A curated list of awesome radio resources. Inspired by awesome-*.
This project is aimed at hackers who enjoy all aspects of radio communication. While a lot of this technology isn't usable by citizens and is heavily regulated by the FCC, just knowing anything about it is special. I've been interested in learning the ins and outs of radio, as well as hearing stories, new and old.
You can find some information at wiki.
Software Defined Radio is a way to define components that are typically hardware, such as filters and amplifiers, as software. It has been around for a while, but with the cost of digital electronics needed to run SDR becoming increasingly cheaper, we are seeing a rise in hacker folk playing and building with SDR.
I would like contributors for this section.
- Recommended starter hardware On the low end, RTL-SDR is a super-cheap usb dongle, around which a thriving community has been founded.
- On the other side of the cost spectrum, pervices makes some really high-throughput, PCIe devices for when you need to log all the traffic ever. The software and community support for this is less good, though (for which you can blame @outofculture).
- You can also browse through the big list of all compatible hardware.
- Antennas are their own body of options and tradeoffs, about which I know nothing.
Depending on the hardware you're using, it may ship with some demo software to play around with. This is great for just getting a chance to see some waves and start to get an idea of what's possible. Otherwise, GNU Radio is going to where you'll spend your time. It's mainly just a library, but it also has a supporting gui for combining processing blocks that then outputs python. Once you're more comfortable, you can also just use GNURadio to do any device tuning, setup and i/o, and then use numpy for the signal manipulation math.
Just visualizing and manually inspecting a signal is a valuable part of learning how to work with them. Baudline is a janky old thing, but it's the best there is. Be forewarned that learning the UI won't come easily to anyone.
- Gqrx
- sdrsharp on .NET
- some gr sketches
- Shinysdr project
- UHF RFID reader for lime
- SDR Educational Tools For Raspberry Pi
- Oscilloscope tool
- audio filter for GR
- Interesting encoders/decoders for GR
- ACARS decoders
- Cool phosphor spectrum
- example for gr-fosphor
- goTenna Mesh
- M100 DJI controlling
- RF transmitter for Raspberry Pi (only GPIO needed)
- GPS simulation
- Software correlator for GPS
- http://sdrgps.blogspot.com
- SDR GPS receiver
- GPS simulation
Police and fire in the United States typically communicate over trunked radio. This makes it hard to scan using normal reciever without trunk tracking abilities. See more in the trunking section.
While not strictly specific to public health and safety, it is usually the first thing that comes to mind when talking about trunked radio.
Trunked radio is a form of digital-two-way communication where multiple organizations can share a small spectrum of real frequencies without hearing another organizations conversations. A user can choose a logical channel or group and the base station will find an empty frequency to transmit on.