HackRF as SDR for ham use?

Discussion:

Greg D

2014-08-02 22:13:01 UTC

Hi folks,

I see there's a new SDR receiver being built for the "hacker"
community: http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/hackrf

They claim it's compatible with SDR#, so I wonder how well it will work
for the variety of digital ham radio purposes? It's a little pricy, but
claims to cover 10mhz to 6 ghz, so that would cover through our
5.65-5.925ghz allocation. I don't know what the bandwidth is.

Useful?

Thanks,

Greg KO6TH

Glenn Little

2014-08-03 02:20:24 UTC

Permalink

When I visited the web page they state it goes down to 10 MHz, not 10
mhz as you stated.

Did they change something?
I would be interested if it would go to the sub audio range as you indicated.

73
Glenn
WB4UIV

Post by Greg D
Hi folks,
I see there's a new SDR receiver being built for the "hacker"
community: http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/hackrf
They claim it's compatible with SDR#, so I wonder how well it will
work for the variety of digital ham radio purposes? It's a little
pricy, but claims to cover 10mhz to 6 ghz, so that would cover
through our 5.65-5.925ghz allocation. I don't know what the bandwidth is.
Useful?
Thanks,
Greg KO6TH
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http://www.tapr.org/mailman/listinfo/aprssig

John Gorkos

2014-08-03 02:37:24 UTC

Permalink

I'm at BlackHat right now, and just finished the first day of classes,
hands on, with Michael Ossmann and the HackRF. I've barely had any time
with it at all. It has extremely low transmit power, and is classified
as "test equipment" to avoid all of the FCC legalities for type
certification. I can tell you I've gotten 20MHz of bandwidth samples
out of it, into a Linux VM on my MacBook pro, and it seems to be pretty
slick. Tomorrow will be more hands on with the device, and a LOT of
time in GnuRadio. Obviously, based on the fact that we're at BlackHat,
most of the concentration is on security and penetration. Things like
finding unknown signal types in a very large chunk of spectrum, then
locating and identifying those signals.

BTW, Michael is a real genius at explaining SDR techniques and the math
behind them. At the beginning of the class, he passed out little green
plastic slinkys with his company logo on them. Today, about halfway
through the afternoon session, he used the slinkys to explain how a sine
wave and cosine wave look the same, depending on whether you're looking
at them from the imaginary or real number point of view, and that the
slinky represents the longitudinal axis of time extending out of the
paper, as you plot complex numbers on a two axis system. Freaking
brilliant. If you ever get the opportunity to go to one of his
classes, you'd be a fool to decline.

I'll try to provide more info about the device tomorrow. I'm mentally
and physically drained after a day of complex math.

John Gorkos
AB0OO

Post by Greg D
Hi folks,
I see there's a new SDR receiver being built for the "hacker"
community: http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/hackrf
They claim it's compatible with SDR#, so I wonder how well it will work
for the variety of digital ham radio purposes? It's a little pricy, but
claims to cover 10mhz to 6 ghz, so that would cover through our
5.65-5.925ghz allocation. I don't know what the bandwidth is.
Useful?
Thanks,
Greg KO6TH
_______________________________________________
aprssig mailing list
http://www.tapr.org/mailman/listinfo/aprssig

Greg D

2014-08-03 04:00:05 UTC

Permalink

Hi John,

Non-Ham related question... Professionally, I work in the Wi-Fi area,
and was also interested in being able to use the HackRF for capturing
and decoding Wi-Fi traffic, as well as getting a better look at the RF
environment (spectrum analysis). Can this be done with the available
(free) software?

Sounds like a really interesting and fun conference!

Greg KO6TH

Post by John Gorkos
I'm at BlackHat right now, and just finished the first day of classes,
hands on, with Michael Ossmann and the HackRF. I've barely had any time
with it at all. It has extremely low transmit power, and is classified
as "test equipment" to avoid all of the FCC legalities for type
certification. I can tell you I've gotten 20MHz of bandwidth samples
out of it, into a Linux VM on my MacBook pro, and it seems to be pretty
slick. Tomorrow will be more hands on with the device, and a LOT of
time in GnuRadio. Obviously, based on the fact that we're at BlackHat,
most of the concentration is on security and penetration. Things like
finding unknown signal types in a very large chunk of spectrum, then
locating and identifying those signals.
BTW, Michael is a real genius at explaining SDR techniques and the math
behind them. At the beginning of the class, he passed out little green
plastic slinkys with his company logo on them. Today, about halfway
through the afternoon session, he used the slinkys to explain how a sine
wave and cosine wave look the same, depending on whether you're looking
at them from the imaginary or real number point of view, and that the
slinky represents the longitudinal axis of time extending out of the
paper, as you plot complex numbers on a two axis system. Freaking
brilliant. If you ever get the opportunity to go to one of his
classes, you'd be a fool to decline.
I'll try to provide more info about the device tomorrow. I'm mentally
and physically drained after a day of complex math.
John Gorkos
AB0OO

Post by Greg D
Hi folks,
I see there's a new SDR receiver being built for the "hacker"
community: http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/hackrf
They claim it's compatible with SDR#, so I wonder how well it will work
for the variety of digital ham radio purposes? It's a little pricy, but
claims to cover 10mhz to 6 ghz, so that would cover through our
5.65-5.925ghz allocation. I don't know what the bandwidth is.
Useful?
Thanks,
Greg KO6TH
_______________________________________________
aprssig mailing list
http://www.tapr.org/mailman/listinfo/aprssig

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http://www.tapr.org/mailman/listinfo/aprssig

John Gorkos

2014-08-03 04:19:52 UTC

Permalink

So, the max rx bandwidth on the HackRF is 20Mhz, or 20MSps delivered via
USB. Since an 802.11b or g channel is 20Mhz, you can pull that off.
The N channels are 40MHz wide and the AC channels are (I think) up to
80Mhz+, so those are outside the capability. The limiting factor (to my
knowledge) is the bandwidth of the USB connection. There are several
scripts out there to incrementally snapshot fairly large swaths of
spectrum (i.e. sample 20MHz for 10 seconds, FFT, write to disk, move up
20Mhz, repeat ad nauseum). Doing that, you get a pretty good picture of
regular, repeating signals fairly quickly.
Many of my classmates are interested in either bluetooth work, or
Z-Wave, and probably some Zigbee stuff in there. This thing can even
decode ATSC OTA signals in real time.

Gqrx is a pretty slick piece of software that's cross platform, and SDR#
is supposedly the cat's meow in the Windows world. Since I haven't run
Windows since Windows ME, I can't really comment on that.
The in-class exercise that we're working on is intercepting, decoding,
and eventually spoofing an RF-based PC security system that uses
low-powered 905 MHz transmitters to tell a USB device plugged into a
workstation when an authorized user is in the vicinity. I suspect there
are some other cool exercises that Mike has up his sleeve for later on.
Again, I'll have a full report tomorrow night. Right now, I'm 3 hours
off between clock time and body-clock time, two beers in, and full of
steak. I'm probably not spelling half the words in this email
correctly... :)

John Gorkos
AB0OO

Post by Greg D
Hi John,
Non-Ham related question... Professionally, I work in the Wi-Fi area,
and was also interested in being able to use the HackRF for capturing
and decoding Wi-Fi traffic, as well as getting a better look at the RF
environment (spectrum analysis). Can this be done with the available
(free) software?
Sounds like a really interesting and fun conference!
Greg KO6TH

Post by Greg D
Hi folks,
I see there's a new SDR receiver being built for the "hacker"
community: http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/hackrf
They claim it's compatible with SDR#, so I wonder how well it will work
for the variety of digital ham radio purposes? It's a little pricy, but
claims to cover 10mhz to 6 ghz, so that would cover through our
5.65-5.925ghz allocation. I don't know what the bandwidth is.
Useful?
Thanks,
Greg KO6TH
_______________________________________________
aprssig mailing list
http://www.tapr.org/mailman/listinfo/aprssig

_______________________________________________
aprssig mailing list
http://www.tapr.org/mailman/listinfo/aprssig

Chuck Gooden

2014-08-03 15:32:10 UTC

Permalink

Greg,

To capture and decode Wi-Fi traffic, down load a copy of wireshark at
http://www.wireshark.org. There is a link for a 802.11 packet capture
but it is expensive. wireshark is a very good tool that I use at work
and is very full featured. I have never tried it on a wifi connection
but it will probably work, and if it doesn't its free so it wont cost
you anything.

Chuck

Post by Greg D
Hi folks,
I see there's a new SDR receiver being built for the "hacker"
community: http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/hackrf
They claim it's compatible with SDR#, so I wonder how well it will work
for the variety of digital ham radio purposes? It's a little pricy, but
claims to cover 10mhz to 6 ghz, so that would cover through our
5.65-5.925ghz allocation. I don't know what the bandwidth is.
Useful?
Thanks,
Greg KO6TH
_______________________________________________
aprssig mailing list
http://www.tapr.org/mailman/listinfo/aprssig

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Jim Sanford

2014-08-03 16:32:03 UTC

Permalink

I have used wireshark on a wireless connection. There are things that
it can do on a wired connection that it can't on wireless (at least the
free version).

Good luck!
73,
Jim

Post by Chuck Gooden
Greg,
To capture and decode Wi-Fi traffic, down load a copy of wireshark at
http://www.wireshark.org. There is a link for a 802.11 packet capture
but it is expensive. wireshark is a very good tool that I use at work
and is very full featured. I have never tried it on a wifi connection
but it will probably work, and if it doesn't its free so it wont cost
you anything.
Chuck

Post by Greg D
Hi John,
Non-Ham related question... Professionally, I work in the Wi-Fi
area, and was also interested in being able to use the HackRF for
capturing and decoding Wi-Fi traffic, as well as getting a better
look at the RF environment (spectrum analysis). Can this be done
with the available (free) software?
Sounds like a really interesting and fun conference!
Greg KO6TH

Post by Greg D
Hi folks,
I see there's a new SDR receiver being built for the "hacker"
community: http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/hackrf
They claim it's compatible with SDR#, so I wonder how well it will work
for the variety of digital ham radio purposes? It's a little pricy, but
claims to cover 10mhz to 6 ghz, so that would cover through our
5.65-5.925ghz allocation. I don't know what the bandwidth is.
Useful?
Thanks,
Greg KO6TH
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aprssig mailing list
http://www.tapr.org/mailman/listinfo/aprssig

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Greg D

2014-08-03 18:43:13 UTC

Permalink

Hi Chuck,

Yeah, Wireshark and I are already good friends. The problem is that one
can only capture what the wi-fi interface can hear clearly, and often
that's not where the problems are. So integrating the RF spectrum view
is what I'm after.

For those wanting to play with Wireshark with Wi-Fi, for example (and to
keep it ham-related) diagnosing an ad-hoc network supporting a field-day
operation, you can put many of the newer Wi-Fi adapters into monitor
mode and capture down to the beacon level. From a Linux root shell
(sorry, I don't know if this is possible from Windows or Mac):

ifconfig wlan0 down
iwconfig wlan0 mode monitor
iw reg set 00
iw dev wlan0 set channel <channel> [HT20|HT40+|HT40-]
iw phy phy0 set channel <channel> [HT20|HT40+|HT40-]
ifconfig wlan0 up

Then aim Wireshark at wlan0 and you're set. There are probably
extensions for 802.11ac, but my laptop doesn't go there yet.

Sometimes you'll get a device busy error, in which case you're stuck - I
haven't found a way around that.

Greg KO6TH

Post by Greg D
Hi John,
Non-Ham related question... Professionally, I work in the Wi-Fi
area, and was also interested in being able to use the HackRF for
capturing and decoding Wi-Fi traffic, as well as getting a better
look at the RF environment (spectrum analysis). Can this be done
with the available (free) software?
Sounds like a really interesting and fun conference!
Greg KO6TH

Post by Greg D
Hi folks,
I see there's a new SDR receiver being built for the "hacker"
community: http://hakshop.myshopify.com/products/hackrf
They claim it's compatible with SDR#, so I wonder how well it will work
for the variety of digital ham radio purposes? It's a little pricy, but
claims to cover 10mhz to 6 ghz, so that would cover through our
5.65-5.925ghz allocation. I don't know what the bandwidth is.
Useful?
Thanks,
Greg KO6TH
_______________________________________________
aprssig mailing list
http://www.tapr.org/mailman/listinfo/aprssig

_______________________________________________
aprssig mailing list
http://www.tapr.org/mailman/listinfo/aprssig