  In the article we present a hardware meteor detector. The detection principle
is based on the electromagnetic wave reflection from the ionized meteor trail
in the atmosphere. The detector uses the ANADIGM field programmable analogue
array (FPAA), which is an attractive alternative for a typically used detecting
equipment - a PC computer with dedicated software. We implement an analog
signal path using most of available FPAA resources to obtain precise audio
signal detection. Our new detector was verified in collaboration with the
Polish Fireball Network - the organization which monitors meteor activity in
Poland. When compared with currently used signal processing PC software
employing real radio meteor scatter signals, our low-cost detector proved to be
more precise and reliable. Due to its cost and efficiency superiority over the
current solution, the presented module is going to be implemented in the
planned distributed detectors system.
