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Universal Software Radio Peripheral From GnuRadio
The Universal Software Radio Peripheral for GNURadio has now gone into production and is
available for purchase for $450. It used to be insanely expensive to acquire this
technical equipment. Now the price has dropped by two orders of magnitude, to something about as expensive as a high-end graphics card. How long will it be till it's labeled a terrorist tool and banned?
I don't know, allow me to contact the Office of Homeland Security and inform them about this device and find out...
(Just kidding)
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
It just happened. At least for those who know enough to use Google, but don't have enough common sense to handle context issues. Which sounds remarkably like those congressfolk who go around labeling things terrorist tools. Except for the knowing how to use Google bit.
No, it GNU/runs GNU/Linux.
Regards,
RMS
Le français vous intéresse?
Not long. Government likes banning things. Next thing on the list: a hammer. Since it can be used for terroristic activites.
Neither of the links provided are much help.
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
Yep, I can see all the slashdot readers going out and getting this... with all of the other VME stuff we have.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
It's been around for years...
How long will it be till it's labeled a terrorist tool and banned?
When HAM radio is?
Seriously, what kind of commentary is this, especially with the FCC giving unprecedented amounts of frequency bandwidth back to the public?
Couldn't the article have done just as well without the last sentence?
Well, since neither link in the submission actually explains what it does, I think whatever-it-is is safe from being labeled a terrorist tool. :)
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
Two orders of magnitude? Did it really cost $45,000? And what's with the terrorist comment?
Is this just a radio tuner card for PCs?
This is great news : software defined radios are über-cool and the Gnuradio project is quite promising. I hope that someone will soon package it with enclosure and daughtercards and market it to people who are not willing to do the seemingly required hardware assembly.
I must seriously be out of the loop (hardware's not my thing), but what does this radio do exactly? And why would it be classified as a terror instrument?
"Here's a spoiler: You're will die alone."-Triumph the Insult Comic Dog
This looks like an excellent step towards a turn-key software defined radio but I have a dumb question:
Why go with usb2.0 as the interface instead of pci or multiple usb2.0 connectors (is the usb 2.0 bandwidth limit a total value or a per/channel value?) I know you want to isolate the radio receiver from all the RF noise inside the PC but there are giga-sample a/d cards that go inside boxes already... Just wondering
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:28nXJV0PSy4J: comsec.com/wiki%3FUniversalSoftwareRadioPeripheral +&hl=en
The commercial board provides considerably more than the "free" board, for approximately a correct ratio for the price. (Eight times as amany quadrature channels for eight times the price, since a quadrature channel on the GnuRadio requires the purchase of four daughterboards at $50 each.) More than that, the commercial board includes documentation, and is easier to reduce to a standard FPGA implementation for inclusion in hardware.
Where's the bargain, here?
Being able to receive, record and replay, with pure clarity, in glorious stereo, dozens of simultaneous radio stations ... all owned by ClearChannel and all playing the same uniform shit? Not sure I'm that interested...
At any rate, I wager they'll let their law dogs loose the second they realize you can skip commercials with it...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
It's apparently a general purpose software decoder of digital signals; decode DTV at a software level, apply software filters to analog audio, basically thru programming replicate all those arcane things done in both analog and digital radio/tv/shortwave signals.
http://www.linradio.com/
How long will it be before people see it as a possible terrorist tool ?
I dono but I sure as hell would have never thought iti until YOU brought it up.
Somtimes things are best left unsaid , especially in a world of paranoid radicals that will look for ANY reason to take your freedoms away,
To that end you hve just been very helpfull in giving them ammuntion, you should congratulate yourself.
My favorite quote ever: #137692 +(191)- [X]
:)
Procyon> I don't know the world around me!
Procyon> I'm scared, and confused!
DS> have you felt a strong desire to vote for george w. bush recently?
Same with terrorism, it sucks. But the politicians should stop banning random stuff out of fear - i want people to start using their brains, for once. In the US they already slashed constitutional rights, and want me to give my fingerprints and digital foto when i travel into US. Forget it!
Too bad the US has influence on the world - the EU is aching to introduce similar laws, what country can i migrate too now?
...was the previous price really 10x10x450=$45K?
Wow...that's some cost reduction.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
I listen to all of my hacker radio at Hacker Media . They podcast over four dozen different amateur talk radio shows.
The text claims the limiting factor is the USB2 bus but when you get into the details of the circuitry, the Raceway Link, the Aquisition bus, and the Arbitar all connect through one single 32bit local data bus. I assume this is a change from the previous design and build. Now I know why the price is a few orders of magnatude lower.
On a side note, I really have no idea what I am talking about. Just pulled that out of the air based on 10 seconds looking at the two included links, Based on the current comments that no one has any idae what this thing is for (myself included), I bet I could have fooled quite a few people though.
It might have been good for this to come out 1-2 years later. Why? Because then HDTV and digital radio broadcasters would have had more time to get sloppy on the encryption and DRM under the (false) assumption that the need to have their hardware radios in order to receive the signal is protection enough.
With software radios widely and inexpensively available during the initial deployment of the next generation of radio and television broadcasts, broadcasters may recognize too soon the need for bullet-proof cryptographic methods and may not screw it up again like they did before.
Remember, the US government banned digital audio tape and taxes CDs to thwart "pirates". It's not much of a stretch to imagine that other useful equipment will be labeled "terrorist". Microsoft spokesmen have called Linux a "security threat".
Furthermore, what's wrong with a little trolling on Slashdot?
I'll begin writing the XM Radio descrambler tonight. J/K
A software-defined radio (SDR) system is a radio communication system which uses software for the modulation and demodulation of radio signals.
An SDR performs significant amounts of signal processing in a general purpose computer, or a reconfigurable piece of digital electronics. The goal of this design is to produce a radio that can receive and transmit a new form of radio protocol just by running new software.
Software radios have significant utility for the military and cell phone services, both of which must serve a wide variety of changing radio protocols in real time.
The hardware of a software-defined radio typically consists of a superheterodyne RF front end which converts RF signals from and to analog IF signals, and analog to digital converter and digital to analog converters which are used to convert a digitised IF signal to and from analog form.
Software-defined radio can currently be used to implement simple radio modem technologies. In the long run, software-defined radio is expected by its proponents to become the dominant technology in radio communications. GNURadio is a project to implement software-defined radio as free software.
URL:: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_rad
Some years ago, I was doing some work on a laser rangefinder, and got to the point where I needed about $20K in test gear to find out why it wasn't working right. Something like this would have been a big help.
Radio hams will find uses for this. It should be great for working on new data transmission schemes for high-noise links, like HF.
LabView support would be nice.
hiding place of Osama - who happens to like Linux so much that his middle name is named after a Linux directory so Linux must be a terrorist tool that must be banned too! - please stop the world I want to get off...
Essentially this is a device to 'tune' to any of the millions of frequencies that are in the upper part of the non-visible Electromagnetic spectrum. TV and Radio are broadcast in the long wavelength low frequency part of the specturm. Pretty pictures at Nasa
t rum/index.html
(Warning: you may have to click through a stupid ad.)
Anyway, Here's a Salon Article about the polictical & technical aspects of it:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2003/03/12/spec
www.rdex.net
There were quite a few pages dedicated to the advances in digital radio and SDR in Monitoring Times a few months back.
One of the biggest advantages to a true SDR radio is that the manufacturer can build one or two models of radios, and have different software loads depending on bandsplit, features, costs, etc.
Motorola tried that with their Jedi-series and XTS series of handy talkies over the past decade... biggest problem was that it is pretty simple (technologically) to take a radio with no special features (smartnet, digital modes, tone signalling, etc.) and enable the features by cloning the software load of another model.
They did smarten up to that with the MTS2000 line of radios; any attempt to force a 'codeplug' into it that didn't belong would turn the unit into a brick, and you'd have to send it back to Motorola for a costly repair (as well as a stern talking to for 'hacking' at the radio).
True software defined radios would be a lot easier to secure... on paper it would drive prices way down... in reality, as long as the radio manufacturers control the public service contracts, prices will still remain sky high.
As an aside, WiNRADiO markets a device that could *almost* be considered an SDR device... super pricey for a receiver, but neat concept.
I am looking forward to the day we see true SDR transceivers.
How long will it be till it's labeled a terrorist tool and banned?
It's not a transmitter as far as I understand.
But, he's right in pointing out that the powers that be do not have a vested interest in allowing citizens to own a general purpose reciever/transmitter. It marginalizes their sense of control.
Like PGP/GPG, buy one, use it, build an economy around it BEFORE they start thinking about making it illega.
Kremax
--- Little Atomo - The Amazing Thinking Robot from Atomocom! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIP9KisHi4k
Is it really so hard to use tags?
Software radio or SDR - an intresting subject where mathematical formulas become radio.
See for a high level overview.
Good reading is Understanding digital Signal processing by Richard G. Lyons. Prentice Hall, 1st ed: ISBN 0201634678 (amazon.com, search). 2nd ed: ISBN 0-13-108989-7 (amazon.com, search)
VanuBose 's company Vanu Technology demonstrated a software radio based on an iPAQ with a digital radio "backpack", in May 2003. Here are some links:
Slashdot article
Linuxdevices.com
Vanu.com
Vanu.com
Here's a note on the future of software defined radio
Several relevant pointers available here
"It wouldn't be the least bit surprising to see a Federal ban on private ownership of high-speed analog-to-digital converters at the IC level."
Look up dual-use technology and try again. Don't you guys get tired of being paranoid every second of every day, about everything? It's draining just reading your post.
Isn't it interesting how the FCC is fucking the little guy?
I hope the equipment they sell holds up better than their server! ;-)
"And why would it be classified as a terror instrument?"
Because some are paranoid fools that couldn't tell the difference between a legitimate threat, and just hot air. That's why they're called "chicken little's". That's also why they're usually ingnored. Just like the boy who cried wolf one too many times.
How long will it be till it's labeled a terrorist tool and banned?
I'm seriously asking what else has been banned under the concerns of terrorism?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Did you look at the website in the article? this thing will accept up to 4 transmitter and 4 reciever daughter boards. The boards avaliable are not that harmfull, but anyone with basic electronic and programming knowledge could "re-wire" the thing. ITs a nice radio, but it will transmit and receive, and easily do it in the 88-108MHZ WFM radio band.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
The nice thing about GnuRadio is that you can build things like an ATSC digital television receiver, all in software. The problem is that, thanks to the heavy weight of the MPAA and other media lobbies, the FCC gave us the broadcast flag, meaning that a programmer can set a bit that says "do not record" such-and-such.
... at your own peril. It makes specific uses of GnuRadio illegal, and even if you wrote your GnuRadio software to pay attention to the flag, a simple programming error would make your product illegal.
But to make the broadcast flag effective, you also have to mandate that equipment pay attention to it, and be robust against user modification. You've got to make it otherwise illegal to make an ATSC receiver that doesn't obey it. And sure enough, that's what the FCC has done; July 2005, any equipment that doesn't obey the flag is illegal to sell, trade, create, etc.
And with GnuRadio, you write an ATSC receiver that does or doesn't pay attention to it
Heck, it might even be said that GnuRadio itself will be illegal this year, since it fails the robustness rules.
Now, is this copyright infringement? Refusing to record a pristine ATSC transport stream or recording it for personal use isn't necessarily a distinction the MPAA et al. are likely to make. But it does facilitate the distribution of perfect copies of Desperate Housewives and other quality programming (ahem), and the MPAA have used the copyright infringement/terrorism analogy before.
From the page:
"...amateurs have done experimentation that shows that as little as 5 watts of power from a nearby radio transmitter can seriously degrade the performance of BPL. In some cases, the interference logged off a BPL user, requiring a reconnection to the network."
So you can see, it would take very little effort for hams to pretty much kill BPL by driving up to some power lines, broadcasting crap on that frequency at 5W (most handheld tranceivers can hit 5W no problem) for a couple of hours (how's prime time sound (when most users are online)?) and then driving away, long before anyone can figure out where he is?
I tell you, I don't even use the portion of the spectrum that BPL causes interference on, but the total disregard by the FCC of their own rules makes me want to turn vigilante myself.
The VME board was linked as a reference. The real news is the USB interfaced card.
Besides, I have 3 or 4 VME cards sitting around here, including one 9U monster. They're all "trophy" boards from back when I used to design hardware.
PS - you left the base off of the numeric values in your post, too. If you want to be pedantic to an asinine degree - much less an incorrect asinine degree - you'd best do it right.
It can also create signals! This is a really nifty device! Except for one thing, it's only avaliable as a USB device! I'd have thought that PCI would be a bit more sensible for something this data hungry?
easily do it in the 88-108MHZ WFM radio band.
Ah, no. The USRP and basicRX / basicTX only operate themselves up to 30 or 50 MHz I believe. You would need an additional RF front-end (aka transverter) for VHF frequences like broadcast WFM.
If it can tune in cellular frequencies, sorry, it's already illegal in the US and pretty much any other developed nation. Various dictatorship-countries would probably instantly declare anyone they found owning this kind of thing to be a 'spy'.
I imagine this scares the crap out of the FCC. , because prior to this the only thing that stood between your phone call and...well..anyone...was that they had a leash on all the companies that could make such devices.
PS: Coral links, people? Universal Software Radio Peripheral
Please help metamoderate.
If you examine the madwifi driver FAQ it makes reference to regulations explicitly permitting "open" code controlling hardware that can receive/transmit many frequencies.
5.3. Why is the HAL closed source?
The Atheros chipset can tune to frequencies that are out of the ISM band(s). These frequencies are licensed by various regulatory agencies, and radar systems thus an open HAL is disallowed by just about every regulatory institution in existence (i.e. FCC etc). On a practical/usability note: Were it not for the binary nature of the HAL, then the same nerds who deploy the "power hack" for the WET11 could be generating emissions all over the restricted bands using madwifi hardware. Ask yourself, which would you rather have, more power, or less interference?
I expect just receivers will bear less of a burden, but I would not be surprised if Gnu Radio was already illegal with massive criminal penalties associated.
Which is an atrocity, frankly. Please correct me. Please.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
"With the right software, it takes control away from the FCC and Congress."
It also takes away FCC "limits of interferance" as well. Are you willing to die, so some hobbyiest can get his jollies "taking control" of the emergency frequencies?
"The SDR doesn't care if the software that you download isn't type accepted by the FCC or does things that Congress doesn't like, like listening to their cell phone calls."
People have been able to do this without SDR for years. Also that's what encryption is for. Something SDR doesn't help with.
Prolly I'm a bit confused here.
He was told by a store to come in and pick up a refund check. WHen he got there, they told him it wouldn't be ready til the next day. He got pissed, ranted and raved, cops showed up, and told him it was a terrorist threat to challenge the manager to meet him outside.
Anything the Powers That Be want to label as terrorist; that's what is terroristic these days. When Disney sees SDR as a threat to Mickey Mouse, it will be labeled a terrorist tool.
Infuriate left and right
"I'm seriously asking what else has been banned under the concerns of terrorism?"
Your post.
could someone tell me what this device is, what it does, and why it should be interesting to us?
The web site certainly wasn't much help, and the jargon-laden responses I've seen so far aren't much help either.
Many thanks.
D
Christ?! Moderators seem to be on the ball today. Realllll funny. Totally.
My skull sometimes bleeds when I read slashdot. It was a part of the disclaimer when I started, I know. It's like a terrible crack addiction.
>> How long will it be till it's labeled a terrorist tool and banned?
Just more evidence of the kneejerk juvenile pandering we've come to expect from SLashdot.
How and why is this thing any more of a terrorist boon that other radios, the web, or cell phones?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Unless explicitely stated otherwise, an order of magnitude is e, or about 2.71.
Um. No. Like anything else you're going to read or talk about, it's more reasonable to assume that humans deal in base-10, especially when orders of magnitude are concerend.
The expression "orders of magnitude" is really only useful if your audience agrees on its definition, and the overwhelming majority of definitions I can find point to exponents of 10, not of e.
Can you show us otherwise, to any overwhelming degree?
With 4 x 64MHz AtoD converters, this board could be easily turned into a descent digital oscilloscope. Right now such equipment is so very costly, but the right IO module might just make this a possibility for low frequency work.
"Which is an atrocity, frankly. Please correct me. Please."
Why is it an atrocity being unable to interfere with regulated bands? Are nerds really that gung ho about anarchy?
Parent is absolutely correct - please mod parent up!
How soon would someone come up with software necessary to decode digital cable signals? I'd
imagine people would buy this card, plug into their
PCs, hook in the cable feed from the coax from the
wall and watch all the shows for free!
An order of magnitude is an astronometric term referring to the brightness of stars. A single "order of magnitude" (from A to O, for instance) correstponds to a factor of ten in luminance.
Of course, that doesn't explain Slashdot's interesting use to day.
No need for hacking cable modems anymore: http://it.slashdot.org/it/04/12/27/1310230.shtml?t id=222&tid=218
This kind of threat was never known as terrorism untl the Patriot act gave the police new powers.
As far as things banned under the flag of terrorism, or not knowing about the nonsense legislation Disney has bought, you must have been hiding under a rock these last several years.
Why don't you go crawl back under it? You're not contributing anything worthwhile.
Infuriate left and right
$450 plus custom software plus the effort of the hookup plus the risk of jail, all to save forty pieces of eight per month? Arrr, that do sound like a bum deal, matey. I'd rather be robbin' cruise ships off the Phillipines.
Hollings and Berman are both Democrats, frex.
I propose we come up a term for people's competency in using Google akin to reading literacy. So, if you know how to use Google you are "Google literate", if you don't know you're "Google illiterate" and if you know how but simply choose not to you are "Google aliterate", etc.
So, we could cosponsor Google literacy drives to combat Google illiteracy in the population, and so forth.
Many general-purpose tools can be misused to commit crimes. Banning them can make it difficult or impossible to do the legitimate things they're intended for.
It is legal to purchase equipment that ignores the Broadcast Flag until 1 July 2005, after which point ALL such equipment may still be used and even resold. Now, yes, NEW equipment sold after that date to consumers must respect the Broadcast Flag...but what constitutes "consumer" equipment? Price? Usability? Purpose? Function? That is another question...but the point is, Broadcast Flag-free equipment can be purchased now, legally, and will remain legal indefinitely.
http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/
We have until July 1, 2005, to buy, build, and sell fully-capable, non-flag-compliant HDTV receivers. Any receivers built now will "remain functional under a flag regime, allowing consumers to continue their use without the need for new or additional equipment." Any devices made this year can be re-sold in the future.
Gigabit ethernet ports are becoming common on PC and laptop systems.
Accent on the becoming. Right now, there are a lot of laptops with High Speed USB and 100BASE-TX Ethernet. High Speed USB, at 480 Mbps half-duplex, is faster than 100BASE-TX Ethernet, at 100 Mbps full-duplex. Besides, which connection has a simpler interface chip?
OK... Quote me something about it.
Show me your quotes on mere threats being considered terrorism.
Otherwise you're still buried under a rock in a deep dark hole and still not contributing anything.
Infuriate left and right
While Part 15 specifies that equipment must accept inbound interference, it does not give free reign to interfere. It's still illegal to knowingly broadcast a radio signal for the purpose of jamming another signal, or causing equipment to malfunction. Packing up a powerful mobile HAM set and driving it around just to kill BPL signals seems like it might qualify.
oh, my guitar tuner did that.
I used to have a Korg Pandora guitar effects pedal (revision1). When left amplified to my 200watt Marshall amp and then TURNED TOTALLY OFF it would pick up a mix of
Russian and German radio!
Fantastic easter egg!
A blog I run for the wealth
Is there any less legitimacy to using DeCSS on my Windows machine to watch a DVD I legitimately purchased*?
Yes, but for an unrelated reason. Every DVD Video player app licensed under the MPEG-2 and Dolby Digital patents also happens to include a licensed CSS decoder. CSS isn't patented, as the inventors unwisely chose trade secret protection instead, but if you're decoding video with DeCSS, you're probably also decoding MPEG-2 video in violation of patents and decoding AC3 audio in violation of patents. So in addition to being unlawful under the DMCA, there's an argument that DeCSS was also a contributory infringement of the patents on DVD Video.
...isn't the phenomenon the original comment was talking about.
Read the fine print in the manual
You are allowed to transmit without a license during states of emergencies. Still there on the books. The US government is currently operating under a variety of states of emergencies.
The HAMS don't like that little bit of data brought up, as it would require them to acknowledge their entire subservience and groveling to government thing, the first amendment and what it really means, and the barely constrained "leetness" factor.
I like radios, and I like most HAMS I know, but this is true facts, too. FWIW. IMO, there is no "pirate" radio, but there is "pirate" government.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
See also Flex-Radio which can transmit (if you have a license), has a similar price point (within 3dB ;-), works with GnuRadio software, and comes with its own Visual Basic software (source).
John Dvorak coincidentally has an article about SDRs over at www.pcmag.com: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1745361,00.as p
also transmit and receive in the 800 Mhz cell phone band.
or your local fire/police department.
or your local airport.
or...
Obviously there are many "bad" things it could be used for. Just like the kitchen knife in your drawer.
violates motorola's 'Symphonic' DSP fm chipset patents!!!
r ol as_symphony_digital/
(24-bit Onyx DSP and special parallel code)
therefore this will never go fully commercial with fm radio working as a preset for many many years!!!
you read it here first on slashdot Dec 2004.
too bac AC posts sre not archived.
but 'i told you so' once again
http://mrtmag.com/dealers/automotive/radio_moto
My God--do you know what could be done with one of these devices? If it were programmed to learn? It's better than having your own standing army. It would be like having a key to the entire world.
"Due process for one. The USA can hold people without charge for years and has cobbled together some special court system so they don't have to try the Cuba inmates under US civil or military law. "
Which the US supreme Court overruled
And who knows how long before those jack-booted government thugs start banning firearms. Oh wait, that happened before the terrorists. Our rights have been eroding since long before the public knew about those wahabi goatfuckers. And that will continue as long as people are grandstanding about such things as illegal foreign combatants not getting the protection of the geneva convention (which they are NOT entitled to) and the US constitution (Does not apply outside the US ; mind that imperialist attitude!) instead of noticing the politicians they vote for slowly removing rights that apply to them.
Sometimes at night I imagine the darkness is filled with horrible things with too many teeth, like Julia Roberts.
See Software Defined Radio on wikipedia
My skull sometimes bleeds when I read slashdot.
Just stop banging your head against the desk, dude. I know, it's hard to stop, but, as much as you want it to, it won't change the contents of the article summary.
Software controlled radio signal receive/transmit is no more or less a terrorist threat than fertilizer and truck fuel, or DNA sequence machines and a smallpox database, or a fueled in flight 747.
Every day that passes, technology puts more power in the hands of individuals. Dangerous times are a-comin'. The Uni-bomber warned us we are on a path leading to a cliff. But he was as crazy as John Brown in 1856.
No sane informed person thinks the answers to tehnologies conundrums will be simple.
For all the people saying they don't know what it does, you know it has something to do with GNURadio, is it so hard to look that up yourselves?
Next time there's a story about an XBox video game or peripheral, I should reply to every post, asking what an XBox is...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The FPGA contains digital up and down converters
..." (Source: USRP FAQ).
The FPGA is not an analog RF front-end, but is for programmable digital logic (gate arrays).
The FPGA can only modify digital signals that have been through the ADC (or before they go through the DAC).
The USRP cannot transmit a RF signal greater than the ADC and basicTX module can handle. "... the BasicTX will put out about 1mW up to about 50 MHz
i am really starting to think that the reason why the man doesn't want us building our own communications and transport devices is because he wants to keep holding us by the balls by therefore keeping us all on the same planet until he feels that we've been pumped enough to go work for him on another planet filled with valuable resources...
"Stallman, you are a moron... You dumbass acid-dropping hippie!" Really fixed.
Yet Another Slashdot Astroturfer?
Tech Public Policy stuff
America is in the process of becoming a "no go" zone for non-commercially sponsored electronics R&D. Anyone familiar with electronics should be able to come up with any number of devices used on an everyday basis that was invented in a homebrew workshop, not a corporate R&D shop.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Remember the TRS80 or TK-something era?
My trs80 had a tape drive. I recorded software transmited live by the local college FM radio station. then i had a maze game or flight sim to play with.
Current ATC systems are too weak, this kind of device could be easy modified, to enable it to send false signals to aircrafts, guiding it to collisions, this is to hijack a plane w/o hijackers inside.