HackRF Jawbreaker

[A. Maitland Bottoms]

>>>>> "Iain" == Iain McFadyen <ki4hlv at gmail.com> writes:
Iain> Good evening. Hope everyone is coping with the snow....

Pretty easy to shovel out today.

Iain> Has anyone got experience with the HackRF Jawbreaker Software Defined
Iain> Transceiver?

Yup!
Because I was in the right place at the right time with the right interests, I
was part of the beta invitation distribution. Last fall I was able to get
support for the HackRF board into the Debian distribution. (My packages
are also part of the Ubuntu universe as of the The Trusty Tahr - which
will become Ubuntu 14.04 LTS at the end of April.) Recently support for
the HackRF is available for the stable Debian release in wheezy-backports.

Much of my use of the board has been in receive mode, using gqrx
(http://gqrx.dk/) and gr-air-modes. But I have used it to transmit
FM to my 900 MHz and 1.2 Ghz radios. And last December I set it up to
transmit a Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum carrier in the 44x MHz band.

Due to its portability, I will be using it as a FHSS source in this week's
AMRAD meeting demonstration.

Receive sensitivity, along with receive path gain control, is quite sufficient
for connecting directly to an antenna and getting useful signals with near
instant gratification.

Transmit power is around the 5 mW level, but asking for too much puts
it into non-linear operation, and picking lower output power is required
for linearity. The controls give you enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot.
It is powered from the USB cable, so I don't know what part of the trouble
is on the HackRF board and what part might be due to my USB power source.
I've been pondering wiring it inside a Motorola MTR 2000 repeater as an
IF replacement. Note: the HackRF is a half-duplex radio.

Lots of buzz in the ham radio community about panadapters.
The improved bandwidth over the rtl-sdr devices is nice. It makes a
good panadapter for the rtl-sdr :)

Given that the OSMOCOM folk include support for the HackRF, pretty
much everything that uses rtl-sdr devices also works with the HackRF.

Here's a recent Michael Ossmann talk:
http://vimeo.com/81334997

I like my Jawbreaker, but I still would like to get a post-kickstarter
HackRf One once thay become available.

Looks like the kickstarter orders are about to get assembled....
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mossmann/hackrf-an-open-source-sdr-platform/posts

Does that help you Iain?
-Maitland