Building professional-grade Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance systems that are accessible to search and rescue teams, field operators, and tactical training programs. Every line of code, hardware schematic, and technical specification released under permissive open-source licenses.
Prepared Citizen Corps emerged from a simple observation: the technology gap between military and civilian tactical capabilities has never been wider, yet the underlying components have never been more accessible. Modern sensor hardware, AI acceleration, and mesh networking protocols are commercially available—but integrated tactical systems remain locked behind proprietary contracts costing tens of thousands of dollars.
This project started during volunteer work with search and rescue operations. Night operations relied on decades-old night vision technology. Coordination depended on consumer radios with limited range. Situational awareness came from hand-drawn maps and verbal updates. Meanwhile, the same Raspberry Pi computers used in classrooms could run real-time object detection. The same LoRa radios powering IoT networks could build resilient mesh systems. The same AR displays used for entertainment could overlay tactical data.
The technical capability existed. The integration didn't. So we built it. And rather than building another proprietary system that would help only those who could afford it, we're building everything in public. Open source software. Open hardware designs. Comprehensive documentation. No vendor lock-in. No licensing restrictions. Just practical tactical technology that anyone can build, modify, and deploy.
Software Engineering: Professional experience building real-time 3D applications, VR systems, and computer vision pipelines. Expertise in performance optimization for embedded systems and graphics programming for resource-constrained hardware.
Search and Rescue: Active volunteer with wilderness SAR teams. Field experience identifying capability gaps in night operations, team coordination, and situational awareness during extended deployments.
Hardware Integration: Hands-on experience with sensor fusion, embedded Linux systems, and ruggedized field hardware. Practical knowledge of what actually survives operational environments versus laboratory demonstrations.
This combination—professional software development, volunteer field operations, and hardware engineering—creates the foundation for building tactical systems that actually work when they're needed. Not technology demonstrations. Not vendor vaporware. Just practical tools that solve real problems.
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Interested in Contributing?
We need help with plugin development, Pi optimization, hardware design, ML model training, documentation, and field testing. See our contribution guidelines to get started.