FOSDEM 2017/2018 SDR Conference Videos: Passive Radar, Radio Telescopes, SatNOGS and Wireless Traffic Lights
Fosdem 2017 and 2018 were conferences on software development that occurred on 4 & 5 February 2017 and 3 & 4 February 2018. The conference features several software defined radio and RTL-SDR based talks which appear to have recently been uploaded to YouTube. Below we're posting some of our favorite SDR related talks, but the full video list can be found here, and here is the SDR playlist from Fosdem 2018.
(Yet another) passive RADAR using DVB-T receiver and SDR
by Jean-Michel Friedt @ FOSDEM 2018
In this presentation Jean-Michel shows a GNU Radio passive radar implementation utilizing two coherent RTL-SDR dongles. During the talk he demonstrates his results with RTL-SDR passive radar operating on planes, boats and cars.
Slides: http://jmfriedt.free.fr/fosdem2018.pdf
Paper: http://jmfriedt.free.fr/URSI.pdf
Intro to Open Source Radio Telescopes
by Martin Braun and Sue Ann Heatherly @ FOSDEM 2018
In this talk Martin and Sue discuss how amateur radio astronomy can be performed using lost cost software defined radio tools such as an RTL-SDR. They show how to receive solar flares and detect the 21cm hydrogen line and focus on showing how easy it can be to do these projects in a classroom environment.
Claim Space, the Libre Way, using SDRs
by Manolis Surligas @ FOSDEM 2018
In this talk Manolis from the Libre Space Foundation and SatNOGs discusses how they use RTL-SDR's and other SDR's in their volunteer run network of satellite ground stations to create an online database of received satellite data.
Receiving Wireless Mobile Traffic Lights
by Bastian Bloessl @ FOSDEM 2017
Wireless mobile traffic lights are often used to secure construction sites when roads are partially blocked. Some day, when a pair of them was placed close to our home, I set off to explore how they are working. In this talk, I will describe how I used a cheap RTL-SDR together with GQRX, Inspectrum, and GNU Radio to reverse engineer the modulation and frame format of different types of wireless traffic lights. With some patience, I could also make some sense out of the bits. In particular, I was able to extract the signal state and display it in a web interface, mirroring the traffic light. A closer look at the frame format and the apparent absence of any authentication might leave one with a bit of a worrying impression regarding the security of those systems.
