Beginner's Guide To The HackRF & Portapak With Mayhem

[Music] hi and welcome back to another tech mines video if you're new here then welcome to the channel if you're a regular viewer then welcome back so in this video I'll be covering the hack RF along with the porter pack unboxing first time you set up and taking a look at what applications come preloaded on the porter pack now if the hack RF has interested you in the past but you've not yet taken the plunge to buy one then it's important to know which hack RF and pter pack combo to look out for not all of them will be fully compatible with future releases of the Mayhem firmware so always check the products description to ensure full compatibility with future releases now this particular hack RF and pack combo shown in this video is fully compatible able with the latest release of firmware in fact this particular Port pth comes delivered with version 1.7.4 and this is not the latest version so in this video we'll also take a look at how to upgrade the firmware which incidently is extremely easy now this particular kit that I got from bang good comes with a few extra goodies this small magnetic antenna is designed to be used around 433 MHz so perfect for the ISM band another antenna included is this routa style flat antenna which is actually designed to be used around the 2.4 GHz range the telescopic antenna is stated to be useful for between 40 MHz up to 6 GHz due to being able to adjust the length of the antenna but it's kind of short really for 40 MHz now this kit comes with the hack RF and the pter pack already assembled in this rather Nice metal case the rotary control and the push buttons all have a quite good feel to them and there's definitely some form of quality control there if you want to you can attach the little gray button caps to each of the buttons if they're not already fitted I guess it just makes it easier to press any of those five control buttons on the bottom of the pter pack you'll notice two SMA sockets that come from the hack RF directly these are used for the clock in and clock out now more about that later as that's really in advanced use now next to this is a USB socket which is used to either charge the internal battery or control the hack RF from a computer you'll also find a 3.5 mm audio socket which can be used to attach headphones or even an external speaker although this particular model of Porter pack comes with a built-in speaker now on the top you'll find a couple of push buttons butons and one is a reset button and the other is a dfu button which puts the hack RF into a firmware download mode now only use that if you know what you're doing there's also an SD card slot where you can store files from the portter pack firmware download folder now this will contain things like Maps Etc status LEDs are also visible through a small slot in that metal casing and they will change depending on what's going on with a hack RF at the time the main receive and transmit antenna connection is also found on the top which is an S SMA connector if we take a quick look inside the casing we can see the porter pack main board which is that board on the top with the screen attached to it underneath this is the hack RF main board which of course can be used on its own without a pter pack but obviously with a computer instead looking through the boards from the side we can see the internal clock battery and then from the other side we can see the installed rechargeable battery which gets charged when a USB cable is attached now you can't really see it but the internal speaker is on the underside of the hack RF board now to get the most out of your new hack RF and pack combo it's worth updating it to the latest version of the Mayhem firmware now to check which version you have simply turn on the hack RF by tapping the rotary dial and assuming the battery is charged you should see the display like this now if nothing happens just plug the hack RF into your computer via the USB port just so that power is applied and press the middle push button and then the main application menu should appear and down on the bottom left you should now see the Mayhem version number as you can see here we have version 1.7.4 which is the version that it's shipped with if we now pop over to the Mayhem firmware GitHub website we can check to see what the latest released version is as we can see here the latest version is actually 1.8.0 and it provides a list of all the changes compared to the previous version now the files that we need are located just under where it says assets and just above this there's a link to a Wiki site which covers how to install the firmware from various different operating systems like Windows Linux and Mac OS however in this video I'll show you how to update the firware using Windows now the two files that I'll download are these two one of which contains the files we need to copy to a fat 32 formatted micro SD card and you don't have to download the SD card files for the port pack to work but for the best experience and to make sure all of the features work for their best then just download these now once you've downloaded these two zip files it's time to uncompress them just like you would do with any AR I file now before we begin the firmware update you need to copy the contents of the SD card zip file to your SD card now this may take a couple of minutes as there's quite a lot of files to copy over once the files are copied over to the SD card remove the SD card from your computer and then just pop it into the hack RF STD card slot like this now you need to attach a USB cable to the hack RF and then to your computer so that we can download that new Mayhem firmware from the computer to the pter pack now the pter pack needs to be in hack RF mode and to do this we use the buttons to select hack RF mode once in hack RF mode you'll see the screen looking like this now back over on the computer we need to navigate into the Mayhem 1.8.0 firmware folder and find the driver folder now if you haven't done this before then the flash utility may not find the hack RF so the update will not work so just double click the application within this driver folder to ensure that the driver is installed you can now go back to the firmware folder and run the flash portter pack Mayhem Windows batch file and then you should be presented with the screen like this just press any key and the Flash update procedure should start it's a very quick process but you will get confirmation that the update was successful if you don't then just make sure the hack RF is connected via USB and the portter pack is in hack RF mode and once done unplug the hack RF from the computer and then power cycle the hack RF I just turn it off and back on again now when we now look on the bottom left of the menu screen we should now be able to see that the firmware version has been updated to 1.8.0 now of course if there's been another release of firmware since the making of this video then the version number should be the same as the version that you downloaded and installed now with all the boring bits out of the way it's now time to have some fun and go through the portter pack menus to see what this thing can do now for the rest of the video you may see that the firmware version on the bottom left is not 1.8.0 and that's because I installed the latest nightly build and you can do this as well if you want to or just stick to the official release version the initial startup menu has many applications that you can use on the porter pack with the rece receive and transmit applications within their own section to maneuver around the screen just use the buttons on the bottom right of the portter pack and then just use that center button to select it now if we first select the receive tab the available receive only apps will be shown a great application is the adsb app which assuming you have a good antenna for around 1.09 GHz you'll start to receive aircraft data packets in real time you'll notice there's an adjustment for the LNA and the VGA along with turning the preamp on and off now these are on the second line down from the top of the screen just use the buttons to select an item and then just use the rot control to adjust the value as aircraft are being received you'll also see their IO value and any that have a green icon indicates that there's a valid GPS position for that aircraft using the buttons to select one and then pressing the center button allows you to drill further into the received data for that particular aircraft you can even select the C on map button to show a plot of the aircraft's position on a world map now this is why we needed the SD card with all of the extra data on as the pter pack does not store this information by default it has to recall that map data from the SD card to be able to show you it on the screen now I'm getting quite a lot of aircraft shown here and that's because I have the hack RF connected to my dedicated Outdoors adsb antenna so your results might vary depending on what type of antenna you have in fact that goes for anything that you're going to receive having a tuned antenna for the frequency that you're receiving will obviously work best now next to this is the AIS button and this is for tracking boats unfortunately I live quite far inland and there's not many marinas or docks in this area so I'm not able to receive any is signals here the next along is aprs which is the automatic reporting system for ham radio users now this little app will decode the aprs packets and show the decoded packets on the screen there are two tabs for this app stream or list if you select the list tab it will display a list of the received call signs and if there's a green icon displayed in the middle column and you can click on this list entry and even show the location of this station on a map app similar to how we did with the adsb mapping now the audio app essentially turns the port pack into a handheld receiver which utilizes the internal speaker you can choose any frequency that the hack RF supports along with narrow FM wide FM AM and of course upper and lower sideband n modulated audio will be sent to the internal speaker now the internal speaker is extremely small on this so it's not the best quality so having a pair of headphones will make your listening experience a bit more pleasant but having that internal speaker is Handy if you have no other options condition way Jan back to 2 wh from with X this is Hotel Bravo 9 stroke Papa Echo 7 kilo Hotel Bravo 9 stroke Papa Echo 7 k a Bluetooth BL scanner is available showing nearby devices with signal strength strangely enough this picks up the Bluetooth from my camera that I'm using to record the video and that's the Sony zv1 as you can see on the list poag or page reception and decoding is also possible but of course you need to know the rough frequency area and which to tune to now for me is 153 MHz and Performing some fine tuning got me locked onto a pretty active Channel now just be careful with this is there's some pretty sensitive information which comes through on these packets of data so a little bit of respect is needed weather balloon tracking is also possible showing you the decoded data along with a plot of its location on a map at the time I've recording this video there was no reachable balloons I expect it's a great feature for all you weather balloon Bon trackers and Recovery teams now there's lots of other useful apps but it would make this video extremely long if I was to cover every single one of them in great detail but another fun app to test is the TPMS RX app which just receives data from tire pressure sensors decodes it and then just displays the data on the screen now the transmit tab also has quite a few applications some of which I would definitely recommend not to use unless you know what you're doing and in a controlled environment especially the adsb TX and the GPS simulator of course the aprs TX app can be used if you hold a valid amateur radio license so you can broadcast your own aprs messages the S painter app can be quite fun allowing the user to transmit text or an image which is then displayed on the waterfall of an SDR receiver a bit like this I think the only time I've ever seen this feature being used in a fashion that it's actually worth it is a waterfall painter built into SDR console and used on the Q 100 satellite where users announce that they're calling CQ the soundboard app allows you to choose a frequency and then transmit a pre-stored WB file from the SD card of course you can create your own and then just drop them onto the SD card before putting it into the porter pack the microphone app allows you to transmit your voice on a frequency of your choosing of course you will need a microphone so using a pair of mobile phone headphones with a mic plugged into the 3.5 mm Port should work now there's also an sstv transmit application which allows you to choose most of the sstv different modes now this is pretty cool and you can choose any particular frequency you want for this to transmit on here I'm just receiving on SDR console and then just outputting the audio to mmsstv which is just decoding the image as it's being transmitted live from the hack RF via the porter pack now this might be good for portable operations or if you just want to do some testing with your friends now if you're wondering what each of the icons mean and do function wise that's on the top title bar there then the dedicated wiki page manual from Mayhem is a really good read to help you get familiar with features now to mention a couple of the important icons there the first is a screenshot function which saves a screenshot to the SD card great if you're going to be creating tutorials or if you want to capture that moment you receive something important the other important function to mention disables or enables DC power on the antenna Port which is effectively turns on a b so that you can power external modules like lnaas or filters now if you've made it to the end of the video then well done and I hope this has shown showing you a few of the main features of using the hack RF with the porter pack now if you're new to the hack RF then let me also tell you that there's hundreds of applications available online that will work with a hack RF while connected to a computer these range from decoding satellites to opening garage doors and emulating cell phone networks there's lots to discover and learn now feel free to take a look through my back catalog of videos from more projects involving the hack RF I'll link below to a couple of the sellers that are selling an officially supported pter pack and hack RF combo as if you remember what I said at the start of the video about certain clones not being able to support the official Mayhem firmware anyway guys I hope you enjoyed this video if you did then please make sure you're subscribed for more content like this until the next video stay safe thanks for watching I'll see you guys in the next video [Music]

Channel: Tech Minds

Views: 93,238

Keywords: hackrf, beginners guide, tutorial, how to use hackrf, how to use portapak, rtl sdr, receiving, scanning, radio bands, radio reception, how to use an sdr, transmitting with hackrf, replay attack, flipper zero, hacking, how to hack rf

Id: H-bqdWfbhpg

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 21 2023