Getting Started With The HackRF

Shannon starts up the HackRF to show some of it's capabilities. Follow along and learn about this new software defined radio peripheral capable of transmission or reception of radio signals!

HackRF - Getting Started and 2 Radio Frequencies at Once Pentoo, a Linux distribution with full support for HackRF and GNU Radio. Download the latest Pentoo .iso image from one of the mirrors listed athttp://pentoo.ch/download/. Then burn the .iso to a DVD or use UNetbootin to install the .iso on a USB flash drive. Boot your computer using the DVD or USB flash drive to run Pentoo. Once Pentoo is running, type startx at the command line to launch the desktop environment. Accept the "default config" in the first dialog box and then launch a Terminal Emulator window using the icon at the bottom of the screen. At the time of writing, the current Pentoo .iso (2014.0-RC3) has a minor bug that you need to work around by typing "eselect lapack set 1" at the command line in the terminal window before trying to use GNU Radio. You only need to do this once after starting up Pentoo, but you'll have to do it every time you boot an unmodified .iso. To verify that your HackRF is detected, type "hackrf_info" at the command line. It should produce a few lines of output including "Found HackRF board." The 3V3, 1V8, RF, and USB LEDs should all be illuminated and are various colors. Now you can use programs such as gnuradio-companion or gqrx to start experimenting with your HackRF. Open GNu-radio companion via terminal and open the first HackRF map file.