RF Bug & Hidden-Camera Sweep Tool

A first-pass sweep for things in the room that are transmitting.

Placeholder illustration. Real photographs go here once we have finished hardware to photograph — we will not use stock images of somebody else's equipment.

In Development

Contact for pricing

A handheld broadband RF power meter based on the open-source RFHunter design - an ESP32 reading an Analog Devices AD8317 logarithmic detector. It samples the room's normal RF level at power-on and then shows you where that level goes up. It is in development: we are building our own carrier board and a calibration jig before we will sell one.

Notify Me

Not for sale yet. Ask to be notified and we will contact you when a unit passes our own bench test.

GPL-3.0 — source code ships with the unit.

// CAPABILITY

What it does

Measures broadband RF field strength from roughly 1 MHz to 10 GHz with an Analog Devices AD8317 logarithmic power detector, about 55 dB of dynamic range.
Samples the ambient RF floor for about a second at power-on, then shows deviation from that baseline on a ten-segment bar, an OLED readout, and a buzzer whose pitch rises with signal strength.
Has a sensitivity knob, so you can walk a room and narrow down instead of pegging the meter at the doorway.
Runs on its own battery with USB charging. No app, no pairing, no account, nothing to log into.
Helps you walk down a device that is actively transmitting - a Wi-Fi camera, a Bluetooth bug, a cellular tracker, an analogue video sender.

// LIMITATIONS

What it does NOT do

Read this part. It is the half of the specification most sellers leave out.

This is a first-pass triage tool. A clean reading is not a guarantee that a room is clean, and we will not sell it as one.
It is a relative RF power meter, not a spectrum analyser. There is no frequency identification, no demodulation, and no protocol classification. It reports that RF energy went up here, and nothing more than that.
It cannot detect non-transmitting recorders. A camera or voice recorder that stores to internal memory or an SD card and never transmits is invisible to it. Independent testing of this detection method found a covert audio recorder that only a magnetic probe could locate at all.
It does no optical lens detection - the flashlight-and-red-filter method - and no magnetic-field sensing. Those are different instruments.
It cannot distinguish a hidden camera's Wi-Fi from a guest's phone, the smart TV, the thermostat, or the router next door. False positives from ordinary household electronics are normal and expected with any RF-only detector.
The dBm figure on the screen comes from a fixed conversion in firmware, not a per-unit calibration curve. Treat it as a rough relative estimate, not a measurement.
The ESP32's own radio can interfere with the detector sitting beside it in the same enclosure. The project's maintainer confirms this openly; our build disables the Wi-Fi radio in firmware to reduce it, and it is still a real effect.
No published false-positive rate exists for this design. We are not going to invent one for a sales page.

// HARDWARE

Specifications

Sensor

Analog Devices AD8317 logarithmic RF power detector, roughly 1 MHz - 10 GHz, about 55 dB dynamic range

Controller

ESP32-WROOM-32, averaging 20 samples of the detector output per reading

Display

128x64 I2C OLED - raw reading, voltage, estimated dBm, and a ten-segment bar

Audio

Piezo buzzer, pitch scaling with detected signal strength

Sensitivity

10 kilohm panel potentiometer for range adjustment

Power

3.7 V lithium cell with TP4056 USB charging, plus a 9 V boost rail for the detector - trim verified with a meter on every unit

Baseline

Automatic ambient sample of about one second at power-on. Re-baseline by power cycling somewhere quiet

Enclosure

3D-printed, clip-together, no tools

Status

In development. Open items: a Clear Fork Security carrier PCB, a repeatable calibration and test jig, and a verified supplier for the AD8317 module since the original is discontinued

// OPEN SOURCE

Licence & attribution

GPL-3.0

Based on RFHunter, copyright Matthew Rogers (RamboRogers), licensed under GPL-3.0. The complete corresponding source for the exact firmware on your unit will ship with the unit along with the licence text and a written offer valid for three years. An ESP32 is natively re-flashable over USB and we will not lock it.

// FREQUENT QUERIES

Straight Answers

Why is this one "in development" when the other three are open for pre-order?

Because the upstream project ships no circuit board. It is point-to-point wiring with a 9 V boost rail that has to be trimmed by hand on every single unit, and getting that wrong can damage the detector chip. We are not selling something whose correctness depends on a hand trim until we have our own board and a test jig that proves each unit before it leaves the shop.

Will it find a hidden camera in a rental or a hotel room?

If the camera is transmitting, usually yes - that is exactly what it is for. If it records to an SD card and never transmits, no. That is the honest answer about every RF-only detector on the market, not a shortcoming of this particular one.

Why does it beep at my own router?

Because your router is transmitting, and this instrument measures RF energy without knowing what the energy means. Sweeping a room properly means turning known things off, working in sections, and narrowing down. That is a technique, and we will teach it with the unit.

What would a proper clearance look like instead?

Different and considerably more expensive instruments. A nonlinear junction detector can find electronics that are not transmitting at all; a spectrum analyser can tell you what a signal actually is. When a job needs that, we will say so rather than sweep it with this and call it done.

When can I buy one?

We do not have a date, and we would rather say that than invent one. Ask to be notified and we will contact you when a unit passes our own bench test.

// NEXT ACTION

Talk to us before you buy a detector

Tell us what you are actually worried about. Half the time the honest answer is a different device, or none of them.

Request a Site Assessment Call (304) 555-0142