Jeri Ellsworth probably saw all the fun the TSA was having with their scanners and decided, 'hey, maybe I can build my own'. And by hacking a satellite dish to act as her backscatter and centimeter wave scanner, she did.


Jeri lists clear instructions and gives a brief explainer on how it all works in her video, but it's still pretty damn complicated. The core of what she's doing, according to Hackaday, goes something like this:

[She used] a hacked set of Feed Horns (like from a satellite dish) to create the image. By reversing the power transistor on one of the Feed Horns, one of the horns is made into a transmitter, while one of the other horns stays as a receiver. This data is then fed into a FPGA by way of an A2D converter, where an image is assembled when the scanner is moved over a surface. X and Y axis tracking is handled by an optical mouse also controlled by the FPGA, and the whole setup is output to a monitor.


Basically, she's adopting an idea similar to the TSA scanners but building her contraption with less professional parts. Which means that even though her images aren't quite as clear as the nudie pics the TSA are jerkin' to, it'll do the general trick. If you're a professional DIY-man and love to see digital nakedness, have at it. [Hackaday via Crunchgear]