RF surveys

[Maitland Bottoms]

This is a trending topic on the Internet...
>http://www.sharedspectrum.com/papers/spectrum-reports/

Yeah, back in 2009 we just had a few people doing RF surveys.

But now, all the cool people have the equipment necessary to
perform that task - since it is just an rtl-sdr device and a
laptop. So everyone can take RF surveys!

The osmocom rtl-sdr folk already ship a tool called "rtl_power"
to help do the survey job.
http://www.rtl-sdr.com/new-command-line-utility-rtl_power/

The heatmap is an idea of the kind of visualization tools that could be done,
it allows making large 2-D color images to pan about on your big monitor.

A basic intro talk will get you started:

 Monitoring the Spectrum: Building Your Own Distributed RF Scanner Array
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5BTUVPeoVY
 or
 (197 MB) http://30c3.ex23.de/CCC/30C3/mp4/30c3-5142-en-Monitoring_the_Spectrum_Building_Your_Own_Distributed_RF_Scanner_Array_h264-hq.mp4

After that, you might want to look up:

 Hillbilly Tracking of Low Earth Orbit
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktnQ7nBCuqU
 or
 (555 MB) http://30c3.ex23.de/CCC/30C3/mp4-hd/30c3-5463-en-Hillbilly_Tracking_of_Low_Earth_Orbit_h264-hd.mp4

So while I am sending 30c3 links, last Saturday I was talking about Oona,
and her approach to listening to FM broadcast stations:

 My journey into FM-RDS
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-2k6TMPMRo
 or
 (165 MB) http://30c3.ex23.de/CCC/30C3/mp4/30c3-5588-en-de-My_journey_into_FM-RDS_h264-hq.mp4

Happy RF visualization to all, and
print sum(map(ord, "Happy new year to you!"))

73,
-Maitland