
Show HN: PandwaRF – RF Hacking Tool with Sub 1GHz RF Transceiver, BLE and USB - tania-b
https://github.com/ComThings/PandwaRF/wiki
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ishields
As someone with some but not much exposure to RF, can anyone shed some light
on how this is different from a regular transmitter/receiver hooked up to a pi
(I've done just this with a pi zero for ~$20) and what the use cases for this
might be?

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gh02t
It's an SDR, so it can transmit and receive over multiple frequencies. It's
basically a programmable transceiver that can be used to interact with many
different protocols and transmission encodings on different frequencies. Looks
like it also has some specialized abilities for security stuff, e.g. brute
forcing RF codes.

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deutronium
Technically I don't think it is an SDR, as it's not using software to generate
arbitrary modulation schemes. The chip is capable of transmitting data through
certain modulations.

[http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/landing/cc1111/](http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/landing/cc1111/)
\- is the chip they're using.

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tartopom
Yes, it is not a SDR because CC1111 doesn't send the I/Q samples, so no custom
demodulation possible. Only support some standard modulation AM/FM/FSK, ...

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heywire
This is perfect timing for me, as I've been experimenting with the Texas
Instruments CC110L attached to an ESP8266 running the Arduino stack. I started
on this after having written an SDR receiver application to receive my
electric and water meter readings using an expensive rtlsdr dongle and a
raspberry pi. Thanks for sharing!

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Radio2034
What? RTLSDRs go from ~$9-$20 max (I got mine for $10 on eBay), and a
Raspberry pi is $35. The PandwaRF is ~$150 USD alone. Does the CC11xx series
chip in this device make a difference to your use case?

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heywire
Well, I was more talking about a general device to assist in reverse
engineering various RF protocols (and that was before I found the price for
this device :) ). Now knowing the price, it puts it up with the YardStick One,
which is probably out of my price range (I'm cheap). The CC110L + ESP8266
setup that I'm working with currently cost me about $12 shipped, combined
(eBay as well).

The selling point on using the CC11xx vs. generic rtlsdr is the scanning
speed. The particular protocol that my electric and water meters speak is
spread spectrum with 400kHz channel spacing and 25 channels. I'm able to park
my rtlsdr on a frequency and get about 1/4 of the packets (luckily there is no
change in channel during packets). I've tried scanning, but the dongles I have
just aren't quick enough. The meters themselves actually use the TI chips, so
I know they're up to snuff.

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Radio2034
Ah, I see. I have a HackRF and several USRPs, so I'm kinda spoiled in terms of
bandwidth and capabilities. You could try combining more than one RTLSDRs into
one virtual stream using GNURadio. Check this out: [http://www.rtl-
sdr.com/combining-the-bandwidth-of-multiple-r...](http://www.rtl-
sdr.com/combining-the-bandwidth-of-multiple-rtl-sdrs-now-working-in-gqrx/) The
only catch is that it is not phase coherent, but if you're doing FSK or AM
then that's perfectly fine.

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heywire
I've had a HackRF on my wishlist ever since discovering Mike's awesome SDR
video series. That said, I wouldn't want to dedicate the device to the meter
reading (hence my trying to pare down to the bare essentials).

Funny you mention using multiple dongles, I've actually been doing just that
while working out the protocol to capture as many messages as possible. Except
in my case, since 2.4MHz gets me exactly 6 channels, I can just run multiple
instances of my application, each looking at their own 2.4MHz chunk of
spectrum. No need to truly synchronize them.

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adrienthebo
Another RF neophyte here - what's the selling point or applications of an RF
transceiver over the 300 - 928 Mhz band? It looks like those frequencies were
used for TV broadcasting but the spectrum has been reallocated, and there's
not a lot of unlicensed space to play with. Given this what kind of
applications are there for this device?

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calebm
Just to make sure I understand - the advantages of the PandwaRF compared to
the HackRF would be: (a) price (b) size (c) battery-powered?

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tartopom
I would add: (d) BLE connectivity (e) Android App (f) Easy scripting
(JS/Python)

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grandalf
This is very cool. Adding to wish list.

