Pranking Colleagues with the USRP B210 Software Defined Radio

The Ettus USRP B210 is an advanced $1,100 software defined radio that is capable of both transmit and receive. Balint, one of the researchers at Ettus, has posted a video showing how he was able to play a light hearted prank on some of his colleagues using the B210.

Earlier in the year we posted about how Oona Raisanen was able to use her RTL-SDR to receive and decode restaurant pagers (the wireless devices given out at some restaurants to notify you when your food is ready).

Balint used his USRP210 controlled by a mobile phone app to transmit a fake signal to his colleague’s pager, causing it to activate before his food was ready.