Skinwalker Ranch is a History channel conspiracy theory reality TV series where a team of scientists and researchers are sent to look for various explanations for "otherworldly" activities supposedly occurring on the ranch. In some episodes the team have made use of an SDRplay RSP software defined radio with SDRuno software to monitor the radio spectrum.
In the series the team are constantly surprised to see unexplained activity occurring on the spectrum. Are these signals just RF noise or man made activity? Or something else? You can decide from the RSP SDRUno waterfall and spectrum display which is shown clearly in the clips below. In the first clip they discover wideband spectrum noise on HF frequencies. In the second clip (from 2:40 onwards) they discover a suddenly active signal at 832 MHz when attempting to setup their drone which experiences calibration issues.
SkinwalkerRanch& SDR
The mystery of Utah's Skinwalker Ranch is very much alive
Thank you to David for submitting news about his company Caribou Labs' new product called "CaribouLite" which will be a software defined radio HAT for the Raspberry Pi. The product is currently in the pre-launch stage over on Crowd Funding platform CrowdSupply and you can sign up for future updates on the release. David writes:
I'd like to inform you of a product we have developed called CaribouLite board, which is essentially a Raspberry Pi HAT that enabled up to 6GHz SDR capabilities Tx and Rx, and an additional TxRx Sub 1GHz channel.
It uses Microchip's modem AT86RF215 as an I/Q ADC, DAC and frequency conversion is done using Qorvo's RFFC5072 IC. An FPGA (ICE40) is used to stream data packets (I/Q @ 13 bit x2 / sample) back and forth between the Raspberry Pi and the Modem, over an interesting fast interface called SMI.
I think this project brings new ideas to the table and would be interesting to the SDR community.
The use of the SMI interface is an interesting idea and not something we see utilized often as apparently the official documentation is sparse and poor. But David notes how it allows for up to 500Mbit/s of data to be exchanged between the FPGA and Raspberry Pi, although the true throughput depends on the specific Raspberry Pi model used. Regardless the SMI data rate is more than enough for the 120 MBit/s required by the two streams of 13-bit IQ data that the CaribouLite generates.
The campaign also notes that the sample rate is 4 MSPS, with 4 MHz bandwidth, and up to 14 dBm of transmit power is possible. They also note that they are planning to release a wide range of library code that allows for use cases such as wide range spectrum analysis, a signal / protocol generator, an analog / digital DAB+ receiver, an ADS-B receiver and more.
The software and hardware design is also fully open source and available on GitHub.
The CaribouLite SDR HAT mounted on a Raspberry Pi Zero
The "Pluto Plus" (aka Pluto+) is an unofficial and upgraded version of the Analog Devices ADALM Pluto SDR. It is currently available on Aliexpress and Banggood stores. In his latest video Tech Minds reviews a Pluto+ SDR that he has received, noting that it has all of the features that should have been in the original Adalm PlutoSDR.
He notes that the PlutoSDR+ has various improvements over the PlutoSDR such as that it comes in a metal enclosure, has four SMA connections (2x TX, 2x TX), a Gigabit Ethernet connection, a microSD slot, external clock input, 0.5PPM TCXO, fine tunable clock via resistor, a PTT key port and a DFU key.
In the video he goes on to show how to set up the PlutoSDR+ before testing it out on a QO-100 satellite setup, noting that it works perfectly and without any signal drift noticed.
If you weren't already aware KerberosSDR is our 4-channel phase coherent capable RTL-SDR unit that we previously crowdfunded back in 2018. With a 4-channel phase coherent RTL-SDR interesting applications like radio direction finding (RDF), passive radar and beam forming become possible. It can also be used as four separate RTL-SDRs for multichannel monitoring.
KerberosSDR is soon to be replaced with the upgraded KrakenSDR, which will begin crowd funding on Crowd Supply later this year. Please note that we have had some pandemic related delays finalizing the design, but progress is being made.
Recently we came across a brief demonstration video on YouTube where it appears that students have embedded a KerberosSDR into an RC boat. The boat carries four direction finding antennas connected to the KerberosSDR and autonomously navigates towards a signal source.
Over on Reddit Ian Grody (u/DutchOfBurdock) has posted about his success in using a modded Android smartphone to run an RTL-SDR Blog V3 and NOAA decoder software all within the phone itself.
In the past we posted about Ian's work in getting rtl_power scans to work in conjunction with the Tasker app, in order to generate automated frequency scans on his phone on the go. His more recent work from the past year includes showing us how it's possible to install Debian chroot on an Android phone, and run Linux software like GQRX, GNU Radio, DSD, rtl_433, multimon-ng and dump1090 directly on the phone with an RTL-SDR.
His latest Reddit post shows that the NOAA-APT decoder also runs well on the Debian chroot, leading to a truly portable NOAA decoding setup. He notes that he is now working on the possibility of Meteor M2 decoding on the phone.
Below is his video from last year demonstrating SDR GQRX and GNU Radio running on the Debain chrooted phone.
Back in April we posted about "Hash's" RECESSIM YouTube series on hacking electricity smart meters using a software defined radio. Recently his series continues with a video on decoding and logging the GPS coordinates sent by the smart meters used in his area. Using a car, SDR and laptop he was able to drive down the freeway collecting smart meter data as he travelled, decode the data, and plot it on a map. In his video Hash explains why there is GPS data in the signal, and how he was able to reverse engineer and determine the GPS data.
In his latest YouTube video Tech Minds explains and demonstrates Remote SDR V2, which is software that allows you to easily remotely access either a PlutoSDR, HackRF or RTL-SDR software defined radio. It is designed to be used with the amateur radio QO-100 satellite, but version 2.0 now include multiple demodulation modes, NBFM/SSB transmission capability, CTCSS and DTMF encoders, modulation compression and a programmable frequency shift for relays.
In his video Tech Minds shows how to install Remote SDR V2 onto an Orange Pi via the SD card image, how to access the web interface, and how to access and use the connected SDR.
Remote SDR V2 with Orange Pi and Transmit Capable
We note that the code is designed to be run on Orange Pi boards, which are low cost single board computers similar to Raspberry Pi's. However over on Twitter @devnulling has indicated that his own fork of the code should run on x86 systems. Aaron @cemaxecuter is also working on including it into a DragonOS release.
The image below demonstrates a typical Remote SDR V2 transceiver setup with two HackRFs.
A full QO-100 Transceiver Setup with Remote SDR V2 and two HackRF's.
J.-M Friedt has created a block for GNU Radio called gr-rpitx which allows a Raspberry Pi to be used directly as an output RF sink in GNU Radio. If you were unaware, RPiTX is software that allows you to turn your Raspberry Pi into a transmit capable SDR without any additional hardware apart from a wire antenna connected to a GPIO pin. It works by modulating a GPIO pin in a way to generate any arbitrary signal modulation. gr-rpitx allows this software to be used directly within GNU Radio.
In his presentation uploaded early for the upcoming online European GNU Radio Days conference, J.-M Friedt explains how gr-rpitx works, and shows how you can easily connect any flowgraph to the gr-rpitx output sink. His examples demonstrate retransmitting broadcast FM using an RTL-SDR, broadcasting digital signals like DRM, and how gr-rpitx and RTL-SDR could be used as part of a basic scalar network analyzer.
gr-rpitx uses the GPIO4 output of the Raspberry Pi to generate a radiofrequency stream fed by a GNU Radio signal processing flowchart with sample rates up to 400 kS/s.
European GNU Radio Days/SDRA presentation about gr-rpitx (J.-M Friedt)
