Pocket FM (opens in new tab)

(pocket-fm.com)

30 pointssauerbraten10y ago10 comments

10 comments

Is this someone's attempt at marketing SDR to the masses? This is nothing new, and I'm surprised to see how little information they put forward about it.

neilwillgettoit10y ago

It's just a low power FM station with a raspberry pi in it as a controller. It would be highly illegal to use this device in most modern nations without a license.

voltagex_10y ago

The Nokia N900 could broadcast short-range FM with RDS, I'm not sure what advantages this has.

1 more reply

neilwillgettoit10y ago

This seems like a bad idea. It would make targeting dissent with kinetic means very easy. It's one of the whole reasons that shortwave broadcasts are still around.

msandford10y ago

How so? What off the shelf guidance systems exist to home in on FM radio?

I'm sure there are tons of anti-SAM guidance packages which will steer something towards a SAM transmitter, but that's in an entirely different frequency band from what I remember.

Terminal guidance systems tend to be in the UHF and SHF bands, generally gigahertz and up where as FM is VHF at about 100MHz.

It'd take a fair amount of work to re-engineer a guidance package to find such a lower power FM transmitter and perform terminal guidance on it. Especially when the world is awash in FM all around there too.

http://thediplomat.com/2014/08/the-f-35-vs-the-vhf-threat/

bobowzki10y ago

It's this easy.

http://youtu.be/NSC4Y8yA-jY

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

10 comments

gravypod10y ago

Is this someone's attempt at marketing SDR to the masses? This is nothing new, and I'm surprised to see how little information they put forward about it.

neilwillgettoit10y ago

It's just a low power FM station with a raspberry pi in it as a controller. It would be highly illegal to use this device in most modern nations without a license.

voltagex_10y ago

The Nokia N900 could broadcast short-range FM with RDS, I'm not sure what advantages this has.

1 more reply

neilwillgettoit10y ago

This seems like a bad idea. It would make targeting dissent with kinetic means very easy. It's one of the whole reasons that shortwave broadcasts are still around.

msandford10y ago

How so? What off the shelf guidance systems exist to home in on FM radio?

I'm sure there are tons of anti-SAM guidance packages which will steer something towards a SAM transmitter, but that's in an entirely different frequency band from what I remember.

Terminal guidance systems tend to be in the UHF and SHF bands, generally gigahertz and up where as FM is VHF at about 100MHz.

http://thediplomat.com/2014/08/the-f-35-vs-the-vhf-threat/

bobowzki10y ago

It's this easy.

http://youtu.be/NSC4Y8yA-jY

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse