Universal Radio Grabber: the USRP 189
Nethemas the Great writes "The Universal Software Radio Peripheral or USRP created by Matt Ettus and Eric Blossom gives a new perspective on the radio spectrum, as in just about all of it from DC to 2.9Ghz. With the right software and daughterboards, their USRPs can capture FM, read GPS, decode HDTV, transmit over emergency bands, track peoples movement via their mobile phones, and much, much more. With prices starting at just $550 this new toy is accessible by most anyone."
The real question (Score:5, Insightful)
Depends on the country (Score:3, Informative)
Now this applies to the US one, other countries do not necessairly have an FCC equivilant that regulate
Re:Depends on the country (Score:5, Informative)
No. The USRP motherboard is capable of handling anything from DC to 2.9 GHz, but you need the matching daughterboards for specific ranges. Daughterboards [ettus.com] include:
Also, you obviously need to have the matching antenna to actually receive something useful in a given frequency range.
Now, whether or not receiving particular frequencies is allowed or not will obviously depend on the FCC and similar regulatory organizations (in most, if not all countries, for instance, receiving police radio frquencies is illegal). Maybe the FCC regulation you mentioned is taking things a bit too far... cell phone standards like GSM are encrypted anyway (unless, of course, you go for a man in the middle attack [wikipedia.org]).
As to your FCC quote, I suppose the question is whether being able to buy another daughterboard/antenna means it can be "readily altered to receive such frequencies." With respect to transmitting, the FAQ [ettus.com] states that since it's sold as test equipment, you don't need a license. I wonder if the "test equipment" status supersedes that FCC statement as well?
Re:Probably already is. (Score:2)
Re:The real question (Score:5, Informative)
It makes sense to license transmitters. The EM spectrum of useful radio frequencies has finite bandwidth, and we must have some plan for use so that the most people can get the most benefit out of it. This includes astronomers, hobbyiests, emergency services, cell-phone users, television studios, and many more. Licensing solves the traffic jam problem.
It makes much less sense to license receivers. The radiation is there, passing through people, even. Frankly, I don't understand why anyone would think that I don't have the right to intercept any signal which passes through my personal space and process it however i please.
But that seems to be the case. Recievers capable of recieving cell-phone frequencies may not be sold. I am unsure of the legality of modifying or building your own equipment for that purpose, but I am sure the cell-phone companies have lobbied hard to make that illegal as well. As a longtime desirerer of encrypted cell-phones, it has frustrated me that they want to transmit "in the clear" and just make it a crime to recieve, especially as equipment from before there were cellphones exists that has no hardware blocks on those frequencies whatsoever. Fortunately, CDMA forces at least a rudimentary level of quasi-encryption.
Re:The real question (Score:3, Insightful)
Where "they" means the NSA, in this case.
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Your searches may vary -- this is enough to get the ball rolling.
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Re:The real question (Score:5, Insightful)
So it should be legal for me to use a night-vision scope to look into my neighbor's bedroom window at night? After all, her naked body is reflecting electromagnetic radiation into my personal space. Amplifying it into a visible image, digitizing it, and making it available on the Internet seems like a perfectly logical step, doesn't it?
People have an expectation of privacy. They expect you won't be sneaking around peering into their windows at night, and they expect you won't be intercepting and decoding their personal telephone calls. Yes, you have the right to decode electromagnetic radiation. And yes, the callers have a right to privacy. Any time two different rights conflict, one or the other has to take precedence. Privacy is a much more desirable-to-society right than is the ability to spy on our neighbors, and so privacy wins.
Re:The real question (Score:3, Insightful)
So I take it you think that we should ban all night vision scopes, then? Because that's effectively what's been done...
Re:The real question (Score:2)
As for the neighbor analogy, you could just say "close your curtains", but that doesn't really hold up because it's something that the neighbor has to actively do to avoid having her privacy compromised. Encrypting cell transmissions can (and should) be automatic and transparent to the user, so the analogy breaks on that point.
Re:The real question-PirateTV. (Score:2)
I personally feel we should be able to listen to anything that crosses our space- and decrypt it if w
Re:The real question (Score:5, Insightful)
in the US?
in the MODERN US?
(have you not been reading the news at all, over the last say, year or two?)
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Actually, sounds pretty logical to me. If your neighbor is concerned, she should get some high-tech radio jamming technology called "insulation". Saves on heating, too.
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Night vision needs some light in order to function. It operates of ifrared and visible light waves. Ifrerad waves (the light you can't see) don't putrude very far (compared ot regular light sources). When to see images on the news were a battlefield is lite up like daytime, it is because of a flare that was shot up or some other
Re:The real question (Score:2)
So I agree with one of grand(grand?)parents that if the RF radiation is allowed to pas
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Ok, I'm with you so far.
URL?
m-
Re:The real question (Score:2)
So it should be legal for me to use a night-vision scope to look into my neighbor's bedroom window at night?
I'm not sure that's a valid analogy --- there is, after all, a big difference between passive scattered photons that have occurred simply because an object is in a particular space, and explicitly generating EM waves with the intent to communicate information.
Yes, you have the right to decode electromagnetic radiation. And yes, the callers have a right to privacy.
Why? And that's a serious ques
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Just to point out that that last sentence shouldn't be there.
(mutters) friggin' textarea boxes...
Re:The real question (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm just intending to clarify things, as your social contract statement seems to indicate that you believe that authority can grant or take away rights at whim, as long as it's written down somewhere, or otherwise generally agreed upon. I'm assuming this is a European idea.
The ramifications are that U.S. citizens have a basis for determining when a government has overstepped its bounds (whether they actually do is a different story), where the social contract idea seems to provide little justification for being critical of authority. I'm sure in either case it doesn't make much difference practically speaking, but we're coming from fundamentally opposed viewpoints. (i.e. humans have certain rights no matter what, vs. the only rights you have are what society agrees on.)
But, you're right, there's no inalienable right to receive RF signals and decode them, as far as I'm aware, in the U.S. Constitution or otherwise.
Re:The real question (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummm. Radio transmitters are much more along the lines of your neighbor changing or whatever in the middle of a crowded public area with people that could turn around an
Re:The real question (Score:2)
"Helloooo??? Is this thing on?"
"Can you hear me now?"
Re:The real question (Score:5, Informative)
But it is legal. Anything you can see from your property is fair game to look at, at least in the USA. Probably not legal to record it; almost certainly not legal to distribute if you do.
It's totally legal to look at naked people in their own house if you can see them without trespassing. If you choose not to cover your windows you give up your reasonable expectation of privacy.
Amusingly you're not legally trespassing until you have been told to leave, at least in California. Those "no trespassing" signs don't mean shit either, unless your property is completely encircled with fence and you have a gate which is locked.
Re:The real question (Score:2)
It's totally legal to look at naked people in their own house if you can see them without trespassing. If you choose not to cover your windows you give up your reasonable expectation of privacy.
Spying on people when they have a reasonable expectation of privacy (as when in a darkened room) is illegal in most localities in d
Re:The real question (Score:3, Informative)
Not here in Texas, at least. At our last Neighborhood Watch meeting, the officer who was speaking said that those signs count as a command from the homeowner to leave, and allow him the ability to arrest folks who are acting suspicious on someone else's property (whereas otherwise, the best he could do would be asking them to leave).
Now, in terms of shooting
Re:The real question (Score:2)
It should be legal for you to build or own a night-vision scope. (Parallel to owning a receiver that can receive, among other things, the bands that cellular phones transmit in.) It might be that it should be illegal for you to use it for certain purposes.
Re:The real question (Score:2)
The distribution part is a different matter altogether, regulated by things like copyright, IP ownership, etc. Thing which a model-release form are there to solve.
Re:The real question (Score:2)
If you make it illegal to look in houses like that, you only get to pun
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Yes, definitely. In fact, if she can be seen from the street/sidewalk, she could possibly be charged with indecent exposure. If you want privacy, close the blinds. Now if you have to take a step even one foot on her property to have the necessary vantage point, then you would be a 'peeping tom' and in violation of the law.
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Well, I like my privacy too. But I still have to disagree with you because of your argument about privacy winning over interception of signals passing through space controled by interceptor.
Why? In general, because of physics (and human individualistic nature).
For example, one argument can be that if "your" signals are truly yours (or at least that notion is enforced by society) than when your signals are passing my property I can sue you. Because, if you say those signals are yours than I say "fine, but
Re:The real question (Score:2)
No, it doesn't. (Score:2)
No, it doesn't.
It makes sense to license OPERATION of transmitters and/or the people who operate them.
Licensing type-approved transmitters, which are crippled so they are unable to violate the rules, is a shortcut to create added utility. Building adherence of the rules into the device allows it to be operated
Ouch $550 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ouch $550 (Score:5, Informative)
At a minimum you will need the motherboard, a radio module, some cable (which isn't cheap, especially for doing higher frequency work), and a useful antenna (those tiny ones they advertise on the website will be fine for higher frequencies, but if you want to do anything else, you are looking at an external antenna and more cable).
However, this is a very cool project. A lot of good will come from this work. But $550 is not the starting price. The starting price is higher.
Re:Ouch $550 (Score:2)
With my $550 (Score:2)
Re:Ouch $550 (Score:2)
Re:Ouch $550 (Score:2)
Re:Ouch $550 (Score:4, Interesting)
Buying the chips in small quantities leads to about $100 just for the 4 main chips (two analog interface chips, one FPGA, one USB microcontroller). The PCB is likely to be around $20 if it's more than a two layer and in small quantities. The labor to assemble just a few of them is likely $50-$100.
$550 isn't a bad price. But there's a reason the PCB isn't open sourced like all the other design files - the company wants (needs) to make money and recoup its investment.
Still, one sufficiently motivated could reduce the cost of the entire board and probably include the popular generic modules to the $200 range if they were able to get a comitment to purchase from say 100 people.
It's a neat concept, and one I'd like to get into, but right now it's not something that you use so much as tinker with. It's for researchers and hobbyists. Once there is real time hdtv decoder software in linux that runs with this, and a good tv/radio record/pause/skip program, as well as a nice simple scanner application then it will become something worth having for the general linux hacker.
I think someone could make a good bit of money if they made a small module that just had one A/D interface, the FPGA, a cable modem tuner, and the usb microcontroller. It could sell for $100, which would be cheap enough for regular hackers to get it and start making really cool tv/radio applications for.
-Adam
P2P Telephone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:P2P Telephone? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:P2P Telephone? (Score:3, Insightful)
-matthew
Re:P2P Telephone? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you really want privacy, what you want is some really strong, good encryption. I would, if you are paranoid, encrypt your messages many times each time with a different key.
People often claim wireless is the solution to everything. It definitely is not. RF spectrum is
Re:P2P Telephone? (Score:2)
Radios don't have an IP address.
So what? (Score:3, Informative)
How is this legal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How is this legal? (Score:2, Redundant)
A friend of mine bought WinRadio from Austrailia in order to get the full spectrum version.
Re:How is this legal? (Score:5, Informative)
Are there any license requirement for the transmit or transecive daughterboards?
The USRP is sold as test equipment, which has no licensing requirements. If you choose to use your USRP and daughterboards to transmit using an antenna, it is your responsibility to make sure that you are in compliance with all laws for the country, frequency, and power levels in which the device is used.
Re:How is this legal? (Score:3, Informative)
Reminds me of a story I heard: during prohibition, you could buy a health drink that was basically grape juice concentrate. The instructions said something like "Do *not* dilute and certainly don't add yeast. If accidental yeast contamination occurs, don't even think about leaving it in a warmish place for ro
Uh, prices don't begin at $550 (Score:5, Informative)
Just the motherboard is $550. You will need at least one daughterboard to actually do anything. The cheapest ones (2-200MHz transmitter, 2-300MHz receiver, 30MHz transmitter, 30MHZ receiver) are $75 each. In order to just transmit, you will need to spend at least $625, unless you are a member of "TAPR, AMSAT, SARA, or SETI League" in which case you get $25 off the motherboard.
Interestingly, though the sales page lists "extra" power supply, usb cable, and standoff sets, nowhere on the sales page does it actually say that the unit comes with any of these things. If you're going to run a business, run it right.
Re:Uh, prices don't begin at $550 (Score:2)
Homebrew SETI? (Score:5, Interesting)
Open source radio astronomy anyone?
Re:Homebrew SETI? (Score:2)
Re:Homebrew SETI? (Score:2, Interesting)
Open Spectrum (Score:2)
Nothing new here... (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.comsec.com/wiki?UsrpProgress [comsec.com]
NOW I can finally (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry... not universal (Score:3, Funny)
decoding HDTV? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:decoding HDTV? (Score:5, Informative)
GNU Radio is a pretty amazing piece of software. I attended a talk about it at Linux '05, and was amazed by the capabilities. When they say they are decoding HDTV, they mean that they are doing it in software. All of it. Not just decoding the MPEG-2 streams, but everything this side of the analogue to digital convertor. They are not running it through a decoder box and grabbing it from a FireWire connection, they are capturing the radio signals, converting them into digital signals in hardware and then doing everything else in software.
The basic architecture of GNU Radio is a filter API. Individual filters are written in C++ for performance and then they can be joined together and controlled with Python, making the barrier to entry very low for anyone who wants to tinker with it. Don't be fooled into thinking you need an expensive receiver like the one in TFA to play with it either, it will accept input from a large number of ADCs, including sound cards. You can use it to apply transformations to any digital waveforms.
You can use it to implement something like 802.11 entirely in software, generate telephone dialling tones on your sound card, modulate your voice to sound like a Dalek, decode HDTV signals, or a huge range of other things. It turns your PC into a hugely powerful programmable DSP.
The hardware in TFA is just icing on the cake. As I recall, the specs for a slightly simpler model are available from the GNU Radio site, so you can build one yourself if you have (a lot) more time than money.
Re:decoding HDTV? (Score:2)
Ok, I must be missing here (the details of HDTV were not very specific). Do other people NOT decode HDTV, and is that milestone? Any product by DVICO will also decode HDTV. My Dvico USB unit decodes it.
The milestone is that it's done entirely with open-source software, instead of a proprietary chip.
Re:decoding HDTV? (Score:3, Informative)
I hear hype... (Score:2, Informative)
Not quite- in order to fit the swath of FM radio into that USB2 pipe, it isn't sampling it in any great detail. If you tried to decode one station, it'd most likely sound like a tin can, unless you sampled a narrower slice of the FM band. So don't get too excited. Claiming the motherboard or these devices are "universal" is extremely misleading. You buy modules that transmi
Re:I hear hype... (Score:4, Interesting)
Dave
timing BETWEEN SIGNALS, nanosecond range (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think you understand how GPS works. Simplifying- a GPS receiver looks at when signals with the same timestamp arrive, and deduces how far it is from each satellite from that. If a signal from Satellite A saying "hey, it's 12:01:05 right NOW arrives a second after a similar signal from Satellite B,
Re:timing BETWEEN SIGNALS, nanosecond range (Score:2, Informative)
You are
Re:timing BETWEEN SIGNALS, nanosecond range (Score:2)
You've got to do a lot of signal processing to ignore
Re:timing BETWEEN SIGNALS, nanosecond range (Score:4, Informative)
You don't need absolute timestamps on each sample to get distance. The timing is encoded in the PN sequence in the transmission from each satellite. Also included in the transmission from each satellite is the satellite orbit information and the exact time that the GPS system uses. First, you receive 1 satellite, and then set your GPS clock to the system clock. Once your handheld GPS is set to the system clock, you can figure out how far you are away from the satellite by determining time of flight from the satellite to the handheld (You know the PN sequence, and you know the time. You can figure out the time that you received the signal, and then you can determine the distance)
Once you know the distance from 3 satellites, then you know you are in 1 of 2 locations. If you further assume that you are reasonably close to the earth's surface, then you knock off one of the possible locations. More satellites will give you a better estimation by giving you more position estimates to average out.
As far as the signal processing, the GPS signal comes in to the antenna pretty close to the thermal noise floor, and so it's a bit tough to receive. Because it's a direct sequence spread spectrum system, you get 43 dB of processing gain from the de-correllators which helps significantly. Multi-path isn't really to much of an issue because the signal is primarly from overhead. Absorbtion is more of an issue, and is something that Garmin/SiFR etc spend a lot of time dealing with.
As far as beating the current state of the art in GPS receive algorith's with a half dozen guys working in their basement, probably not. As an educational thing, it's pretty useful.
Dave
1 satellite should do (Score:2)
One measurement of the carrier frequency locates you on a cone whose axis is along the direction of satellite's travel.
A second measurement should locate you on a curve which I believe to be a hyperbola. (the axis of travel has changed)
A third measurement locates you on a point.
If you can pick up quasars, the Earth's rotation should eliminate any need for satellites.
Did this many years ago.... (Score:2)
Re:I hear hype... (Score:5, Informative)
As to capturing the entire FM band at one fell swoop, I know for a fact that the USRP and a good USB 2.0 High-Speed host can sustain 32MB/s transfers. This becomes an actual sampling rate of 8MS/s in quadrature, which means a full 8MHz band can be sampled at 12 bit precision. The FM band is 107.9-87.9=10MHz wide. At 12 bits, no, you can't get the whole band in. However, the USRP can go 16MS/s at 8 bits (again, in quadrature, which effectively doubles the sample rate), and consume 32MB/s across the USB. Since FM (frequency modulation) doesn't require large dynamic range in terms of bit depth, it is possible that you could get nearly full fidelity audio out of all FM channels simultaneously: but you would need one big honking PC to demodulate in real-time.
As I am a licensed Amateur, I can use this as a transmitter, in the bands and with the modulations to which my license class is allowed. I have the 400-500MHz transciever board; I am of course limited to the 70cm Ham band for transmission, and I of course honor that. It works quite well.
For radio astronomy, I have the DBS_RX board, and it directly tunes several radio astronomy bands, including the Hydrogen line at 1.42GHz. It works quite well for both continuum and spectrum studies, although I still have some bugs (with considerable help for the GNUradio project and other programmers) to work out.
Re:I hear hype... (Score:5, Informative)
So if we assume that the all of the data can get to the computer, could the device grab all of the FM in such a format that it could be "decoded" into normal FM quality audio? Short answer, yes. The daughter cards for the baseboard/motherboard convert the signal down to an IF (intermediate frequency) within the range of the ADC. If you really want to know how IF and all that stuff works, look up FM radio on wikipedia.
What really annoys me is how you try (key word is "try") to explain that this device cannot do GPS. You do NOT need accurate timing to do GPS. Time is part of the GPS solution, so you only need a simple realitively accurate clock. The $100 handheld GPS units don't have anything more accurate than the clock in your pc, which this device would have access to (the clock in your pc, that is). In fact GPS is often used to provide timing for applications like NTP servers. Again you would need one of the daughter cards to convert the GPS signals down to an IF. The actual GPS signal (C/A-Code) is transmitted in the L1 band (1575.42 MHz) which when converted down to an IF could be handled by the ADC in the device. From there you would only need to aquire 4 satelites to get a simple PVT solution (position, velocity, and time). And, FYI, GPS in certain applications and situations can give accuracy to within cm range (mm range if using differential GPS and post processing which this device could do).
So before posting as if you are an expert, look up some stuff on what you are writing...or at least explain that you aren't positive on how everything works but you don't think it could do what it claims. And yes, I actually work doing military GPS for a company and have a BS in EE with a concentration in communications (so I should hopefully know what I am talking about).
Re:I hear hype... (Score:2)
Similar package for less than $600 complete (Score:3, Informative)
Or, for even cheaper ($350), Ten-Tec's RX-320D [tentec.com], with digital radio. Everything from DC to 30MHz (shortwave).
I've never used any of them, your milage may vary, etc.
Re:Similar package for less than $600 complete (Score:2)
"the right daughterboards" (Score:5, Informative)
Firstly, the "right" software: Even with a reasonably fast processor (say 3 GHz) today, you are typically only be able to process, at most, a few million samples per second -- especially if you are performing complicated modulation/demodulation, coding/decoding, filtering and protocol processing. Each sample may require substantial computation, and that limits the number of samples you can process per second. That, in its turn, affects the bandwidth that a processor can address (i.e. how wide a part of the radio spectrum you can "see" at any one time).
Secondly, the "right" daughterboards: To be able to address a wide bandwidth, we require digital-to-analog and analog-to-digital converters with high sampling rates. These are limited by the state of the art in signal conversion technology -- typically a couple of million samples per second if we want a reasonable number of bits per sample (at a reasonable price). Push it beyond that, and we have to be happy with fewer bits per sample (may 10 or 8 bits). This introduces noisiness to the signals being transmitted or received, degrading the fidelity of the software-defined radio.
Also, a daugterboard usually has some form of signal translation hardware ("mixers") to translate the low-frequency signals that computers can generate to and from the higher parts of the radio spectrum. Although broadband mixers are available, they need tunable oscillators (reference frequencies), and these tend to be limited to narrower parts of the spectrum. Also, analogue filters, amplifiers and antennas (which all form part of a typical software radio front-end), usually are limited to specific ranges of the radio spectrum.
In short, software radio daughterboards tend to be fairly application-specific (or at least spectrum-specific). We can do a lot of things in software, but a "universal" software radio needs a lot of hardware swapping. I think that makes it a bit less "universal". It might also push the cost of a truly multi-purpose system quite a bit beyond $550.
But I'm glad to see this technology receiving such mainstream attention, and I applaud the efforts of the designers. I just think that TFA (and the post) could maybe be a bit less sensasionalist.
And yes, IAASDRE.
G-J
Re:"the right daughterboards" (Score:2, Insightful)
The Right Duaghterboards: The USRP is outfitted with two Analog Devices AS9862 MxFE chips, each possessing two 64MS/s 12 bit ADC's, two 128MS/s 14 bit DAC's, and assorted auxiliary ADC's and DAC's for things like AGC.
The daughterboards themselves are just RF frontends. The DBS_RX, for instance, uses a Maxim satellite receiver chip that quadrature downconverts from the RF directly to plus and minus baseband. One MxFE can do quadrature, and is a good match to the sing
Re:"the right daughterboards" (Score:3, Interesting)
1.) The hardware design (schematics, layouts, etc) are OPEN;
2.) The FPGA Verilog code is OPEN;
3.) The software is GPL.
As to the computational power of the CPU, I'm thinking an FPGA coprocessor could be used to great effect; something like a DRC coprocessor in a socket 940 (Opteron socket): see http://www.drccomputer.com/pages/modules.html [drccomputer.com] for details. Run the correlation and other functions in the FPGA and offload the grunt work of the algorithm to
Re:"the right daughterboards" (Score:3, Interesting)
WinRadio (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:WinRadio (Score:2)
Re:WinRadio (Score:2)
WinRadio is available as internal PCI and external USB devices. Prices start at $500 US for general-coverage shortwave. Winradio Receivers [grove-ent.com]
Re:WinRadio (Score:2)
Software defined radio is nothing new. What's new is that there are more hands in the pot - more people trying to do cheaper generalized stuff with it, as opposed to bog standard radio (voice, CW, etc) communication, and putting the hardware together in such a state that software developers can hack at it without any electroni
Re:WinRadio (Score:2)
One more thing - the PC internal version was an ISA card - NOT PCI.
WinRadio finally introduced a PCI version about a month ago (not ten years
What this is and what this isn't (Score:5, Insightful)
For those of you who are too lazy, read this [radio-electronics.com].
Now let me point out that while the A/D converter is fast, it only has 12 bits. This will give you about 72 dB of dynamic range. Modern reciever design can yeild dynamic ranges of 100 dB or better (depending on how you measure it). Some day we'll get this performace from 16 bit A/D converters. When that happens, expect the designs of radio to change to software over hardware.
This is the trade off for building a reciever of this sort. There is no free lunch folks...
Re:What this is and what this isn't (Score:2)
Re:What this is and what this isn't (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
$550 is expensive (Score:2)
So the PS3, which is an actual toy mind you, is "prohibitively expensive", while an esoteric piece of hardware only 1 in 10 people would even know how to use is "fun for the whole family, go out and buy one at Walmart"?
Sony told you so (Score:2)
Seriously though, this is an awesome idea, its like the internet 20 years ago, or the personal computer 50 years ago. 100 years from everything will be the same exact microscopic chip running specialized software, from trans dimensional warp drives to an automated bionic eyelash.
Re:Cracking satelite using regular TV card (Score:2)
Re:some misconceptions in the posts (Score:2)
Re:some misconceptions in the posts (Score:2)
Re:Well (Score:2)
As for making it illegal, the board is considered test equipment and even the transmit boards only have a minimal power output (100 mw or less)- you'd need to buy or build an amplifier for the right frequency get the cables to hook it up, and build an appropriate antenna.
This is still not a device that just any idiot can cobble together something that does thoes things- it's not necessarily extremely difficu
Better ban transistors and wire then (Score:2)
Re:Well (Score:2)
Imagine script kiddies getting a hold of these devices and sticking them near an airport. Furthermore, all the bitching about privacy you see here at Slashdot might take on a new meaning once anyone out there is listening in on your cell