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Comment by _abox | Hacker News Reader

Considering people have been converting the PWM pin of a raspberry pi into a digital TV transmitter and the fact that all modern wi-fi chipsets are software defined, I think a lot of malicious stuff can be done with it if one really sets their mind to it. Much more than the regular deauth shenanigans.

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I think I found the transmitter you're talking about, it looks pretty neat: https://github.com/F5OEO/rpidatv

Yes, it's very cool! But don't use it to transmit in practice though. The output is very dirty because it produces square waves which generate a lot of harmonics (emissions on unintended frequencies).

You can use this safely if you know what you're doing but only with a lot of filtering. Or by not transmitting as such but outputting into a receiver directly with some attenuation.

> Considering people have been converting the PWM pin of a raspberry pi into a digital TV transmitter

Somehow the world didn't end though?

Maybe we should just assume the RF spectrum can and will be interfered with regarding of regulation and design accordingly, rather than trying to put the cat in the bag? After all, that's the approach we take for security despite "hacking" being illegal in most countries, and yet we still use HTTPS and authentication.

There is a difference between transmitting on the TV band with a range of one room and sticking a transmitter tower up in your back yard. No one cares or can even detect low power unauthorized transmissions.

I never said the world would end. I just answered the question about repurposing the hardware.

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