What is the HackRF One Portapack H2+

[Music] this is the hackrf pter pack H2 plus it is a device that allows you to detect decode and manipulate the invisible radio signals that surround us at all [Music] times now both of these devors will do similar things so it's the hagf pek the big brother to The Flipper zero let's dive in a bit deeper and find out the hacka pure pack has an annoyingly long name because it is not actually a single project by a single manufacturer back in 2014 Michael Osman launched the hacker F1 an open- Source SDR transceiver platform meant to be controlled with a computer via USB the device can both receive and transmit in the frequency range of 1 MHz to 6 GHz then another guy Jared Boon designed the first pter pack kit for the hacker F1 a circuit board that is connected on top of the hacker F1 which added a touchscreen SD card reader and navigational controls to enable portable use without the computer the original firmware of this portter pack was eventually abandoned and then picked up by someone else and then abandoned again and now lives on as the regularly updated firmware called Mayhem along the way the hardware has been evolving as well adding a rechargeable battery a rotary control dial among other new features and what we end up with is a weird Abomination as a result of too many cooks for instance there's no communication between the battery and the device so you will instead find four LEDs around the rotary encoder indicating the current battery level this this pack comes with a speaker connector but no actual speaker installed so I've had to Mud one in with my porw soldering skills there is also no way for the firmware to turn the device on or off so the portter pack H2 Hardware has been designed to turn on the device by a single press of the rotary encoder and turn it off again by two clicks of the rotary encoder which is very impractical when transporting the device in the back where accidental presses on the most prominent button will happen but least that is how this specific variant of the portter pack Works which is called the H2 plus the portter pack project was originally made as an add-on to the original hack rf1 made by Michael osman's company Great Scott gadgets which you can still buy today however you can also find hack RF clones assembled with pter packs made by various random manufacturers on AliExpress there's no real consensus among manufacturers on how this device is supposed to be designed or what components are used which also means that not all available variations of the portter pack will work with the latest Mayhem firmware check with the Mayhem firmware GitHub to see what products are recommended and most likely compatible the device is still quite an interesting tool however let's look at some of its functionality as it is currently this is the main menu if we go to receive and open the audio decoder the device will function as a regular radio receiver here can listen to signals ranging from 1 MHz to 6 GHz and you have an SDR waterfall visualizing the received signals as well as several different modulation types to choose from if we go back to the receive menu we find a bunch of apps that will help us decode some of the signals that we are capable of receiving one such app will decode adsb signals from airplanes allowing us to read details on nearby planes and to display the position on a map the reason this works is because each plane is transmitting a radio signal on 1,90 MHz which contains the GPS position along with a bunch of details on the heading speed altitude call sign and so on a similar technology is used by ships and boats called AIS and similarly amateur radio enthusiasts use a decentralized pack and positioning system called aprs which we can also de code other notable decoding apps are the PAC pager app weather balloon decoding Wireless tire pressure readings and electronic Wireless meter readings some of the apps marked in yellow are only partially working at this time a very useful app is the search app which functions similarly to the frequency analyzer app on a flipper zero allowing us to learn what frequency a nearby device is transmitting on if we go back to the main menu again and take a look at the transmit function ality we will see that we're able of emulating a lot of signals even more than we can decode we can transmit aprs and poac pagia signals we can also do old-fashioned mous code and even use the pter pack as an automated Beacon transmitter for radio fox hunting we can transmit images in the sstv protocol often used by amateur radio enthusiasts we can control the popular dukebox systems known as Touch Tunes and we can transmit funny sound bites using the soundboard app there's an interesting app called Spectrum painter which will turn text or images into a viewable signal on another SDR receiver's waterfall and then we have a few of the scary apps we have a Jammer which can cause interference on any frequency we have a GPS simulator app which can make nearby phones believe that they are in a completely different location and lastly we can potentially cause Havoc by transmitting fake airplane location data adsb packets I don't need to tell you not to do this going back to the main menu we find two apps called capture and replay these are useful for recording for instance RF remote controls key fobs doorbells and similar and playing them back to emulate the original device similar to what a flipper zero can do the remote app is used for naming and setting up your recorded signals for quick access allowing you to create several different button layouts of recorded signals the scanner app can scan through a frequency range of your choice and find active stations the microphone app will allow you to transmit voice if you connect a phone headset with a microphone to the headphone jack on the portter pack turning it into a walkie-talkie then we have the looking glass app this application will allow you to view a waterfall or spectrum of a specific frequency range giving you a visual overview of the activity you can move a marker to see the frequency of a particular signal and select it will open the audio app on that frequency going into the utilities folder we find a bunch of different application for managing data on the SD card editing our frequency lists trimming our captured recordings and even a signal generator we can also flash new firmwares directly from the SD card recent developments by the firmware team has made it possible to load applications from a folder on the SD card and the first ported application has been the Pac-Man game this is a significant step for the development team in allowing for more future applications without them needing to be embedded in The Limited firmware memory lastly we have various settings and then an option for putting the device into original hack RF mode for use over USB with a computer and SDR software so it's the haer of pek the big brother to The Flipper zero not really it's more like its inbred cousin it's not a wellth thought outout vision from a single company but even with its personality qus I still think it has a lot of interesting features and a lot of unresolved potential it's a fun toy for the tinkerer who enjoys experimenting with radio communications

Channel: sn0ren

Views: 390,939

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Id: alrFbY5vxt4

Length: 8min 20sec (500 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 11 2023