Cyberspectrum

Cyberspectrum SDR Meetup

The Bay Area SDR Meetup will serve as a forum to exchange knowledge and ideas related to Software Defined Radio (the software and hardware), and generally aim to get people excited about all the applications that can be realised with the technology. At each meetup, attendees will have the opportunity to present their work/ideas to the group.

Engineers, enthusiasts, hobbyists and people of all experience levels are welcome, no matter what your software/hardware background. Everyone is welcome to submit their ideas/presentations to the pool. For each meetup, a fixed number will be chosen to fit the format. Currently there will be a short show-and-tell section, followed by two 20 minute presentations (e.g. an introduction to an SDR topic and analysis of a mystery signal), and then to conclude a 40 minute in-depth presentation on an application. Suggestions/alterations to this format are welcome of course!

Meetup locations will alternate between the South Bay and San Francisco. Meetup presentations will be recorded and posted online (although you can opt out if you wish).

More Information and Upcoming Events: http://www.meetup.com/Cyberspectrum/

Bay Area Software Defined Radio #1

Live Stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUGr_Z04SKs

Kevin Reid (@switchborg): "A Visual Introduction to DSP for SDR"

A tour of DSP topics relevant to implementation of simple software-defined radios. Focuses on visual explanations of fundamental manipulations of digital signals, including analytic signals, frequency shifting, sampling rates, filtering, and the discrete Fourier transform. http://switchb.org/kpreid/

@SigBlips: the 'baudline' signal analyser, and some interesting signals

Bay Area Software Defined Radio #2

Live Stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdn6LDeAdHo

Nick Foster @bistromath

Satellite communications with GNU Radio, SDR hardware, homebrew antennas and satellite tracking.

Josh Myer @xek

A couple months back, some friends and I captured a bunch of RF telemetry from a rocket launch down at Vandenburg AFB, down by LA. I'll talk about how we decided what to capture, what we captured, and how we analyzed the many, many gigabytes of RF that wound up on a hard disk that morning.

Jonathon Pendlum @SDRJon

RFNoC (RF Network on Chip), a new framework for Ettus third generation devices (X300 & E300) that aims to make FPGA acceleration in SDRs more easily accessible. I will cover some background on FPGAs and their use in SDR, the motivation and design of RFNoC, and conclude with a few live demos.

Bay Area Software Defined Radio #3

Live Stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFBkX4CNb08

Julian Arnold (AKA Perpetual Intern of the Month, @broadcrap):

A discussion on creating a simple SDR Doppler RADAR, OR decoding WiFi[masked]a packets - which one will he choose!?

Derek Kozel (@derekkozel):

"Digital modulation schemes such as Phase Shift Keying (PSK) convert data bits to analog signals for transmission. This mapping is known as a constellation. For simple schemes, optimal constellations can be calculated, but for higher-order modulation schemes with more points, it becomes very difficult to mathematically determine an optimal constellation. Evolutionary algorithms provide a simple and pragmatic way to find good answers without advanced knowledge of communications theory. This talk shows a start-to-finish implementation, including an introduction to digital signals and evolutionary algorithms."

Alex Ray (@machinaut & Team Lunarnaut):

"We'll be talking about some of the radios, antennas and protocols we're working on as part of the just-started NASA Cube Quest Challenge, a competition to get high data rates to small satellites far away from the Earth.

Our team is still in the very early stages, but we've been building and testing antennas, as well as experimenting with modulation schemes. Along those lines, SDRs are great for out needs because we can be extremely flexible with protocols, bands, antennas, and more!

We'll show off what we've been working on so far, and can talk about what we plan on doing next."

Bay Area Software Defined Radio #4

Live Stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq07aQaB8mM

Julian Arnold (@broadcrap) will talk in depth about building a Doppler RADAR with cantennas and SDR

Ief Kox (@iefkox) will talk from the other side of the world about MultiPSK and use it to analyse all manner of interesting signals: ACARS (HFDL, VDL), STANAG 4285, ALE, AMTOR Navtex, Wefax, DGPS, SSTV and more!

Jesus Molina (@verifythentrust) will present on "Wardriving in the age of the Internet of Things with SDR":

In this talk I will present information on how to discover and map radio devices utilizing SDR, and I will present a new concept: Warwatching (yeah, watching IoT devices in real time!). Round 10 years ago we drove around picking up wireless signals from WIFI access points. Tools like Kismet were used to collect relevant information, and the data was then post processed to draw heat maps. Then Google crashed the party with their ever present cars, and with increasingly pervasive dynamic AP (phone hotspots, drones) it doesn’t make much sense anyway.

But SDR opens a new world for us: Wardriving in ANY frequency range. The amount of devices equipped with radio transmitting capabilities have increased, and is time to create new tools for discovery and pentesting in the age of the IoT. With SDR we can detect, listen and interact with several “static” radio devices (cell towers, FM stations, etc), and also we can “see” dynamic short range devices (drones, Bluetooth) and even actually watch them using augmented reality!. I will provide a short demonstration and the road ahead.

Bay Area Software Defined Radio #5

Live Stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxiphlitrAQ

Kevin Reid (@switchbord): "An Update to a Visual Introduction to DSP"

Matt Ettus: "Synchronisation and MIMO demystified"

Beyond a single radio, there are multiple antenna systems, geographically separated systems, and all manner of multi-radio configurations in-between. Matt will talk about what is necessary to make these systems work, and the different levels of timing & synchronisation involved.

Martin Braun (@braun_noise): "The SDR Mythbusters: Is #cyberspectrum hard to do?"

SDR has a reputation for being very difficult. Is this actually true? GNU Radio developer Martin Braun gives a tour through a typical development cycle and the tools GNU Radio provides to make development as smooth as possible.

This talk is geared mostly towards enthusiasts who are looking start their own GNU Radio development, and want to know exactly which resources are available.