SDR and GNU radio has always sounded interesting to me ever since I heard it mentioned on the Security Now podcast years ago. Does anyone know of good resources on how to get started? This is something I’d love to tinker with one day. I also don’t know a great deal about RF communication in general.
GNU Radio
11–20 of 71 posts
Re: GNU Radio
#12Got some fortran (0.3%) there?
Re: GNU Radio
#13Has always done a terrible job of selling itself. A $25 dtv receiver and a chickenwire antenna parabola and code your own satellite TV decoder, learn what radar guns emit, emulate a modem... maybe even shift to IR and do TV controls.. it's, latent in this stuff. But the frontpage doesn't take you there.
Is it possible to use a laptop's built-in wifi antenna / wifi card as the hardware side of a gnu radio setup?
That seems like it would be a nice cheap one-two punch for getting started. AFAIR wifi uses the public (unregulated) bands so there should be lots of interesting stuff on those frequencies beyond wifi signals.
Re: GNU Radio
#14Has always done a terrible job of selling itself. A $25 dtv receiver and a chickenwire antenna parabola and code your own satellite TV decoder, learn what radar guns emit, emulate a modem... maybe even shift to IR and do TV controls.. it's, latent in this stuff. But the frontpage doesn't take you there.
What are some good resources to start playing with SD add an amateur?
https://pysdr.org/ is a good introduction to DSP/SDR using Python.
Previous discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24750588.
Ham Radio Workbench podcast on GNU Radio: https://www.hamradioworkbench.com/podcast/GNU-Radio.
In terms of hardware, there is a large spectrum, from inexpensive RTL-SDR (receive only, ~$25), PlutoSDR (transmit and receive, $229, which PySDR covers) all the way to $x000+ for USRP etc.
Re: GNU Radio
#15Has always done a terrible job of selling itself. A $25 dtv receiver and a chickenwire antenna parabola and code your own satellite TV decoder, learn what radar guns emit, emulate a modem... maybe even shift to IR and do TV controls.. it's, latent in this stuff. But the frontpage doesn't take you there.
Is it possible to use a laptop's built-in wifi antenna / wifi card as the hardware side of a gnu radio setup? That seems like it would be a nice cheap one-two punch for getting started. AFAIR wifi uses the public (unregulated) bands so there should be lots of interesting stuff on those frequencies beyond wifi signals.
Due to it being a radio licenced by rule, the firmware in wifi devices is locked down tight. If it ware wide open FCC would revoke it's type acceptance.
The only project that so far has managed to even partially use wifi hardware as a more generic SDR is nexmon[1] and even that is rather involved. Really cool project but not much heard since 2018.
For just experimenting with modems across a noisy path one could just use the built in microphone and speakers.
1. https://github.com/seemoo-lab/mobisys2018_nexmon_software_de...
Re: GNU Radio
#16I just wish GNU Radio did not brake compability between versions.
3.6 --> 3.7 --> 3.8 all ware breaking.
So no older example or block you find will work in the current version. This is infuriating when trying to learn and following tutorials. All my friends seem to have migrated to building their prototypes in C using something like liquid-dsp instead of gnuradio. As that will compile and work next year.
Re: GNU Radio
#17SDR and GNU radio has always sounded interesting to me ever since I heard it mentioned on the Security Now podcast years ago. Does anyone know of good resources on how to get started? This is something I’d love to tinker with one day. I also don’t know a great deal about RF communication in general.
I looked into this last year, and the process seems to be "get at least half an undergrad degree in signal processing and then read the code." GNU Radio is really powerful, but most of the tutorials out there are "rest of the fucking owl" style[0]. Which I then realized makes sense, given the complexity of the domain. So be aware it's a deep subject and you won't be decoding new satellites in a few clicks unless you're copying somebody else's homework.
Re: GNU Radio
#18SDR and GNU radio has always sounded interesting to me ever since I heard it mentioned on the Security Now podcast years ago. Does anyone know of good resources on how to get started? This is something I’d love to tinker with one day. I also don’t know a great deal about RF communication in general.
This wiki page is pretty good for getting started.
Re: GNU Radio
#19Usually there's little documentation about SDR, but Analog Devices has "recently" released a book, which is available for free: https://www.analog.com/en/education/education-library/softwa...
Also can be bought, but has a quite hefty price tag: https://www.amazon.com/Software-Defined-Radio-Engineers-Trav...
Other good resources are the books and courses on WirelessPi: https://wirelesspi.com/book/
Re: GNU Radio
#20SDR and GNU radio has always sounded interesting to me ever since I heard it mentioned on the Security Now podcast years ago. Does anyone know of good resources on how to get started? This is something I’d love to tinker with one day. I also don’t know a great deal about RF communication in general.
Buy a dongle and antenna from here: https://www.rtl-sdr.com/buy-rtl-sdr-dvb-t-dongles/
Install GNURadio, start playing with gqrx and FM reception.
Buy a cheap radio controlled thingy, install SDR# with the plugins package and RTL_433 plugin for it and start playing.