This folder contains everything needed to run the RF Module for AFIT's Immersive Cyber Experience (ICE).
Module time: 3-4 hours
-
Presentation (1 hr). The PowerPoint presentation is designed to walk through the history of RF communications, some of the key concepts and then let the students play with HackRF. Look in the notes of the presentation for key pieces to discuss. This format works best when the presenter can tell a story -- i.e., don't just list facts!
-
Task 0: Look at the RF spectrum. Students should use GNU Radio to connect to their HackRF devices and plot time, frequency, and waterfall plots. This should be an instructor-led demo.
-
Task 1: Build FM Radio Receiver (1-1.5 hrs). Students should use GNU Radio to construct an FM receiver by copying the blocks in https://greatscottgadgets.com/sdr/images/lesson1-grc.png. The goal should be to listen to a popular Dayton radio station, e.g., 99.9 or 107.7MHz
-
Task 2: SIGINT (1.5-2 hrs). Instructor should run transmitter_soapy.py, which will use HackRF to transmit 6 secret messages across the 915 +- 15 MHz spectrum. Students are required to determine which channels are being used, then decipher the messages. They know that the preamble for each message is [1,1,1,1,0,1,0,1,0,0,0,0,1,0,1,0]. DO NOT TELL THE STUDENTS WHERE/WHAT THE MESSAGES ARE! Each will be two ASCII characters: a number and a letter... when put in numeric order it will spell out a message.
Students will need GNURadio and necessary modules/libraries to communicate with HackRF. Instructor will need additional SoapySDR libraries to communicate directly with HackRF via Python script. The easiest way to get all requirements is to install radioconda, which is an anaconda metapackage found here: https://github.com/ryanvolz/radioconda. It includes a ton of great SDR tools for command line and GNURadio control.
conda create -n radioconda -c conda-forge -c ryanvolz --only-deps radioconda
Then run the module with
python3.13 transmitter_soapy.py
Note: On MacOSX (Apple Silicon, M1), there is a problem with the SoapySDR Python module and the underlying libraries/drivers that support interfacing with HackRF. To run the SoapySDR HackRF transmitter app, install soapyhackrf, [email protected] and the Tkinter GUI [email protected] separately and run outside the radioconda environment using Homebrew:
brew install [email protected]
brew install [email protected]
brew install soapyhackrf