ESPectre
Motion detection based on Wi-Fi spectre analysis
Details
- External ID
- 45953977
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- ESPectre
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- Nov. 17, 2025
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 215
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.9563318777292577
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
Hi everyone, I'm the author of ESPectre.This is an open-source (GPLv3) project that uses Wi-Fi signal analysis to detect motion using CSI data, and it has already garnered almost 2,000 stars in two weeks.Key technical details:- The system does NOT use Machine Learning, it relies purely on Math. — Runs in real-time on a super affordable chip like the ESP32. - It integrates seamlessly with Home Assistant via MQTT.
Enrichment
- Theme
- open-source hardware and embedded electronics
- Vertical
- Security
- Function
- Hardware & robotics
- Audience
- B2B
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Commercial product
- Normalized one-liner
- motion detection using wi-fi analysis
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No It involves embedded C/C++ firmware, low-level ESP32 Wi-Fi PHY layer CSI (Channel State Information) data extraction, and specialized digital signal processing algorithms.
What it would actually take: Building this requires developing firmware for the ESP32 (using ESP-IDF) to capture raw 802.11 CSI subcarrier metrics. The core difficulty lies in advanced digital signal processing (noise filtering, phase sanitization, Doppler shift estimation, and statistical thresholding) executed in real time on resource-constrained microcontrollers. It demands specialized knowledge of RF physics, embedded systems programming, and signal processing.
Discussion
20 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: Leap Motion (for gesture/motion sensing), TOMMY (Wi-Fi sensing motion detection), Xbox Kinect LIDAR
Concerns raised: Wi-Fi mesh roaming issues - ESP32 may lock to wrong access point, monitoring wrong room space, CSI accuracy limited to centimeters, not sub-millimeter precision, PWM frequency updates at 20-50 Hz may cause zipper noise artifacts, Privacy implications - surveillance capability could be misused by state actors, Binary motion detection cannot ignore cats or prioritize size over speed on-device
Feature requests: Advanced ML-based classification (cat vs. human vs. fall detection) on device, Lock ESP32 to specific mesh node MAC address to prevent roaming, Logarithmic pitch mapping with smoothing/lerping to avoid zippering, Configurable beamforming and router power settings for stability
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 17 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #2 of 18 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Looks like the first mover among its competitors.
- Glasses to detect smart-glasses that have cameras · hn · 2025-11-28 · 509 upvotes · similarity 0.39
- Espectral · ph · 2026-09-28 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.37
- A bedside camera detects REM sleep and agrees with a clinical EEG · hn · 2026-07-05 · 10 upvotes · similarity 0.36
- alarm_v3 · github · 2026-09-19 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.36
- esp32-sensors-mqtt-tft-epaper-louis · github · 2026-09-21 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.34
- TwinReplay · ph · 2026-09-19 · 3 upvotes · similarity 0.33
- TE-Speed-VOSR2 · github · 2026-09-20 · 53 upvotes · similarity 0.33
- Flock-Noir · github · 2026-09-11 · 16 upvotes · similarity 0.33
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
Same idea, different domain
Nobody's really built a hardware & robotics tool for Horizontal yet.