Tagged: rpitx

Controlling an RC Car with RPiTX

RPiTX is a piece of software that you can run on your Raspberry Pi unit, which with no additional hardware turns it into a full radio transmitter, capable of transmitting FM, AM, SSB and other signals anywhere from 5 kHz to 500 MHz. Of course remember that the methods used to do this emit a lot of harmonics, so to be legal and safe filtering should be used on the signal output.

Over on Twitter Cyril‏ @kotzebuedog has been experimenting with RPiTX and his radio controlled toy car. From the videos and images, it appears that he’s used GNU Radio to create the required control signals which then transmits the data to the RC car via RPiTX. With this he’s been able to create a program to control his RC car with his computer gaming joystick.

Video Tutorial: Transmitting Signals with a Raspberry Pi

Over on YouTube Crazy Danish Hacker, who earlier brought us an excellent video tutorial series on GSM sniffing, has now uploaded a two part series that shows how to transmit signals with a Raspberry Pi and the PiFM and RPiTX software. We’ve featured RPiTX several times on this blog before as a cheap TX complement to the RTL-SDR. The software allows you to modulate a GPIO pin on your Raspberry Pi in such a way that it produces AM/FM/SSB etc radio signals at a frequency of choice.

Crazy Danish Hackers tutorial shows us how to set up RPiTX, starting from installing Raspbian and enabling SSH to installing the software and actually transmitting something. Some useful tips to get around common problems are also presented.

Transmit Radio Signals w/ Raspberry Pi (1/2) - Software Defined Radio Series #24

Transmit Radio Signals w/ Raspberry Pi (2/2) - Software Defined Radio Series #25

Building an SDR Transmitter using GPIO Pins on an FPGA

Recently an RTL-SDR.com reader named Jon wrote in and wanted to share his project called FPGA-TX. FPGA-TX is software that provides low-cost SDR transmit capabilities on an FPGA. It works in a similar way to RPiTX which is by simply turning the GPIO pins on and off very quickly in such as way that it generates any desired AM/FM/SSB transmission. These methods are crude and require external analog filtering, but can be used for creating almost any sort of RF transmission at a wide range of frequencies extremely cheaply. These sorts of cheap transmitters are great companions to low cost SDR dongles like the RTL-SDR.

Jon’s project runs on FPGA boards and currently supports the Digilent Nexys 4 and Digilent CMOD A7 ($75) FPGA boards. An FPGA is an integrated circuit that can be easily reconfigured to implement various different digital circuits.

FPGA-TX can transmit at frequencies of up to 400 MHz and current supports AM, FM, LSB, USB, Wideband FM and Wideband FM Stereo transmission modes. It runs on Linux. The FPGA transmitter has been tested combined together with an amplifier and filter. It can also interface with a GPS unit for clock calibration.

An FPGA Based Transmitter. In the photo: FPGA, Amplifier, Filter, Attenuator, TX/RX Switch.
An FPGA Based Transmitter. In the photo: FPGA, Amplifier, Filter, Attenuator, TX/RX Switch.
The FPGA-TX Ubuntu Interface.
The FPGA-TX Ubuntu Interface.

A Guide to Using RPiTX and an RTL-SDR to Reverse Engineer and Control ASK/OOK Devices

Erhard E. has been experimenting with capturing, analyzing, reverse engineering and then transmitting new ASK/OOK signals with his RTL-SDR and Raspberry Pi running RPiTX. Erhard has written a very informative guide/tutorial (pdf) that explains how he did it for wireless doorbell and for remote control toy cars. RPiTX is software for the Raspberry Pi which allows it to transmit almost any signal via modulation of a GPIO pin. RPiTX related posts have been featured on this blog several times in the past.

First Erhard records a copy of the doorbell signal using his RTL-SDR and then views the waveform in Audacity. He then writes that you’ll need to find the waveform characteristics either manually using Audacity, or by using the rtl_433 decoder. In the tutorial he uses rtl_433 which automatically gives his the pulse width, gap width and pulse period.

Next in order to actually generate the signal using RPiTX he uses the waveform characteristics that he found out and manually creates a .ft hex file that describes the signal to be generated. Then using using the rpitx command, the .ft file can be transmitted.

Later in the tutorial he also shows how he performed the same reverse engineering process with a cheap RC car toy (forward/reverse commands only), which uses OOK encoding on the wireless controller.

The tutorial can be downloaded in PDF form here.

Showing the Pulse Width, Gap Width and Symbol Period of a signal in Audacity.
Showing the Pulse Width, Gap Width and Symbol Period of a signal in Audacity.

Building a Homemade FM Repeater with a Raspberry Pi, Rpitx and RTL-SDR Dongle

A radio repeater is usually a radio tower that receives weak signals from handheld, desktop or other radio, and rebroadcasts the same signal at a higher power over a wide area at a different frequency. This allows communications to be extended over a much greater area.

Repeaters are generally made from expensive professional grade radio equipment, however ZR6AIC has been experimenting with creating an ultra low cost repeater out of a RTL-SDR and Raspberry Pi. In his system the RTL-SDR dongle is set up to receive a signal on the 70 cm (420 – 450 MHz) amateur radio band, and then retransmit it using Rpitx on the 2M (144 – 148 MHz) amateur radio band.  He also adds a 2M low pass filter to the output of the Raspberry Pi to keep the signal clean.

RTL-SDR + Rpitx Block Diagram
RTL-SDR + Rpitx Block Diagram

Rpitx is software for the Raspberry Pi which we have featured on this blog several times in the past. We’ve also seen the qtcsdr software which also uses Rpitx and an RTL-SDR to create a transceiver. Rpitx allows the Raspberry Pi to transmit radio signals without the need for any transmitting radio hardware at all. It works by modulating signals onto a General Purpose I/O (GPIO) pin on the Raspberry Pi. If the GPIO pin is modulated in just the right way, FM/AM/SSB or other signal modulation approximations can be created at a specified frequency. The signal is however not clean, as this type of modulation generates many harmonics which could be dangerous if amplified. If you use Rpitx, always use appropriate filtering hardware.

ZR6AIC’s post goes into detail about how to install and set up the required software onto the Raspberry Pi and how to set up the script to piece all the programs together into a repeater. He’s also uploaded a video demonstrating the system in action on YouTube.

Raspberry Pi Fm Repeater