Decoding radio-controlled bus stop displays (2013) | Hacker News Reader

Decoding radio-controlled bus stop displays (2013)

windytan.com

65 pointszdw12 comments

There is so much free information out on the airwaves, if you only had the protocol docs available. In addition to the usual pseudo-voyeur stuff (police/fire/EMS/Burger King drive-thru radios), I've seen people downloading telemetry data from space probes, decoding GPS, tracking airplanes with ADS-B, and of course, bus timetables.

Wouldn't that be écouteur rather than voyeur? ;)

Yup, there's a huge number of protocols used for radio, too bad powerful software like Code300-32 still cost an eye. Tech specs are impressive, but still €4500 for the cheapest version. http://www.hoka.net/pdf/code300-32_spec.pdf

There are some FOSS demodulators out there, but unfortunately the number of protocols they support is way smaller. SigDigger however seems promising, although still in early stage of development. https://batchdrake.github.io/SigDigger/

> people downloading telemetry data from space probes

Monitoring JWST transmissions, if doable, might be the next milestone for Ham Radio.

Already done by multipke people at the level of seeing the carrier. No data decoded as that needs much larger dishes. People have also been able to receive the carrier of various space probes orbiting Mars.

Don't forget wifi, bluetooth, vehicle radios, toys, wireless doors, alarms, lights and sprinklers, agricultural and fleet telemetry, AIS...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG_G6rZHp1A

Neil McCauley : how do you get this information?

Kelso : It comes to you, this stuff just flies through the air, they send this information "beamed" out over the fucking place, you just got to know how to grab it, see, I know how to grab it.

One tiny past discussion:

Decoding radio-controlled bus stop displays - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6789485 - Nov 2013 (3 comments)

There has been a very nice CCC talk on this topic… but I don't have the link :/

Pretty sure it was CCC 2013, as I was there.

Here it is https://media.ccc.de/v/30C3_-_5588_-_en_-_saal_g_-_201312281...

This 2015 post (Bastian Bloessl) digs in a bit, then point at a short video.

https://www.bastibl.net/reversing-bus-telemetry/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJwQUHeWftc

Useful 'Darc side of Munich' page:

https://apollo.open-resource.org/mission:log:2014:08:08:darc...

Somewhat related, SFMTA Muni is retiring its current bus stop displays because of AT&T 3G decommissioning. Probably not worth the effort, but presumably sufficiently motivated people could spoof legacy 3G and feed it any data they wish.

https://www.masstransitmag.com/technology/passenger-info/sig...

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