
HackRF, an open source SDR platform - IanMalcolm
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mossmann/hackrf-an-open-source-sdr-platform
======
phaet0n
For people interested in other SDR options, I believe these guys were YC
funded: Per Vices, [http://www.pervices.com/](http://www.pervices.com/)

Their hardware is significantly meatier, supporting frequencies from 100kHz to
4GHz with a bandwith of 250MHz. The HackRF only has a bandwith of 20MHz, and
bottoms out at 30MHz.

I haven't heard much from them, or discussion about them, but they are out
there.

~~~
aray
It's also almost $900, and PCIe (not USB), and doesn't look very portable at
all:

[http://www.pervices.com/shop/index.php?route=product/product...](http://www.pervices.com/shop/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=49)

At that price point you might as well start looking at USRPs.

~~~
yyao
They are very different.

If you are looking for something that you can run from a USB cable, this could
be the perfect tool. Someone called this the Bus Pirate of RF and I think its
a great way to describe this tool.

The SDRs from Per Vices are geared towards low latency and high bandwidth. You
can't squeeze 4x PCIe bandwidth into a USB cable. Neither can you get sub
microsecond latencies. You can't get this over an ethernet connection either.
This is the application where the Per Vices SDRs come out as clear winners.

------
jot
Any thoughts on how this could be used as a low cost surveying tool to find
sources of WiFi interference?

We've been considering getting one of these:
[http://www.metageek.net/products/wi-
spy/](http://www.metageek.net/products/wi-spy/)

It would be great to instead have a bit of kit that could be repurposed like
HackRF.

~~~
dominicgs
You just need something that receives 2.4GHz and can give you signal strength
(or calculate an FFT). Spectools [1] is a great tool for this, it already
supports Ubertooth and could easily be adapted to work with HackRF.

Caveat: I work on Ubertooth for Michael Ossmann

[1]
[https://kismetwireless.net/spectools/](https://kismetwireless.net/spectools/)

------
Radle
So, it's literally a piece of hardware allowing me to take any radio signal
from 30MHz to 6GHz, transfer them into digital data and read them out with my
Computer? (Or other device)

~~~
aw3c2
Since you sound vaguely fascinated, get yourself a 20$
[http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-
sdr](http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr)

------
alokm
Are there any existing reliable alternatives?

~~~
est
BladeRF, USRP

~~~
anExcitedBeast
BladeRF looks pretty awesome.

------
sparky
_Man_ it'd be nice if this (or BladeRF) went down to DC like the USRP, so you
could also use it as an oscilloscope. It's easier on the USRP because of its
motherboard/daughterboard architecture, which adds some cost and complexity,
but the cost adder should be pretty small relative to the several-hundred-
dollars these things cost.

~~~
SigmundA
Yeah I am annoyed at the separation in SDR hardware most seem to be 0-30Mhz or
30Mhz and up.

HackRf is even offering a Ham-it-up upconverter to go with, the same one you
would use with a DVB-T dongle. This gets you into the lower range but uses a
mechanical switch to engage. Would really like soft control of it and be more
integrated into the design. I might even try to wire a relay in to a Ham-it-up
along with a raspberry pi for a integrated device that can go below 30Mhz with
IP based connection.

~~~
xradionut
That's the nature of the RF business. Most folks are interested in one (<=
HF), or the other (> HF), or have money for equipment that handles both.
Building good equipment that handles the full spectrum is challenging.

~~~
nanospider
[http://thinkrf.com/wsa5000/](http://thinkrf.com/wsa5000/)

~~~
patrickyeon
Building that one was challenging too (I used to do RF work for thinkRF).
Going back through history, they started off with something that would only
cover a specific band (say wifi, or specific cell bands). Then we did the 0440
(400MHz-4GHz), then the 0108 (10MHz-8GHz). There are all kinds of difficulties
that come in to making and RF front-end that'll cover all of that bandwidth
(we also did amplification and filtering to get better quality reception).

You'll also note the prices, and that those are receive-only devices. Some of
the reason the price is so high is that we did all the RF design in-house,
designing to our specs. A lot of the cheaper boards out there have less
amplification, no (or too little) filtering, and use an integrated
LO/mixer/digitizer/baseband chip, which limits them to the specs that chip can
handle.

~~~
xradionut
I wonder how hard it would be to modify PyRF for another SDR?

~~~
patrickyeon
That's all stuff that happened after I left, but I would bet "not hard at
all", if you can implement a controller that presents the same API as
[https://github.com/pyrf/pyrf/blob/master/pyrf/devices/thinkr...](https://github.com/pyrf/pyrf/blob/master/pyrf/devices/thinkrf.py)

------
SubZero
Would this be able to say...oh, idk...spoof and overpower digital TV channels
in a localized area? I need to know...for science.

~~~
xradionut
No.

And you don't need to be an jerk and interfere with broadcasts. It's an
antisocial activity frowned on by 99.99 percent of the public and hardware
hackers. There's plenty of good science that can be done in all aspects of RF
experimentation for a small investment of time and little money.

~~~
benjamincburns
To give the GP the benefit of the doubt, there are plenty of low-power FM
transmitter dongles that people use legitimately to play audio over low-cost
FM radios.

------
est
The spec from HackRF github wiki:

[https://github.com/mossmann/hackrf/wiki/Jawbreaker](https://github.com/mossmann/hackrf/wiki/Jawbreaker)

* half-duplex transceiver

* operating freq: 30 MHz to 6 GHz

* supported sample rates: 8 Msps to 20 Msps (quadrature)

* resolution: 8 bits

* interface: High Speed USB 2.0 (with USB Micro-B connector)

* power supply: USB bus power

~~~
rsync
I'm interested in comparing this to the bladerf device:

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1085541682/bladerf-
usb-3...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1085541682/bladerf-
usb-30-software-defined-radio)

... since I already have one.

HackRF appears to be about half the size, which is very nice. Freq range is
30-6000, vs. the bladerf which is 300-3800.

Bladerf is USB 3.0, however, and appears to have a higher sample rate ?
"capable of capturing 40MHz 12-bit full duplex quadrature samples in
realtime."

The HackRF appears to be about half the price, currently.

~~~
ajb
The HackRF is half-duplex (can only either rx or tx at a given time - unless
you get two). The bladeRf is full duplex.

------
mtgx
This is like Nvidia/Icera's i500 modem, right?

[http://www.nvidia.com/docs/IO/116757/NVIDIA_i500_whitepaper_...](http://www.nvidia.com/docs/IO/116757/NVIDIA_i500_whitepaper_FINALv3.pdf)

------
oldgregg
What would be the typical range for something like this or BladeRF?

~~~
aray
I'd assume it depends heavily on your antenna configuration, line-of-sight,
polarization, noise, etc.

Edit: I sent a question on kickstarter asking about TX power limitations so if
mossman answers it, the answer will appear in the FAQ section.

~~~
VLM
[https://github.com/mossmann/hackrf/wiki/Jawbreaker](https://github.com/mossmann/hackrf/wiki/Jawbreaker)

What it really depends on is your modulation method.

So say you want to operate legally as a ham radio op on 5760.1 operating CW.
Well with a reasonably high gain antenna -15 dBm is OK. COTS MMIC amps and
some filters and you'll have a vaguely competitive contest rover. I would
imagine QEX/QST and the like will have ham radio band amp designs for a couple
bucks soon enough after this thing rolls out. Looking at the cost of a FT-817
and a transverter, I imagine you could save quite a bit of dough using this
device... Given $200 I could probably scavenge up some TR relays good for 5 cm
and maybe a whole watt or so. Placed in front of a modest rover capable dish
this could pretty much kick butt. Plus or minus phase noise, which hasn't been
discussed, and frequency stability (I'm guessing no 10 MHz GPSDO input)
(edited to add, and I haven't seen a noise figure spec yet either...)

On the other hand if you insist on trying to do NTSC ATV ham radio operation
around 427.250 you'll find that a smokin +5 dBm on a 6 MHz wide signal will
get you perhaps across the room.

------
cottonseed
This is great. I met briefly with a company developing software radio products
that led me to believe such devices are illegal or require special licensing.
Is my impression wrong or has this changed recently?

Second, can this do GSM, receive at least? Frequency band works, but maybe it
doesn't have the bandwidth?

~~~
benjamincburns
It's been a while since I've looked into this, but last I knew it was legal to
listen to any band you want, but illegal to transmit on any band for which you
don't posses the required license, if any.

Then there's all kinds of rules about transmit power. For instance, last I
knew you could transmit unlicensed on the public FM and AM radio bands so long
as you're under some minimal threshold - I think it was 1W.

~~~
VLM
"I think it was 1W."

LOL no, you know .gov they make it as complicated as possible. If I recall the
AM is DC input power limited and the FM limits are some weird field strength
which is non-trivial to measure. Google for 47 CFR 15 and you're looking for
part C 15.221 and .239 probably. You can read this stuff for free at gpo.gov.

There are about a zillion other part 15 bands you can legally operate under if
you're willing to bother figuring out how.

If you're smart enough to figure out how to legally operate part 15, you're
certainly smart enough to get a license to operate part 97, which doesn't have
even a fraction of those goofy restrictions and is the original techie social
network.

------
cypher517
What cool projects could someone build with this besides scan radio waves?

~~~
xradionut
Scanning radio waves is fairly cool in the first place. Most people really
don't have a clue what's going on and it's fascinating. There's an plethora of
various services and devices in this area of spectrum.

[http://www.ntia.doc.gov/page/2011/united-states-frequency-
al...](http://www.ntia.doc.gov/page/2011/united-states-frequency-allocation-
chart)

Some uses I would consider besides general scanning and exploration would be:
amateur radio (multiple bands), NOAA weather stations and satellites, various
aviation services, device monitoring and prototype assistance, etc....

------
csmatt
Looks like it's essentially a Bus Pirate for RF... Which is awesome!

------
VLM
One interesting observation, I have no idea if this can be turned into a
startup idea, is you can usually tell within the first two lines of comments
in a "SDR" type story who is coming from an analog EE RF background and who's
coming from a programmer digital background. And there's very few in between,
as a percentage.

I donno if the startup idea is an online course for CS to understand EE or EE
to understand CS or both or ... ?

------
paduc
Can't you use this to capture car-key signals and replicate them later? Sounds
like the perfect tool for that.

~~~
cweaver
I'm pretty sure car keys use a rolling code to avoid this type of attack.

~~~
ortusdux
Here is a spec sheet from '96:

[http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/slws011d/slws011d.pdf](http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/slws011d/slws011d.pdf)

Back then they used a 40 bit rolling code.

Found here: [http://auto.howstuffworks.com/remote-
entry2.htm](http://auto.howstuffworks.com/remote-entry2.htm)

------
gdc
Yeah, the lack of < 30 Mhz means this would be a pass for me.

~~~
yyao
Depends on what you want to do. A lot of people think that they need more
bandwidth or power to achieve something. This may not necessarily be the case.

QRP guys have crossed continents on less than a watt. I remember from my
undergrad days that we've played with band passing the human voice. We managed
to get surprisingly good results with 500Hz of bandwidth.

There's a lot of interesting things you can do with more power and more
bandwidth. To echo a lot of the other comments made already, if you are doing
this without much thought, this is generally frowned upon.

~~~
cdjk
Most QRP work is at frequencies less than 30MHz. While 6m might work,
tropospheric ducting, sporadic E, etc are touchy enough that adding in QRP
operation wouldn't be pleasant. The RF upconverter would help with that,
however.

Power is easily solved by an external amplifier.

Increased bandwidth would be nice, but 20MHz is plenty. While you might need
that for microwave experiments (wifi, gsm, etc, and spread-spectrum
experiments), the big advantage of the bandwidth is being able to listen in to
everything at once, and see where signals are at a glance, without tuning
through frequencies. Being able to glance at an entire band, and immediately
see where QSOs are happening is pretty cool. Or you could record all of the FM
broadcast spectrum, and decode it at your leisure later. That's not too
practical, but is pretty cool. And 20Mhz is wider than every ham band 2m and
lower.

And 500 MHz isn't quite enough for voice - SSB is generally 2.3 - 3 kHz.
300-500 Hz is ideal for CW (morse code), and digital modes can use even less.

~~~
VLM
"Most QRP work is at frequencies less than 30MHz. While 6m might work,
tropospheric ducting, sporadic E, etc are touchy enough that adding in QRP
operation wouldn't be pleasant."

Not my experience at all. I have been wallpapering my radio room with 1st
place wins as a QRP entrant in the ARRL 10M contest in December for a couple
years.

During a Es opening my 5 watts might only be S9+10dB whereas a guy with a 1500
watt linear would be S9+30dB so you can see why its not much of an issue.

Before I got a modest brick for 6M it was the same deal every July and
December. I'd have 5 watts out and work guys 1000 miles away who had signals
S9+20dB and I'm sure I was "merely" S9 or so on their side.

Another thing is the ops on 6M are gentlemen, by self selection this is not
80M or 20M sideband. They're glad to work a "weak" signal and don't turn down
their RF gain or whatever those HF ops do.

When propagation smiles on you, power out doesn't matter. When it doesn't,
well you're screwed even if you have illegal levels of power.

I live in a part of the country where the 1000 mile Es donut covers pretty
much all the sand states. So I have a lot of Grids! I near got DXCC during
just one VHF contest in the spring in just one day!

