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PIrateRF

Turn a $20 Raspberry Pi Zero into a 12-mode RF transmitter

Details

External ID
47047559
Source
HN
Company
—
Product
PIrateRF
Website domain
github.com
Launched
Feb. 17, 2026
Cohort
—
Upvotes
33
Upvotes percentile
0.7553908355795148
Tags
—
Fetched at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Updated at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.

Description

I built a software-defined radio transmission platform that runs on a Raspberry Pi Zero W. It spawns its own WiFi hotspot and serves a web UI — connect from any device and you have a portable RF signal generator with 12 transmission modes: FM broadcasting with RDS, FT8, RTTY, FSK, POCSAG paging, Morse code, SSTV image transmission, voice cloning via live mic, spectrum painting, IQ replay, carrier wave, and frequency sweeps.Everything runs through a browser interface. Upload audio files, type messages, configure frequencies, and transmit. The Pi's GPIO pin does the actual RF generation via rpitx — no external radio hardware needed.Written in Go with a real-time WebSocket frontend. Includes a preset system, playlist builder, and multi-device support (connect multiple phones/laptops to the AP and share control).Without an antenna the signal barely reaches 5 meters, which makes it perfect for indoor experimentation and learning about RF protocols without causing interference. All my testing was done indoors with no antenna attached.Built this because I wanted a single portable tool to experiment with every common RF transmission mode without hauling around expensive SDR equipment.Pre-built SD card image available if you want to skip the build process.GitHub: https://github.com/psyb0t/piraterf Blog post: https://ciprian.51k.eu/piraterf-turning-a-20-raspberry-pi-ze...

Enrichment

Theme
hardware hacking and device utilities
Vertical
Horizontal
Function
Hardware & robotics
Audience
Developer
AI stance
Not AI
Project type
Hobby / open-source project
Normalized one-liner
rf transmitter using raspberry pi
Manually corrected
False

Could you build this?

No Generating raw RF transmission across 12 distinct modulation modes directly from Raspberry Pi GPIO pins requires deep digital signal processing (DSP), precise hardware clock manipulation (DMA/PWM), and RF domain expertise.

What it would actually take: Building this requires low-level C or Assembly programming directly addressing BCM2835 hardware registers and DMA controllers to synthesize arbitrary frequencies via GPIO without dedicated SDR hardware. It entails implementing signal modulation algorithms (FSK, RDS, FT8, POCSAG, RTTY, WSPR) from raw mathematical definitions and timing-critical bit banging, alongside managing RF harmonics and hardware filtering.

Discussion

13 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: rpitx (F5OEO/rpitx on GitHub), PSK31, JT-8

Concerns raised: No RF filtering, transmissions on harmonics, Appears AI-generated rather than genuinely developed, Lacks good RF practices despite claiming to prioritize them, Heavy emoji use makes code unprofessional and hard to read

Feature requests: Adjustable or fixed RF filtering options, Support for PSK31 and JT-8 modulation modes

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one — 84 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #24 of 85 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 109 days after the earliest competitor.

Other launches for this product

Same idea, different domain

Nobody's really built a hardware & robotics tool for Fintech yet.