While PiOS is based on Debian 13 "Trixie," the company significantly customizes upstream Debian, including newer kernels.

For 13 years now, Raspberry Pi has been adding new sections to the top of a single release notes file, which tells us that this build is dated 2026-06-18 and updates the kernel from version 6.12.75 to version 6.18.34. Even so, the version number on the splash screen is strangely unchanged. It remains at 6.2, which was the modest security update announced in April. Now there's a much bigger change – but no announcement and no new version number. So much for version numbers having meaning.

[...] So what is new in the latest version of PiOS? Well, the kernel is now version 6.18 from November, which became the LTS kernel within days. By default, PiOS 6 uses the labcw Wayland compositor with some components drawn from LXDE, such as the panel and file manager.

This is in place of its old customized version of LXDE, formerly called PIXEL. This release includes labwc version 0.9.7, replacing version 0.9.2. You can still switch back to Openbox for an X11 desktop if you want, but this disables the Wayland-based Raspberry Pi Connect that was added a couple of years ago (and might yet make it over to Windows).

[...] We upgraded a testbed Pi 5 from the January release, and it went smoothly with no apparent difference – and it still only takes about 560 MB of RAM under X11, which is very good for 2026. The new kernel means that some functions are slightly slower and some slightly faster, but you probably won't be able to tell. For the full lowdown, Linux news site Phoronix has extensive benchmarks.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Patients are also three times more likely to trust AI in their doctor's secure portal than a public chatbot:

Only 2% of U.S. adults turned to AI for healthcare information in 2024, and today the number is 61%, according to Salesforce's Connected Health Consumer report, a survey of 3,200 consumers worldwide aimed at better understanding how the rise of agentic AI is reshaping consumer expectations, attitudes, and demands within healthcare -- specifically patient experience. 

Here are the four key findings of the 2026 Connected Health Consumer Report:

The report found that 60% of patients put off care because of scheduling friction. Patients are desperately seeking a better engagement experience with healthcare providers. The current multichannel engagement models fail to deliver a good experience, with 49% of patients noting abandoned calls after 10 minutes of holding. 

The online experience is not better, with 46% of patients labeling websites as confusing and difficult to navigate. One in 6 now says ease of digital access is a deciding factor when choosing a provider. Record sharing is another major deficit for improved experiences. More than half of patients (60%) say poor record sharing between providers means repeating the same medical tests. 

And 66% of patients have run out of medication while waiting for their prescriptions to be refilled.

Nearly 7 out of 10 patients would rather have access to 24/7 help via AI agents versus waiting to speak with a person during standard hours. Bad scheduling experiences are driving patients away from care, and AI agents are helping. Patients want proactive care, with 83% of patients interested in self-enrolled programs that can provide healthcare recommendations. 

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

Time to start praying to the goddess of wisdom and war:

It's going to be a "messy" summer for security folks, especially when it comes to fixing the open source code that underpins their organizations.

That's according to Dan Lorenc, CEO and co-founder of Chainguard, a software supply-chain security company leading Athena, a newly formed coalition of about two dozen companies that wants to make the process of finding and fixing open source bugs "as easy to consume as possible." 

The members have committed to using AI to prevent attacks on open source software. In addition to Chainguard, other founding member companies include BNY, Cisco, Cloudflare, Corridor, DepthFirst, Docker, JPMorganChase, Kyndryl,  LTM, and PwC.  

Many of these member companies are also partners with Anthropic's Project Glasswing and OpenAI Daybreak, which allow them to try out the pair's most advanced bug-hunting models. The coalition accepts vulnerability findings generated by all frontier models, according to Lorenc.

Athena has already processed more than 20,000 findings and developed over 2,000 patches across 500 open source projects. 

In about three weeks, the coalition's first wave of bug disclosures will begin.

"This is going to be a messy summer for everyone," Lorenc told The Register in a phone interview.

[...] "Put yourself in the shoes of someone with Glasswing access," he said. "You get this crazy, new model that can find vulnerabilities everywhere, that no one had seen and you had missed for years with all of your other tooling. You run it on your code, and it finds tons of stuff in your first-party code, the stuff that you've written, and you fix all of that."

After running Mythos Preview on all of your organization's proprietary code, imagine pointing the model at an application. Most modern apps contain a mixture of code from different sources, mostly third-party. According to Lorenc, 95 percent of the code in any of these codebases is open source.

"When you run [advanced models] at the application level, you find a ton of vulnerabilities in open source code that you can't fix for yourself the same way you can that first-party code," Lorenc said. "So then you're left with: what to do?"

canopic jug writes:

The Medievalists has a short list of 10 inventions from the Middle Ages which have shaped the modern world.

The Middle Ages are often portrayed as an age of superstition and stagnation, but many of the technologies that transformed everyday life were first developed or greatly improved during this period. From eyeglasses and mechanical clocks to windmills and universities, these medieval inventions continue to shape the modern world.

Original Submission

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

The High-Luminosity LHC will be mostly the same machine, but it'll deliver 10 times the luminosity and just as little chance of destroying the universe - sorry, conspiracy theorists:

The end has come for CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC), but it's not being turned off for fear of the world being sucked into some sort of cosmic anomaly - it's getting a major upgrade. 

Physicists at CERN are still bidding goodbye to the LHC, per a Monday announcement from the lab, but this is very much a "the king is dead, long live the king" sort of moment, as the four-year shutdown will result in the completion of the High-Luminosity LHC, or HiLumi LHC, not a full-fledged replacement.

In essence, a younger, fitter model with much better eyesight and most of the same genes will be taking the throne as the world's largest particle accelerator, or human-made machine, for that matter, when it comes online in 2030 after what the lab is calling Long Shutdown 3.

HiLumi LHC will feature a number of upgrades. As its name suggests, increased luminosity is the biggest difference between the new model and the old LHC, which was first switched on in 2008.

Luminosity, as CERN explains, is proportional to the number of collisions produced in a given time. Those collisions are detected in the ATLAS and CMS detectors at the LHC (the pair were responsible for the world's first detection of the Higgs boson in 2012), which will be getting some major upgrades that, per CERN, will effectively make them into entirely new detectors.

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2026/07/01/nasa-unsure-boeing-starliner-will-ever-be-certified-for-human-flight/5265177

Place your bets, because it looks increasingly unlikely Boeing's Starliner spacecraft will carry astronauts again, if a NASA inspector general's report is anything to go on.

Published on Tuesday, the OIG report on NASA's management of its Commercial Crew Program (CCP) examines how SpaceX and Boeing have performed in providing crew transportation to the International Space Station. The report notes that SpaceX worked through its own technical challenges getting humans into space and to the ISS.

Boeing's Starliner, a.k.a. the Calamity Capsule, on the other hand, featured extensively in the writeup, with the OIG calling into question whether it'll ever get past the testing phase.

"Boeing has been unable to obtain human-rating certification for its Starliner capsule and Atlas V launch vehicle, conducting two orbital flight tests and one crewed flight test that suffered significant issues and was ultimately classified as a serious mishap," the OIG report said. "With over 11 years invested and about 4 years of crewed operations aboard the ISS remaining until the Station's planned decommission in 2030, NASA and Boeing have limited time and resources to realize the value of their significant investments into Starliner." 

The saga of Boeing's Starliner has been one of repeated failures and budget overruns, both at NASA and Boeing, thanks to the capsule's disastrous launch record. 

As the NASA OIG noted in its report, Starliner has flown three test missions, one with crew, and each encountered significant technical problems. 

The first flight, in 2019, failed to reach the ISS because a software-related mission timing error caused an incorrect orbital insertion burn, preventing the spacecraft from docking. Problems with stuck oxidizer valves discovered ahead of a planned 2021 launch delayed the second orbital flight test until May 2022, when Starliner successfully reached the ISS despite experiencing thruster failures and helium leaks.

In other NASA news, the agency announced some new commercial Moon landing plans Tuesday that included a truly oddball idea: Sending an engineering development model of a Mars rover to the Moon instead of a purpose-built one. 

The rover, which currently lives at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and serves as a testbed for Curiosity and Perseverance, could be repurposed as the Polar Rover for Observation, Mapping, and In-Situ Exploration, or PROMISE, if Isaacman gets his way. 

The move would mean that a rover that was never meant for actual space exploration would be doing just that, and it'd also mean that JPL was left without its engineering model for two active rovers on Mars. NASA didn't respond to questions about the plan. 

NASA was going to get a pair of astronauts up in the craft in 2023, but that didn't happen after a series of issues were discovered, including a faulty parachute system and flammability risks associated with tape used to protect internal wiring. 

The one crewed mission that Starliner attempted was also a disaster. No one was injured or killed in the incident, but NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were stranded on the ISS for months after NASA determined the craft wasn't safe enough to return its crew to Earth.

According to the OIG, it's the parachute problems, along with persistent helium leaks and the aforementioned propulsion system failures, that are making it question whether Starliner is fit for purpose. 

"The helium leaks and propulsion systems failures remain unresolved as of March 2026, and NASA is uncertain as to when this testing will be completed or human-rating certification for the Starliner will be obtained," the report states. 

The OIG placed the blame on both NASA and Boeing for the problems, similarly to what NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said earlier this year when he accepted that his agency was part of the reason the whole thing had gone so badly.

Per the OIG, NASA contributed to the problem by being "overconfident in Boeing's design and potential success based on the provider's use of heritage systems," which led to the space agency setting "unrealistic launch and flight test schedules." 

"The pressure to adhere to this aggressive schedule was compounded by NASA's underutilization of the contract's data rights, limiting the Agency's ability to fully analyze and resolve flight simulation training failures to ensure crew safety," the report continued. Staffing constraints driven by the Trump administration's desire to cut costs wherever it can find them are likely to further hinder oversight, the OIG said, calling into question once more whether the Calamity Capsule will ever fly again and whether it's worth the cost.

"We question $127.9 million in payments to Boeing, in addition to the $43 million we questioned in a prior 2019 CCP-related report, for a mission that is far from certain," the OIG said. 

In other words, if you want to trim some NASA fat, the Starliner budget's a perfect place to do it.

Original Submission

"Fnord666" and dmc write:

Oomwoo is a new open-source robot vacuum you can 3D print yourself, sidesteps cloud security risks by running fully offline — project combines Raspberry Pi, 2D LiDAR, and a 3D-printed chassis:

Maker's Pet has launched oomwoo , an open-source robot vacuum that owners build themselves. The robot works by mapping the home with an inexpensive 2D LiDAR sensor and then navigating using ROS 2 and the Nav2 stack on Raspberry Pi, integrating natively with Home Assistant. It can be printed using a regular desktop 3D printer and runs entirely without the cloud, while the hardware, firmware, and software are all open under the Apache 2.0 license. Ilia O of Maker's Pet is also developing oomwoo in public "from the first commit," though the project is so early that it doesn't have any build instructions yet.

Right now, oomwoo is at the request-for-comments stage, with the current v0 milestone covering a 3D-printed chassis, a ROS 2 Gazebo simulation, and LiDAR mapping with manual SLAM, and the compute choice between a Raspberry Pi 5, an ESP32 running micro-ROS, or both is still open. Planned deliverables run from the bill of materials and printable files to firmware and a custom PCB, with the first BoM targeted for around mid-July.

The project is structured so the community can build it in parallel: the robot is split into self-contained modules, and contributors claim one and submit work as a pull request. A convenience kit will be sold through Maker's Pet, but Ilia says that buying it won't be a requirement, and every part can be sourced independently.

The usual route to a cloud-free robot vacuum starts with a robot you already own. Valetudo, maintained by Sören Beye since 2018 and also released under Apache 2.0, replaces a commercial vacuum's cloud connection with local-only control and Home Assistant integration. Installing it, however, means rooting the vendor firmware, which on many supported Dreame, Roborock, and Xiaomi models requires disassembly and voids the warranty, and also can't be undone.

The inclusion of local control could be a boon for getting more tinkerers and enthusiasts on board with the vacuum, following several examples of robot-vacuum security failures over the last few years. At DEF CON 32 in August 2024, researchers Dennis Giese and Braelynn Luedtke showed that several Ecovacs models could be hijacked over Bluetooth to reach their cameras and microphones, with Giese telling TechCrunch the security was "really, really, really, really bad."

Hijacked DEEBOT X2 units later shouted slurs and chased pets in several U.S. homes, and a token flaw in DJI's Romo line let one tinkerer reach roughly 6,700 vacuums worldwide , floor plans, and live feeds included. One owner went as far as reviving a remotely bricked vacuum with custom boards and Python to run it offline. oomwoo's reference design eliminates that attack surface, navigating on 2D LiDAR and bumper sensors with nothing pointed at the room.

Original Submission

Freeman writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2026/07/sony-will-stop-making-physical-copies-of-playstation-games-in-2028/

Some gamers are concerned about the future of game ownership after Sony's announcement today that it won't produce physical discs for PlayStation games as of January 2028. On that date, "new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only," Sony said in a blog post.
[...]
"We'll continue to prioritize our resources to drive innovation in how players can access games and provide choices as to where players prefer to purchase new games, whether that's at retailers or PlayStation Store," the blog said.

No companies other than Sony subsidiary Sony Digital Audio Disc Corporation make PlayStation discs, so today's announcement signals the end of physical copies of PlayStation games and marks Sony's evolution toward a licensing-only sales model.
[...]
buying a digital download is not the same as owning a game. Per PlayStation's terms of service:

When you order or purchase a product from PlayStation Store, you buy a personal license to use that product for private, non-commercial use. That license is not transferable unless your local applicable laws say it must be. This means you can use a product in the ways described in the license, but do not own the product.

[...]
Sony also announced today that it will close the PlayStation Store on PlayStation 3 and PS Vita, with the US losing access in July 2027.
[...]
"To ease the transition, players will still be able to download previously purchased content after the closing date for the foreseeable future," Sony said.

Both blog posts have comments decrying Sony's announcements and their implications for ownership and long-term access to PlayStation games.

One user going by Mosquito53, for example, commented:

Another disappointing decision made in the same day. No matter how many users still use these stores, they should remain open. So much content released digital-only, even on these platforms, these games will be lost to time.

Imagine what will happen in the future when this same decision is made for PS4 or PS5 or even the eventual PS6, which now looks to be all digital with the announcement of no more physical disc production.

We will own nothing, it's truly sad.

[...]
in 2024, Sony deleted customers' Funimation digital libraries despite Funimation previously claiming that customers would be able to access these digital copies "forever but" with "some restrictions."
[...]
Sony has also shown a wavering commitment to its digital stores. In 2021, it stopped selling movie and show rentals/purchases. Leaving the door ajar for customers to potentially lose access to digital games they bought for PlayStation 3 or PS Vita doesn't boost confidence around the digital-only future.

Further, the removal of storefronts could mean beloved games released only digitally become virtually impossible to find.
[...]
"This is why physical media matters," a user named Radgatt commented on Sony's PS3 and PS Vita announcement. "More and more proof that you're just buying a license that can be taken away whenever companies feel like it.

Original Submission

"Fnord666" writes:

Engineer open-sources DIY radar system that's 95% cheaper than $250,000 commercial offerings, has 20 kilometer range — Moroccan engineer designs Aeris-10 radar, shares it on GitHub:

"Nice radar you got there," followed by "thanks, I just had it jammed," might be the new word exchange among buddy electronics enthusiasts. In a move that might ruffle the feathers of many large companies with exceedingly pricey wares, a Moroccan electronics engineer named Nawfal Motii has designed the open-source Aeris-10 radar system that is purportedly comparable to commercial systems costing $250,000.

Aeris-10 comes in two variants: 10N Nexus with a 3-km range and an 8x16 patch antenna array, and the 10E Extended, capable of reaching up to 20 km thanks to its 32x16 slotted waveguide array. Motii published the entire project on GitHub , including all the necessary schematics, PBC layouts, components, firmware, and software with a GUI for controlling and monitoring the system.

On the technical end, the Aeris-10 uses an XCA7A50T FPGA as a central brain for doing its FFT math, along with Moving Target Indicator (MTI), Doppler-effect estimation of moving object speed, and CFAR false alarm detection control. The figurative spinal cord is an STM32F746xx microcontroller that orchestrates the frequency synthesizers, ADCs, DACs, the GPS, barometer, stepper motors, and cooling setup.

Watch full video on the link above:

The fact that Aeris-10 offers a true phased array system and ±45° elevation/azimuth adjustments are seemingly its differentiating factors. Prices for electronics are exceedingly floaty in these ship-shinking days, but a brief estimate pins the bill of materials at $5,000 for the 10N and $7,200 for the 10E. Despite the number of zeros on those figures, they're pocket change compared to amounts commanded by off-the-truck offerings. A cursory look puts commercial phase-array systems at somewhere $120k and $200k, and well past those prices for longer-range units.

Motii claims that military surplus radars can be had for $10k to $50k, but those are invariably decades-old tech with next to no spare parts availability. He says that building a DIY system is also a hard ask for a small team, as the testing gear can cost $50k on its own. Describing himself as "a guy in a workshop in Morocco with a soldering iron and an obsession," he took it upon himself to fix that particular problem.

Anyone can hit the project's GitHub page and get their own radar system going, but not everyone might have the necessary electronic and mechanical skills necessary for building one. To that effect, Motti says he's reached an agreement with the Crowed Supply platform, aiming for a Q3 2026 release. The site isn't your standard dice-rolling crowd-sourcing platform, though, as apparently it only accepts fully-designed projects with functional prototypes, rejects 90% of submissions, and claims it never had a scam.

Interestingly enough, this project was originally licensed under the MIT license, but Motti was advised that said license does not protect physical hardware, so it changed to the CERN-OHL-PT license. Should you elect to build your own unit, be aware that the frequencies it operates in are almost assuredly highly regulated in your legal jurisdiction.

Original Submission

On behalf of all staff and community members, may we wish all Americans a very happy Independence Day (and weekend!). Importantly, stay cool and safe!

And everyone, Americans and others (and assuming you didn't get an invite to Taylor's wedding celebrations), tell us what you will be doing and how you will spend the weekend!

I will try to keep the stories flowing to allow the Usians to party appropriately.