The RC transmitter that does everything

March 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

[Demetris] sent in a project he’s been working on over the last year. It’s called the Open Source Radio Control, and promises to be a modular platform for every imaginable remote control transmitter need. If you’d like to control a bipedal android or a 3D aerobatic model plane, the OSRC can do it while transmitting video from the cockpit down to your hands.

Last summer, we caught wind of the OSRC project to build an extensible and open source remote control radio that would do anything; from displaying video from the cockpit to serving as the brain of a UAV rig, the OSRC promised to do everything.

A fully decked out OSRC can be had for about $1400, putting it in the upper echelon of remote control radios. For that price, though, you get a fully customizable radio with your choice of shoulder buttons and a 4.8 inch LCD that receives a video feed from the cockpit of your favorite model. The base unit starts out around $700; still very expensive for a remote control radio, but reasonable when you consider all the possible upgrades.

[Demetris] and the rest of the team put together an outrageously long yet surprisingly beautiful video showing off a few features of the OSRC. You can check that out after the break.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: radio hacks, toy hacks Tagged With: , , ,

Working software-defined radio with a TV tuner card.

March 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

[Balint Seeber] just sent in a small yet timely project he’s been working on: a software radio source block for the Realtek RTL2832U. Now with a cheap USB TV tuner card, you can jump right into the world of software-defined radio.

[Balint]’s code comes just a week after hackaday and other outlets posted stories about using a $20 USB TV capture dongle for software defined radio. At the time, these capture cards could only write data directly to a file. With [Balint]’s work, anyone can use a cheap tv tuner dongle with HDSDR, Winrad, or GNU Radio. If you’ve ever thought about trying out software-defined radio, now might be the time.

Elsewhere on the Internet, a surprisingly active RTL-SDR subreddit popped up dedicated to using the Realtek RTL2832U tuner for software defined radio. There’s an awesome compatibility chart listing compatible USB dongles. The cheapest (so far, and subject to change) is the Unikoo UK001T available for $11 on eBay.

With his source block, [Balint] can listen to anything on the radio between 64-1700 MHz. The sample depth is 8 bits and the sample rate can be anything up to 3.2 MHz. You can watch [Balint] testing out his $20 GNU Radio rig after the break.

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Filed Under: radio hacks Tagged With: , , ,

Software defined radio from a USB TV capture card

March 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

With a simple digital TV USB capture card, you can build your own software defined radio or spectrum analyzer. While it may not be as cool as [Jeri Ellsworth]’s SDR, it’s still very useful and only requires $20 in hardware.

The only piece of hardware required for this build is a USB FM/DTV capture device with the Realtek RTL2832U chipset. So far, two USB sticks have been tested and the unit with the largest frequency range (64 – 1700 MHz) is available direct from China for $20.

Turning these cheap capture cards into software defined radios and spectrum analyzers was discovered by [Antti Palosaari] after sniffing the device. These cards demodulate the frequency and send all the data to the computer and is decoded via software. If you have one of these capture cards lying around, you can grab the software and load it up on your *nix box. Right now, the software only writes directly to a file, and may drop a few samples if writing to a hard disk instead of ram. Small problems, but we’re sure this project will pick up steam in the very near future.

via reddit

Filed Under: peripherals hacks, radio hacks Tagged With: , , ,

Wardriving for Zigbee

February 29, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Wardriving started out as a search for unprotected WiFi access points before hot spots were prevalent. And so this ZigBee protocol wardriving hardware which [Travis Goodspeed] put together really gives us a sense of nostalgia for that time. Don’t get us wrong, we love our pervasive WiFi access and don’t wish to go back to simpler times. But if the radio signals your looking for are scarce, locating them provides a challenge.

Regular readers will recognize that [Travis] is interested in all things RF. One of his projects included sniffing wireless keyboard packets out of thin air and displaying them on the screen of his Nokia N900. This is right along those lines but he’s upgraded to an N9 phone for the display hardware. He switched up the RF hardware, using a TelosB (a board he’s already familiar with) to get on the 802.15.4 ZigBee spectrum. This dev board has an expansion port which let him use an RN42 module for wireless communications with the phone. This means the sniffing hardware can be hidden away in a backpack or jacket. After all, nobody will question someone walking around staring at a smart phone.

Filed Under: radio hacks Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Passive Filters, Data Transmission and Equalization Oh My!

February 13, 2012 By Leave a Comment

[Shahriar] is back with a new “The Signal Path” video. It has been a few months but it is okay because his videos are always packed full of good information. Some new equipment has been added to his lab and as an added bonus a quick tour of the equipment is included at the start, which is great if you like drooling over sweet machines.

The real focus of the video is high speed data communications, getting up into the GHz per second range. [Shahriar] covers filtering techniques from simple RC low pass filters to pretty complex microwave filters. Explaining frequency and time domain measurements of a 1.5Gbps signal through a low bandwidth channel. He also shows how equalization can be used to overcome low bandwidth limitations.

It is an hour long video jam packed with information, so you might want to set aside some time and have a pencil on hand before going in. It is well worth it though, so join us after the break.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: misc hacks, radio hacks Tagged With: ,

Designing a Smarter RF transceiver

February 8, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Two  months ago we featured a transceiver based on the Microchip MRF49XA, and a lot of feedback was sent to [hpux735] requesting that some brains be added onto the system. [hpux735] decided that if he was going to do it, might as well go the distance and make a make a native USB transceiver.

The prototype model is designed for use with the Atmel AT90USBKey, and uses the LUFA USB framework. The protocol and packet format was revised, and a Hamming Code implementation was built using look-up tables to give error control. Finally once the prototype was ready to go [hpux735] created some awesome little PCB’s that contain the AVR, radio, antenna hookups, and blinky lights (no project is complete without blinky lights) are all ready to go when you are.

This project has come quite a long way, covers 3 blog pages, uses a fair bit of ribbon cable, but you just got to love when a plan comes together.

Filed Under: radio hacks Tagged With: , , , ,
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