Teardown: Mini GPS Jammer

If you spend enough time trolling eBay for interesting electronic devices to take apart, you’re bound to start seeing suggestions for some questionable gadgets. Which is how I recently became aware of these tiny GPS jammers that plug directly into an automotive 12 V outlet. Shipped to your door for under $10 USD, it seemed like a perfect device to rip open in the name of science.

Now, you might be wondering what legitimate uses such a device might have. Well, as far as I’m aware, there aren’t any. The only reason you’d want to jam GPS signals in and around a vehicle is if you’re trying to get away with something you shouldn’t be doing. Maybe you’re out driving a tracked company car and want to enjoy a quick two hour nap in a parking lot, or perhaps you’re looking to disable the integrated GPS on the car you just stole long enough for you to take it to the chop shop. You know, as one does.

But we won’t dwell on the potentially nefarious reasons that this device exists. Hackers have never been too choosy about the devices they investigate and experiment with, and there’s no reason we should start now. Instead, let’s take this piece of gray-area hardware for a test drive and see what makes it tick.

Can You Hear Me Now?

While the GPS constellation average altitude of 20,200 km (12,550 miles) might not be quite as high up as communication satellites in geosynchronous orbit, they’re still pretty far away. With this incredible distance in mind, and given the size of the antenna on most GPS-equipped devices, it’s no wonder that the received signal is very weak. So weak, in fact, that it’s generally below the noise floor. Only with clever algorithms and a dash of wizardry can your phone turn this whisper from the stars into anything resembling useful information.

When viewed by an RTL-SDR, the GPS signal is like a needle in a haystack.

It’s this fragility that makes these sort of low-cost jammers possible. It doesn’t take much to overpower the legitimate signal. Keep in mind that a device like this isn’t trying to mimic a GPS satellite, it’s simply broadcasting out enough loud nonsense that the real satellite can no longer be heard.

With the jammer powered up, we can clearly see how the already meager signal is absolutely obliterated by the patterns being broadcast by the device.

With the jammer switched on, the signal becomes a needle in a haystack of needles.

There’s simply no contest; the legitimate signal is tens of thousands of kilometers away, and this thing is screaming its head off at arm’s reach. I didn’t test the range of this device, mainly because I didn’t want to have it powered up for any longer than necessary, but it’s certainly capable of doing the deed at several meters at least.

Betrayed By an Old Friend

Now that we’ve broken federal law for a few minutes by operating this device (seriously, don’t buy one of these) and verified that the dastardly thing does what it’s advertised to do, the only thing left to do is open it up and figure out how it works. For the $8 I paid for this unit I certainly wasn’t expecting a lot inside, but even still, it’s fascinating to see just how easy it is to cause so much trouble.

After years of losing work to the Arduino, the 555 timer has fallen in with the wrong crowd.

On one side of the PCB we can see there are only two major components, a 78M05 regulator to step the vehicle’s 12 volts down to 5 volts, and the hacker’s old friend, the NE555 timer. It’s a shame to see that it takes a teardown of an illegal jammer before we see one of the most iconic ICs in the history of electronics, but there you have it.

Still, unless you’re looking to jam an AM radio, a 555 isn’t going to cut it. Flipping the board over, we get our first glance at the real trouble maker.

RF Witchcraft in a Can

Clearly this component, labeled 13BA A041, is the star of the show. But what is it? While I wasn’t able to find a datasheet for this specific model, what we’re looking at is a microwave voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO). The visible top plate is actually a metallic shield, and with a bit of persuasion, we can look inside to see the incredible array of components that have been packed into the 9 mm x 7 mm area.

The basic theory of operation here is that the VCO’s control pin (labeled VC on the silkscreen) is connected to the output of the 555 timer on the other side of the board. The signal coming from the 555 modulates the output of the VCO, causing the noise we see centered on the 1,575 MHz GPS frequency.

With the scope connected to the VC pin, we can see the 133 KHz sawtooth signal being produced by the 555 timer. If you were to adjust this signal you could potentially shift around the frequency range that the jammer operates on, though without a datasheet for the VCO, it’s difficult to say how far you could push it in either direction. But since these were presumably the cheapest components available, probably not very far.

It’s also worth taking a close look at the small four pin device at the top of the board labeled Q6. Located directly in the path of the high frequency signal as it passes from the VCO to the center pin of the antenna connector, this would be a logical place to put an amplifier. Though it may also be some kind of a diode to protect the electronics from anything that’s picked up from the antenna.

An Unfortunate Surprise

Part of me assumed that the Mini GPS Jammer just wouldn’t work, or at least, it would work so poorly as to not be an issue. But no, in a break from tradition, a cheap imported device from eBay managed to actually exceed all of my expectations.

Not that I’m happy about it. Sure the information to build a jammer like this has been out in the wild for years, but you still needed to have the wherewithal to actually source the parts and assemble it. With such a low bar for entry, this device is clearly quite dangerous in the wrong hands. While a WiFi or cellular jammer would perhaps present a more immediate threat, this is still not technology that anyone wants to see proliferate.

142 thoughts on “Teardown: Mini GPS Jammer

  1. The 4-pin device is certainly an amplifier. One of the pins are having DC injected trough an inductor that makes sure that DC can get in, but the RF isn’t shunted to the supply.

    1. Not to confuse satellite GPS with ‘GPS’ received from cell towers. Many law enforcement departments use cell phone pinging to track (in other words, cell towers). They admit it doesn’t zero in in many instances, but rejecting the wayward pings, and using enough pings, they can follow right along… One can always turn the phone off and put it in a simple shielded envelope – should that ever become necessary…

  2. > The only reason you’d want to jam GPS signals in and around a vehicle is if you’re trying to get away with something you shouldn’t be doing.

    Since when an only guaranteed way to disable GPS tracking in all that Google/Facebook//Twitter/Apple/etc. bloat/spyware crap you obliged to carry with your phone become “something you shouldn’t be doing”?

    Just curious.

    1. Then just turn off the location service on your device. Or maybe don’t install any of those social media apps to begin with.

      In any event, this device certainly isn’t going to help you. Carrying around an illegal jammer is not the solution to unwanted software on your smartphone.

        1. Cellular tracking is not even near to the precision of GPS. WiFi ESSID database tracking available to corporations who extensively steal phones AP list along with GPS position is often much better than cellular tracking.

          To track a phone you need at least three base stations seeing your phone. In towns precision degrades due to reflections and difractions, and in rural areas you don’t have enough base stations.

          1. How precise does it need to be – tracking to within a mile on you at all times is still really quite informative. Doesn’t take long to figure out you stay in this radius more than 2 mins only when the burger van is there or hmm this mile you and x keep arriving in at about the same time and staying there for about the same time – why that should matter if people know is another question.

            But the shear volume of data points on you and anybody else carrying a smartphone around you don’t need high level precision to learn what everyone is up to. So if you are really privacy minded just don’t take the damn spyware laden devices with you, or if you must have it handy carry in its own little Faraday cage.

          2. 5G will change that. It’ll report your position down to decimeters or even centimeters in three dimensional space. Phased array antennas are used in military for exactly the same reason.

      1. Many cars are now “connected” and the manufacturer is usually not willing to tell you how to switch that off or offer service to switch it off.
        I am well able to remove whatever tracking device from my car but not everybody is that technically educated, volkswagen for example puts the device behind the instrument cluster with antennas integrated so you have to do some serious work to remove the thing.

        Those people simply buy this device, problem solved, and I cant completely disagree with them because they never asked for this privacy invasion.
        Its just a matter of time before this will become a serious problem.

          1. As I hate noise I’d love this to be true, keep the damn airwaves for what they are allocated for. But it really can’t be, even if they noticed and had the directional detection to know which moving target had the jammer in odds are good they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. And I’d be surprised if they really have the gear to track moving jamming signals in use – it currently doesn’t seem worth it.

          2. At sporadic intervals the ARRL publishes lists of recent FCC enforcement actions. I remember seeing people getting busted for these GPS jammers, and the fines are well over $10K. Enforcement is via Random Terror – your odds of getting caught are small, but the penalty is pretty harsh. Your chances of getting busted also go up substantially if you’re near one of the remaining FCC field sites – there’s a definite geographic clustering going on.

        1. Connected Vehicles, SAE J2735, is meant for your vehicle to interact with the traffic signal so that we could provide you Signal Phase and Timing Information (SPaT) / Traffic Incident Messages OR communicate with other vehicles for vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communications. The technology randomizes any information about your vehicle as part of the standard.

          The Roadside Unit (RSU), NTCIP 1218, communicates with the On-board Unit (OBU) to gather information such wheel grip factor, wiper on/off, speed, and other information at a rate of 10× a second. The traffic signal gathers information from the RSU which adjusts signal timing parameters based on an algorithm and the information provided by the groups of vehicles.

          You tearing out your GPS does not allow the RSU to know where your vehicle is in relation to the signal (North of, West of, etc) since it provides heading, elevation (freeway vs arterial overpass scenario). The technology is based on Security Certificates which must be signed within a short period of time before it is disregarded. That security certificate is signed by your vehicle manufacturer’s OBU and time stamped using the GPS time data.

          The range of the RSU is 3,000 feet which as another reason MAP messages (message showing the geometry of the road) are important and the RSU knowing the location of your vehicle.

          All that technology is rendered useless because the removal of your GPS not to mention any life safety systems that automatically notify local authorities in the event of an accident.

          1. “The technology randomizes any information about your vehicle as part of the standard.”

            Until law enforcement figures out that they can aggregate the data from across the grid of traffic control devices and get fine-tuned tracking information. History shows us that if a technology can be abused by the government/law enforcement, it will. When the anonymizing takes place under your adversary’s control they can opt to disable it at any time. “Just trust us” is NEVER a valid argument for allowing the government or corporations to do anything. The only system to be trusted is one where any anonymization takes place on the individual’s device and they have absolute control of the device. Everything else is adversarial by design.

            “All that technology is rendered useless because the removal of your GPS”

            Good. That’s the price government gets to pay for abusing their power.

      2. > Then just turn off the location service on your device. Or maybe don’t install any of those social media apps to begin with.

        And how do you know, that turning off that switch in settings is really do something? As for social media – may be you know, that there is huge social pressure from all directions (family,job,friends,local communities) to install and use that social crap. So, average user without soldering or/and hacking skills is hard pushed to GPS tracking without any possibility to definitely turn it off.

        > Carrying around an illegal jammer is not the solution to unwanted software on your smartphone.

        This is only solution corporations leave for average phone user. If some three-letter agency think that it is illegal, they should force corporations to give a user an option to easy and completely disable tracking in hardware and software. If they don’t want to do it, there always will be solutions as described above, and they could not do anything with it.

        1. > they should force corporations to give a user an option to easy and completely disable tracking in hardware and software

          > This is only solution corporations leave for average phone user.

          They literally have an off switch in the OS settings. It’s your paranoia that means you don’t trust it. As such, additional legislation cannot solve your problem.
          Even if they had a physical switch on the side or a GPS module that you can physically remove you could claim that it was a dummy.

      3. Lots of phone nowadays come with social media apps installed by default and sometimes it takes running adb or rooting device to completely remove them (something not many end users are willing or able to do).

      4. Unfortunately for most folks uninstalling most of the datamining software phones come with isn’t possible, and even when they say they do, it’s been proven several times that the likes of google apple and facebook can ignore you having turned off location services.

        Not to say that jamming the gps in your area is a valid solution to this, but you really can’t trust closed and locked software to do what you say when there’s money to make.

        1. Your phone company knows what towers see you (by necessity). Ether way, jamming others’ service is cruising for a legal bruising; you’ll be better off using a near-field antenna to keep the power as low as possible.

    2. Criminals are planting trackers on RV’s here in the UK. They have simcards which use GPS to track and trace where the vehicles are located. It sends periodical messages to the criminal then stolen and chopped. Then into a shipping container and sent to Eastern Europe and Africa, never to be seen again. Hundreds have disappeared.

    3. Stanson, Thanks for calling that comment into question. I’m being stalked by a violent Ex. Jamming a GPS signal would help and is an example of trying “…to get away [from] something [he] shouldn’t be doing.”

      1. I’m afraid that one of these would only prevent your own phone from knowing where you are and would only work when it is on and when you are near it.
        It is also extremely illegal to operate because of all the harm it does to other users in the area. It could be especially dangerous to aircraft nearby.

        As such, if you suspect that someone is tracking you after having compromised your Google or iCloud account or gaining physical access to your phone, a better solution would be to:
        – Reset your passwords
        – Check that any standard tracking systems like find my iPhone or Google Maps location sharing have not been secretly enabled on your account.
        – Check that their phone number/email has not been set as a recovery option in case you ‘forget’ your password.
        – Delete any apps you don’t recognise, or even better perform a full factory reset of the phone in addition to all of the above.

        Domestic abuse is no joke. Stay safe.

    4. exactly. We have the right to simply not be tracked. Wanting privacy doesn’t mean a person is up to no good.
      We truly have created a society of stalkers. Stalking is a crime, btw. Calling it “surveillance” doesn’t change what it is.

    5. this is nothing to do with phones it for vehicle GPS tracking, it doesn’t even have to be for use against law enforcement, most company vehicles and commercial vehicles have gps trackers now days so they can see what there employees are doing

    6. No, that’s not the only reason that you would want to jam GPS signals, known or unknown.

      Maybe you are trying to prevent Law Enforcement from violating your civil rights, stop criminals from tracking you, keep some creep from stalking you, or maybe just ensure your privacy from guys like Stanson. Lol

      Just sayin.

      1. > Also, if you know there’s a tracker in your car, take it out?

        If they know they’re in a trustless toxic relationship that necessitates GPS tracking, get out of it?

    1. The real answer is always in the comments….

      Trackers are one of those great thought-problems that I never really have to deal with:

      1.) Put it on said girlfriend’s car and then wait for her to melt down because “You’re following her everywhere she goes”.

      2.) Mail it to a friend, preferably in Omsk or Adelaide and have them put it on a random car there.

      3.) If it’s the kind you have to remove and download (rather than having it phone data out), put in geographic points/timestamps indicating your car goes faster than the speed of light.

      4.) Cube satellite.

  3. Assuming, of course that the cigarette lighter works…and that the GPS isn’t wired into the “always on” 12V bus (lighter sockets usually turn off with the ignition).

    It’s these little details that separate the professional from the amateur.

    (LoJack works entirely differently, this won’t jam that)

    1. If my cigarette lighter socket turned itself off automatically, i wouldn’t have killed the car battery and had to replace it. This stupid car turns the headlights off automatically, it turns the radio off automatically (things might want to actually USE while parked with the engine off) but it lets the lighter socket run unlimited until the battery is 100% dead. Modern cars suck. Don’t buy a 2008 Astra, even if it is much cheaper than an equivalent Corolla.

  4. I have a cheap Android head unit in my truck. If my phone is near it (like in the vent clip), the GPS in the phone is jammed.

    The GPS in the head unit works fine, because the GPS antenna is 4 feet away.

  5. The GPS modulation and power still seems to be a mystery to most, almost 40 years after its creation. You cant see GPS signal because it is spread below the thermal noise floor. You cant see it with the (crappy) noise floor of the RTL-SDR, or even with a kick ass high $$ spec-an. Thats one of the beauties of low bit rate high spreading direct sequence codes.

    In order to “see” GPS on a spec an, it needs to cross correlate the last 1000 or so “chips” that form a symbol, and plot that energy. Not allot of specans do that (However it would be a GREAT RTL-SDR project!!)

    Many, many engineers have been lost bu this concept- Almost monthly I see one of our junior (sometimes not so junior) engineers withs a spec-an attached to a GPS feed, coming to the conclusion that the “active antenna is dead” Because they cant see the signal! — and even worse,I have seen them add amplifiers until they “could see it” -this was almost always the effect of feedback forming an oscillator.

      1. Exactly! You can “see” the band pass filter operating in -some- of the better antennas letting more noise in from the LNA (If the antenna had the LNA before the filter) – but you are in o way “seeing” the GPS signal. And, few are aware, there are multiple code-signals on-top-of each other, some of which are the C-A code, and then the much wider P/Y code. Oh yeah, and all the satellites in the sky are on the exact same center frequency, so your antenna is picking up all codes at once plus now there is even M code. Then add in L2 but, L2 is actually on a different center frequency. GPS is incredibly complex. Incredibly. It is absolutely astonishing that the system works at all, truly one o the mathematical and physics wonders of the world. The fact that you can buy a fairly good receiver for less than a six pack of crappy beer is absolutely dizzying.

        So, (one more detour) – once, one of our more ambitious engineers must have been paying attention when told that you cant “see” GPS using the satellites and the antenna. He was quick to provide a solution to this problem and promptly hooked up an omni directional antenna on the roof, attached to a sig gen putting out +10dbm at 1575.42 MHz. He was so proud to show his “pip” on the analyzer… Until the the point when I informed him that he was probably jamming every GPS receiver in a 20 mile radius! Thank God planes were not falling out of the sky and people were not diving into lakes..

      2. Specifically what’s probably happening is that the active antennas have ceramic bandpass filters centered on the GPS band, often on both the input and output side of the low-noise amplifier. This makes it look like there’s a “bump” of signal (really noise) at the GPS frequency of 1.575GHz – outside of that passband very little gets through the filter.

  6. “While a WiFi or cellular jammer would perhaps present a more immediate threat, this is still not technology that anyone wants to see proliferate.”

    Much like encryption, the very use of may draw attention to oneself. I’m sure the watchers will never notice the long periods of solid GPS outages. Necessitating maybe a different form of tracking (not like there isn’t a sea of signals to observe and use in a modern society).

      1. What possesses a person to move to a new place and then constantly complain that the new place, which was chosen for a reason, is worse than the old place rather than simply moving back?
        Was your former home covered in lava by a sudden volcano? Nuclear waste? Murder Hornets?

  7. Leaving aside how sensible it is to jam a military system that is part of the critical national infrastructure devices like this are decreasing in effectiveness anyway.

    Not only is this sort of jamming trivial to detect an increasing number of GNSS devices include systems to cope with it. A frequency adjustable notch filter on the front end will do it if you can adjust it quickly enough. The anti-jamming systems aren’t perfect but they are getting better each generation. Plus GLONASS and BeiDou (and GPS L2 and L5) are on different frequencies and most systems are multi-system if not multi-band these days. Just killing GPS L1 no longer guarantees it can’t get the location.

    GPS spoofing (where you put out a fake signal at a stronger power level than the real one) is far harder to detect and avoid. But it also requires a far higher level of sophistication to do, especially if the receiver has anti spoofing features as some newer ones do.

    1. > GPS spoofing (where you put out a fake signal at a stronger power level than the real one) is far harder to detect and avoid. But it also requires a far higher level of sophistication to do, especially if the receiver has anti spoofing features as some newer ones do.

      That’s absolutely not true. Any stooge with a HackRF clone or better can download https://github.com/osqzss/gps-sdr-sim and then get the ephermis file ftp://cddis.nasa.gov/gnss/data/daily/2020/brdc/ and get the newest brdc####.20n

      This shit’s nearly click and play. There’s even GPS circuits you can spoof GPS as. And with a BladeRF with a power amplifier, we’re talking 200mW.

      1. I’ve looked at that, it’s not a good library. You may get roughly the right location but a quick glance at the pesudorange residuals and it’s obvious that there is something very wrong with the signal.

    2. Or, a bad idea and $5,000. GPS “simulators” are cheap and ubiquitous. One of the few thing I think the government needs to keep careful registration of…. and I am a libertarian.

    3. And even spoofing isn’t certain to work even if you do fool the GPS system- with so many positional systems your device will likely ignore the one that doesn’t match the rest – so suddenly you have to spoof all the satellite, cellular and Wi-Fi based systems that can be used to get positional info.

    4. Old news very much in line with the discussion on this subject.

      The interesting part is how a GLONASS-receiver was completely unaffected of the ongoing jamming of NAVSTAR GPS L1 Coarse / Acqustion Code at 10.23 * 154 = 1575.42 Mhz with 1023 “chips” bits with chippingrate 1.023MHz, while the Prescision-code has 23500 chips with chippingrate of 10.23 MHz.

      The “chiptrain” of C/A-chips are repeated and is “only” 300 thousand meter long, but hence the satellite is moving as the “chiptrain” is transmitted. [inverse of 1.023Mz is prox 1 microsecond, 1 microsecond equals one thousand nanosecond, in free space, radiosignal and light travels prox 0.3 meter per nanosecond, 300 meter in one microsecond]

      One single “chip” is transmitted prox each microsecond, making each “chip” prox 300 meter long.

      When the C/A code repeat itself following every 1023 “chips”, then the “codetrain” leaving the satellite is prox 300 thousand meter long.

      When the satellite is more than 22 million meters away from us, if it’s right above us in zenith, then there will be prox 70-seventhy codetrains between us and the satellite, every “train” looking just the same.

      To resolve the ambiguity, one had to enter the approximate position into the GPS-receiver, and it would assume to be on the ground, applying earth center as a “fixed satellite” during earlier days when satellites in the sky were few. This has been overcome by huge increase in processing-power and an increased number of visible satellites to track, and thereby be able to overcome the initial hurdles.

      A receiver from prox 1980 had very little computational power, and also limited number of channels, usually two that were multiplexed between tracking satellites, and to receive and decode the ephemeris.

      The P-code-train has C/A-code-train has got 10 times the resolution, and thereby would offer more precision when it comes to code-tracking, as each “chip” is prox 30 meter long when it comes to P-code. But todays receivers are tracking the phase of the RF-signal that each satellite in view transmits. This technique is named RTK Real Time Kinematic and requires two receivers exchanging information, one is moving, the rover, and one is stationary, the base, tracking the same set of satellites.

      This technique has again been superseeded by a technique named PPP Precision Point Positioning, where the receiver receives ultra-accurate up-to-date ephemeris and resolve most of the other issues with the transmission-path through signal-analysis of the various signal-components, as the most recent satellites transmits 8-eight known signals at the same time, and probably a few “top-secret” ones as well.

      PPP is possible when low-rate S/A Selective Availability is not in play, otherwise RTK or DGPS is the option as long as the transmission-channel and processing for corrections can keep up with the S/A-rate.

      Russia Jamming GPS – Official Norwegian Report
      by Editor | Oct 27, 2017 | Blog https://rntfnd.org/wp-content/uploads/Norway-Comms-Auth-Report-GPS-Jamming-Sept-2017.pdf

  8. Frankly, the reason that such devices are illegitimate is not because of what you’d actually use them for, people have perfectly good rights to want to ensure that a GPS system can’t log their motions, but because of the terrible effects such a device has on all those innocent bystanders who do want to get their GPS signal and may have their systems seriously messed up if they can’t. Plenty of stuff relies on GPS for its clock and timing signals, lots of stuff can break without them, evil little lumps like this device have the trouble that they mess indiscriminately with the GPS spectrum for everyone in the area, not just for the individual who has a reason not to want to have GPS work for them. If anyone wants to block GPS signals locally then a faraday cage around the thing you want to be “blacked out” is the legimiate way to do it without hurting anyone else.

    1. What’s the range of a jammer? If it doesn’t jam GPS reception beyond the confines of the vehicle its being used in, I see no problem with it. It’s when it jams GPS reception by others that it’s bad.

      1. Even if your one of them doesn’t get out of your tin box enough to break the system for others its going to be adding to the noise making it harder to get the signal. Throw in another one, two, dozen in an unknown radius and suddenly you are back to being part of the problem for others. It just isn’t practical to do this without being a noise pollution problem for everyone.

        You want to toggle your GPS devices on and off either add a switch between the antenna and the device, turn the damn thing off, leave it behind or keep it in a Faraday cage.

      2. I think what everyone is missing here is that the function/reason for this device is to disable the vehicle gps tracking device. The vehicle GPS tracking device would be installed by the vehicle owner to assist in the recovery of the vehicle in the event that the vehicle was stolen or hijacked. Vehicle recovery teams appear to be aware of the jamming when they are near.

        1. I recently purchased a car and every single car at the dealership had a GPS tracking device installed by the dealership and they refused to uninstall it despite that I was paying cash. They had no legitimate reason to need a tracker on a car that was paid for.

  9. Wan’t to know a legit use for this kind of devices? Some drones refuse to fly in city areas for safety and legal reasons; and these drones use GPS location to determine If they are in a city area or not. I think that a drone shouldnt fly in the open on city areas, but there are users that enjoy their drones indoor, flying them or doing races in enclosed spaces like gyms or warehouses (I don’t see a problem If they fly It indoor); and this kind of GPS signal blockers are great for that purpose.

    1. First of all, the kinds of drones that have GPS fencing built in aren’t the sort of thing you’d be flying indoors. But even if you did, the chances they would be able to get a GPS lock inside of a building are slim to none.

      But even if your proposed situation was accurate, that’s still not an excuse for blocking everyone’s GPS. Just disable the antenna on the device itself.

    2. This is assuming the drone will even fly at all if it cant get a GPS lock. Something like this would prevent it from getting a GPS lock and possibly flying at all depending on how the firmware is coded

  10. This jammer seems to have a predicable period, I wonder if it’s possible to process the signal and cancel out the predictable signal? I’m sure the military radio wanks are reading this article and snickering.

      1. The ublox m8 has CW Jamming detection and removal for 8 euros in quantities of 100 or more. In large enough quantities it would be under $5.

        No idea how well it would cope with this jamming since the frequency is constantly changing but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is something out there that can do it in the $5 range.

  11. I have known several under cover police officers that use these as prevention of a suspect placing a tracker on their car to find out where they live and possibly cause harm to their family.

  12. Range is important, and it would have been useful to know the range of this device for jamming a cheap GPS. How hard would it have been to do a few tests to figure out how far out the jam field is effective? If it’s only a few feet, it’s hard to get one’s panties in a wad over it even if it’s technically illegal. If it’s thirty feet then yeah, you could be seriously inconveniencing people (including drivers) around you, much less cool.

  13. > The only reason you’d want to jam GPS signals in and around a vehicle is if you’re trying to get away with something you shouldn’t be doing.

    Or maybe preventing Big Brother or anyone else from knowing your every move because of… I don’t know… privacy? The old “if you’re not doing anything wrong, then you don’t have anything to worry about” is the same logic they used in Germany… right before people were disappeared for wrongthought.

    1. This is a ridiculous line of logic. If you’re being tracked by your phone/car/tv/whatever, then that’s where the problem it. Get rid of the device that’s tracking you if you are worried about privacy.

      Don’t block my GPS because you’ve been peer pressured into installing social media on your phone.

      1. I don’t use anti-social media or own a cell phone or one of these vehicles and never will. My argument isn’t for myself. Ever heard the quote:

        First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out.
        Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out.
        Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out.
        And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.

        Something doesn’t have to directly affect me for me for me to speak out against it.

        Also, I seriously doubt this little Chinese device is going to put out a strong enough signal to affect the vehicle next to the one in which this is used. Aside from all of that, I’m not advocating for this as a 24/7, everyday solution to a problem. However, there may come a time when this might be a nice little device to have in your bug out bag.

      1. EDIT: Please don’t actually buy this. Pay cash for your car if that’s an issue, or at least look carefully at what you are signing on your car loan. App permissions at least on iOS are pretty robust. And there are completely legal “bug busters” if you suspect a malicious third party is tracking you.

  14. In China, there will be some cars that can’t be legally transferred and sold through agreements. After these cars are sold, the seller will find the vehicle through the GPS attached with the car and grab the vehicle back. In order to avoid being robbed, the buyer needs to buy the equipment

  15. I own one and it’s range is very small, maybe 10 meters, at most. For those of you who haven’t figured out that there’s a corporate feeding frenzy going on for you personal data, any and all of it, this device affords me some exemption from giving away all my info. If you own a newer car, you prob have a small screen inside of it that displays your WiFi connection, the internet or whatever you want. How long before it displays ads of businesses you drive past? ALL your information is being saved, bought and sold, often without your knowing. I want to be the deciding authority on who knows what about me instead of having it all out there for sale.

    1. Chris let me say I am a fan of personal privacy but have seen our society evolve to more and more tracking. I block specific things … Web activity using VPNs and Tor in random manners for instance … But this little trick does almost nothing if you are concerned about your vehicle movements. You would have to a) use cash at gas stations b) not have a cell phone and cover up your license plate from the THOUSANDS of cameras around town .

      With personal cameras (dash cams, ring, cell phones) in addition to surveillance , buses, trucks, drones, police, ambulance, google, Uber,etc. ) There is so much footage of you out there that through AI and computer analysis of image databases your activities can be tracked without any electronic signals from your car or phone. Just visually. Now you have to disguise yourself , cover your plate , and move around in darkness. If you are a privacy advocate don’t fool yourself that blocking L1 on GPS is fooling anybody that wants to know about you … You are just annoying the guy next to you trying to use his gps for navigation.

  16. “The only reason you’d want to jam GPS signals in and around a vehicle is if you’re trying to get away with something you shouldn’t be doing.”

    …You mean like giving yourself some degree of privacy in the midst of big tech companies meticulously tracking your behavior patterns in the name of profit?

    1. I know one spouse who escaped an abusive home only to have the safe house compromised by a gps tracker hidden in a child’s teddy bear. Safe house got raided at night by some cousins. Victims family say she came “willingly”.

  17. Even when it’s illegal under employment law, or where the law requires certain driver alertness management standards to be maintained, some trucking companies install GPS trackers in their trucks and harass the truck drivers with flimsy pretexts for their knowledge of the details of their driving (“you were seen at this rest stop for too long” etc.) This is one of the reasons these devices exist, because the company owners can’t complain about a truck driver jamming a device which is illegally there.

    Having said that, jamming GPS is generally something that should be illegal. My point is that I disagree with the assertion that those deploying it are doing so for “nefarious reasons”.

    What I’d prefer to see is government installed GPS trackers, holding both drivers and their employers to the expected standards. I’m sure this will elicit cries of “nanny state”, which is a totally garbage argument. Government’s license trucks and drivers, and hold them to certain standards around competence and safety. This is simply another measure, and fundamentally, the trucking industry has not shown any level of responsibility or ethics and enforcement is needed.

    1. Anything that prevents the erosion of privacy and prevents data collection of the common citizen is a blessing.

      Any city, county, state, country that says you aren’t allowed to protect yourself and you must flee is already tyranny. But Guess what? It exists already. Wife and Kids are getting Grape-Koolaided by armed intruders? You aren’t allow to attack only call the cops and run. Not a good spouse or parent if you belief the law takes precedent. However, there is a good chance they will get brainwashed by the state if you DO defend and DON’T allow it to happen. Understand?

      The EARN IT act was the same thing, remove all blinds, shutters, tint, locks on everything digital. Litterally we are on toilets on our phones but removing the lock and door? That was insane.

      They collect enough data on us already just through cell towers. (I worked at Carrier IQ btw).

      I say stop feeding the beast. Become more mature in your thinking please.

    1. Actually might buy one, and hack it (again!) to do something more creative.
      Namely use the VCO to make a calibration box for testing amplifiers.
      The cost is quite reasonable when it is filled with such useful parts.
      For bonus points reuse the case and turn it into a hotspot, as its antenna
      looks very much like one used for 4G and probably is similar.

  18. This would work on Elog trackers for things like heavy equipment or Semi Tractor Trailers. Never mind the fact that you would disappear and then magically reappear a thousand kilometers away. But I can think of ways it can be abused to violate the hours of service.

  19. Legit use? EASY!

    Stop tagging photos with GPS METADATA!

    Feeding everything to Zoom, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Apple, Facetime, Google, YouTube?

    Absolutely not giving anything to them.

    If this is a adjustable for a 5-20 meter range and portable power supply it’s good!

    If you want one for your homestead so the drone can’t record properly? Fantastic. Put a servo tracker and pringles can around it.

    Speeders, Drag Racing, Red Light Rippers and raw noise pollution? People starting fires and riots? Oh that’s fine… BUT a Shed not connected to the house for storing wood?

    “Sorry, we don’t care if it’s from Home Depot, that shed looks like a one bedroom Apartment to us. See? Here is the aerial footage and GPS data. You didn’t get the building permit and here is your fine. Enjoy!”

  20. At this year’s ION conference there is a paper on an automated system they set up in Norway to monitor GPS jammers on the road. It detected around 1 intentional jammer like this each day.
    The system logged details of the type of jammer and took pictures of the cars and trucks that they were in.

    It wouldn’t take much to turn this into a system that automatically sent out tickets.

    1. “it wouldn’t take much..” Well I guess NOW… you can be SURE.. and ALWAYS have to look over your shoulder for just giving the idea… Personally. I would not be. Against. Watching..

      Your mail box filled with grenades and WATCHING ATTENTIVELY you opening it. For charity or whatever.

      Enjoy your hell psychopath.

  21. I work with First Amendment Auditors (search on YouTube) and the introduction of the Microsoft IoT system has permitted the cops to abuse the Auditors by summonsing totally disproportionate and unnecessary back-up. Disabling GPS, for a short range renders the ‘come to me’ request useless.

    I also have a vehicle with ‘complimentary’ GPS reporting. It took me some time to disable all the peripheral junk auto manufacturers fitted, at my cost, added to my vehicle.

    I also changed the OBD connector – which stops the cops from interrogating the electronics.

  22. In about 1,5-2 years, we will probably see an increase in use of these devices in Europe, since they may actually come into good use here. They will probably be a simple way to “knock out” the stupid speed limiters that they will be putting in new cars by 2022: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47715415

    That system needs GPS to get the cars position and determine what the speed limit is, then limit the car to that speed. It may also have a camera that reads signs, but that’s easely fixed by putting a piece of tape over the camera or a picture in front of it, that shows a faked speed sign that says “250” or something (along with the jammer).
    Although, you don’t need to jam the whole area – you could just use a very small jammer and put it right on the antenna to the cars GPS-system. But I don’t think many people will think about that. They will just buy a strong device like this, and put it inside the car to jam the antenna that’s usually on the outside of the car…

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