In the days before integrated circuits became ubiquitous, providing advanced functionality in a single package, designers became adept at extracting the maximum use from discrete components. They’d use clever circuits in which a transistor or other active part would fulfill multiple roles at once, and often such circuits would need more than a little know-how to get working. It’s not often in 2024 that we encounter this style of circuit, but here’s [Maurycy] with a cheap microwave radar module doing just that.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://hackaday.com/2024/07/01/so-much-going-on-in-so-few-components-dissecting-a-microwave-radar-module/