Turning a Wi-Fi 7 Router into a 320 Msps SDR
Just last week we posted about ESP32-SDR, which is custom firmware for ESP32's indpendently discovered by two experimenters that transforms them into a full software defined radio.
Now, h0m3us3r, one of the discoverers of the ESP32-SDR hack, has discovered a way to turn a Gemtek W1700K Wi-Fi 7 router, which uses a MediaTek MT7996 chip, into a wideband software-defined receiver. Compared to the ESP32's maximum 80 Msps sample rate, this newly discovered Wi-Fi chip captures a massive 320 MSps. And most importantly, unlike the ESP32, the router has a built-in 10 GbE Ethernet SoC, which lets you stream full-bandwidth data out and ingest it on a PC.
As a result, you can capture the entire 2.4 GHz band and a wide portion of the 5 GHz band live and stream the spectrum to a Linux host running a live spectrum and waterfall display.
Other devices that run the MediaTek MT7996 Wi-Fi chip include the Banana Pi BPI-R4, GL.iNet Flint 4, and Gemtek XR1710G, however it is unclear if this firmware will run on those devices.
AI Disclaimer: Claude is listed as a contributor to the repo.
Unfortunately, the W1700K seems to be somewhat hard to obtain.
Not sure if it is just not manufactured in large quantities, or if this is the US Wi-Fi router ban biting me.
Indeed, I couldn’t find a single retailer in the EU—only one second-hand unit available in Poland.
Lucky you. I grabbed two from US Amazon before all the hype, 110 € shipped, per piece. They’re gone now.
You should not be locked on to some “specific models”,it’s just an demonstration,you should aware the specific chip like MT7996,doing the same stuff on any generic ones
Great! These projects (the ESP-SDR project, the I/Q access to the Semtech modems just opened a broad door) are a huge step forward.
Ham radio operators will be happy to have cheap I/Q 13cm/5cm access, same for Satdump’ers as they can use it for receiving S-Band satellite transmissions.