alt Hacker NewsVarious Projects Find Hidden SDR Capabilities in ESP32 Microcontrollers
Comments
With the new ESP32-S31 we most likely can extract the I/Q data over a 1 GBit/s interface. I ordered a few and waiting for Ali to deliver it to my lab.
As far as I follow the research process it's quite difficult to get all of it (like the 80MSPS@10-Bit showcase on Reddit) to a computer without a FPGA
Very exciting!
> However, the current prototype uses the FPGA to clock the ESP32, which results in poor phase noise.
Looks like this was solved five days ago:
https://github.com/h0m3us3r/eSpDR/commit/41a0ffe279119df942e...
Since I'm a little slow and it took me a minute:
SDR in this context is software defined radio.
> undocumented feature that lets the firmware bypass the fixed WiFi and Bluetooth functionality and instead capture raw IQ baseband samples
So kind of like those TV USB sticks that you can adapt into proper SDRs?
[dead]
So many $1 wireless ICs have a powerful "SDR", but will never be documented due to certification/compiliance/export-control reasons. The projects listed here rightly limited the scope to RX-only but Espressif might be forced to "patch" this away if arbitrary TX too is possible (or starts making headlines). Hope it doesn't come to that, more cheap options for RF-to-bits is always welcome.
On a technical note, not much I can find about the signal quality. Phase noise, images, DC Offset, etc. Have to get my hands on one, ESP32-S31 seems promising.