The Hacking Beacon

As a continuation of my previous post , I will use HackRF One with Universal Radio Hacker (URH) software for the quick identification of the wireless protocol used in my car remote key fob.  Since I didn't know the transmission frequency of the fob, I first used HackRF Spectrum analyzer software to identify its frequency. Here in Europe the more probable frequencies should be in the range of 433 MHz, 868 MHz or 915 MHz ISM frequencies, so I configured a frequency span from 400 MHz to 1 GHz.  I let the analyzer start the scan and pressed the buttons of the key fob to transmit the data. The transmission appeared very clear at the frequency of 434 MHz. I noted this frequency to be used with URH software.  Then, I launched URH software and started with its Spectrum Analyzer to the fine identification of the transmission frequency; in this case 434,408 MHz.  After that, I captured a couple of transmissions for each of the three buttons of the fob u...

HackRF One , from Great Scott Gadgets, is a Software Defined Radio (SDR) capable of transmission or reception of radio signals from 1 MHz to 6 GHz, supporting sample rates up to 20 Msamples per second. This is a powerful tool for radio experimentation, it is cheap, and compared to cheap RTL SDR dongles, it has the capability of transmit. There are tons of information in the web about this device and SDR in general and I suggest to start with the wiki , but it is not that easy to identify what software would be the more adequate to the particular needs and the specific issues for installing on Windows platform. I expect that this post would help you on this. Note that you are responsible for using your HackRF One legally! Zadig The first step for using HackRF One on a Windows computer, will be installing the required USB drivers using Zadig application. Downlad Zadig (note that SDR# Community Installer already includes it) and follow the instructions below: (1) Connect th...

This post describes an experimental software-based impedance meter project that uses the STM32F4 Discovery board with very few additional components. The meter operates at a fixed exciting sinusoidal frequency of 59659 Hz, and it is capable to measure the impedance vector of a load, i.e. its resistance and reactance. A measurement is initiated by the user by pressing the blue button of the board and the readings are output to a terminal emulator program through the USB interface. The measurement principles are based on the article "An LMS Impedance Bridge – QEX Sept/Oct 2015" from Dr. George R. Steber. The project and source code is available at the following link . It is assumed that the reader has background in the STM32 environment. Overall operation The block diagram of the illustration below shows the basic building blocks of the meter. The capacitor and resistor in addition to the interconnection elements, are the only external components required. Howeve...

The SARK-110-ULM Antenna Analyzer includes the RN4871 Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) module from Microchip, for the remote operation of the analyzer from an Android device or a computer. The BLE module can be controlled externally from a terminal emulator program running on a computer by using the special firmware SARK110ULM_BTOOL.dfu that must be installed on the analyzer. This enables the user to experiment with the BLE module as it were a development board. In this practice, we are going to configure the module to send Eddystone URL beacons. Eddystone beacons Eddystone is a Bluetooth Low Energy beacon profile released by Google similar to the iBeacon profile propietary from Apple. The profile contains several frame types, including Eddystone-UID, Eddystone-EID, Eddystone-TLM and Eddystone-URL. The latest frame type will be used in this practice for the broadcast of the URL www.sark110.com. Setup The standard firmware does not include the functionality for controlling the mod...