chancecasey
New Member
Hi everyone!
I have very little RF experience (but know a little theory) and wanted to get some opinions on how I should proceed. I want to monitor the output of an AMB transponder (used in auto racing) - which transmits at about 3.58Mhz. I know nothing about the signal other than the frequency and that a "7 digit" ID is somehow encoded in it, along with some other data that I'm not really interested in. I just want to detect when a particular ID (transponder) transmits.
To do this, I figured I'd need an antenna, amplifier, and bandpass filter, then of course some way of logging "hi" and "low". I'm assuming the transponder uses amplitude modulation in a hi/low (binary) scheme to transmit it's ID. If I can gather enough data, I might be able to write software to correctly extract the ID out. Oh yeah, I guess I'd need to convert the signal to something usable by an RS232 interface.
Anybody done anything like this before?
thanks!
-Chance
P.S. - I'm not trying to do anything sneaky or rip off AMB's IP, as I'm not trying to "time" the cars, but rather have a simple system for detecting them, e.g. - knowing each one has left the track, or entered the pits, for example. The alternative is to buy one of their $10,000 detection devices that gives extremely precise timing and interfaces with their fancy software - which I do not need.
I have very little RF experience (but know a little theory) and wanted to get some opinions on how I should proceed. I want to monitor the output of an AMB transponder (used in auto racing) - which transmits at about 3.58Mhz. I know nothing about the signal other than the frequency and that a "7 digit" ID is somehow encoded in it, along with some other data that I'm not really interested in. I just want to detect when a particular ID (transponder) transmits.
To do this, I figured I'd need an antenna, amplifier, and bandpass filter, then of course some way of logging "hi" and "low". I'm assuming the transponder uses amplitude modulation in a hi/low (binary) scheme to transmit it's ID. If I can gather enough data, I might be able to write software to correctly extract the ID out. Oh yeah, I guess I'd need to convert the signal to something usable by an RS232 interface.
Anybody done anything like this before?
thanks!
-Chance
P.S. - I'm not trying to do anything sneaky or rip off AMB's IP, as I'm not trying to "time" the cars, but rather have a simple system for detecting them, e.g. - knowing each one has left the track, or entered the pits, for example. The alternative is to buy one of their $10,000 detection devices that gives extremely precise timing and interfaces with their fancy software - which I do not need.
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