Perhaps the most famous of software-defined radios is the RTL-SDR, which is very cheap because it’s a digital TV receiver that’s been pressed into service delivering raw I and Q data streams. But the RTL-SDR is certainly not the only chipset that can do this, and today we have a new one.
The MediaTek MT7996 radio chip in the Gemtek W1700K WiFi 7 router can serve as a very competent SDR receiver, and here’s [h0m3us3r] with the code to make it stream over Ethernet to a Linux machine with a web server, through the device’s SoC.
The radio works on the 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz bands, depending upon which version of the device — and thus which radio chip — you have. These may not be entirely useful to many who use lower bands, and given that a similar hack has been found for ESP32 radios on 2.4 GHz it’s likely a demand will arise for a receive up-converter. Until then, you can look at WiFi packets in a waterfall view to your heart’s content.
Since more and more devices now incorporate a radio, we hope that more such undocumented raw streaming modes will be found, and that we’ll see some other new SDRs. Something to look forward to.
This is the same guy with the esp-sdr project, right?
Seems like h0m3us3r is on a SDR killing streak this month :D
Well, now. There is a pretty large enthusiast community already licensed and ready to use this if it can operate at 2400-2412 MHz, even better if the chipset can go as low as 2300 MHz.
(you know who you are).
Where do you need a license to receive?
The RX freq of this chipset shouldn’t be a limitation. Something like the moRFeus should be easily able to upconvert/downconvert from other bands. I think the HackRF uses a 2.4GHz native chip and it mixes everything internally to get the full bandwidth.
Been trying for some day ,get strong signals,but can’t decide, because I don’t have that too costly dongle with me& setting up the dongle is it self cumbersome.kk