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RFQuack Setup

Prepare Your Hardware

  1. Choose the radio chip and board that you want to use among the supported ones:

  2. Assemble the board and the radio chip together: if you choose the Adafruit Feather system, all you have to do is stack the boards together, and do some minor soldering. Read more.

  3. Connect the assembled board to the USB port.

Firmware Configuration

RFQuack's build system is parametric, so that you can customize some functionality without touching the code. This means that the build system "compiles" a template main.cpp based on some variables, before running the actual compilation step (from C++ to binary executable).

The build process is baed on PlatformIO and will read variables from two files:

  • platformio.ini: board and platform definition.
    • Default: featheresp32 (ESP32)
  • build.env: type of radio(s) and connections.
    • Default: 3 radios (CC1101, nRF24, RF69) connected "randomly" (likely you'll need to change this).

General Configuration

Variable Description Required
RFQUACK_UNIQ_ID Unique identifier for this node (defaults to RFQUACK) No
SERIAL_BAUD_RATE Defaults to 115200 No
USE_MQTT Disables Serial transport and enables the MQTT one No
WIFI_SSID WiFi SSID Yes, if USE_MQTT
WIFI_PASS WiFi Password Yes, if USE_MQTT
MQTT_HOST MQTT Broker host Yes, if USE_MQTT
MQTT_PORT MQTT Broker port (defaults to 1883) No
MQTT_USER MQTT Broker username No
MQTT_PASS MQTT Broker password No
MQTT_SSL Enables MQTT over SSL (put your certificates into rfquack_certificates.h) No

Radio Configuration

RFQuack supports up to 5 radios, up to what your board supports (i.e., enough interrupt and chip select pins). You must configure, at least, RadioA:

Variable Description Required
RADIOA Chosen modem for RadioA: (options: rF69, CC1101, nRF24 case sensitive) Yes
RADIOA_CS Chip select pin for RadioA Yes
RADIOA_IRQ Interrupt pin for RadioA. It's labeled IRQ on nRF24 modules, or GDO0 on CC1101 ones No
RADIOA_RST Reset pin for RadioA (called chip enable pin in nRF24 ) nRF24 only (optional for others)
RADIO<X> Chosen module for RadioA: (options: RF69, CC1101, nRF24) No
RADIO<X>_CS Chip Select pin for RadioX No
RADIO<X>_IRQ Interrupt pin for RadioX (e.g., labeled IRQ on nRF24 modules, GDO0 on CC1101) No
RADIO<X>_RST Reset pin for RadioX (needed only for nRF24 radios) No

Valid values of <X> are B, C, D, E.

Modules Configuration

RFQuack comes with some built-in modules, which are not enabled by default to keep the firmware lightweight. If you want to enable them, define the following variables into build.env:

  • GUESSING_MODULE
  • FREQ_SCANNER_MODULE
  • MOUSE_JACK_MODULE
  • PACKET_FILTER_MODULE
  • PACKET_MOD_MODULE
  • PACKET_REPEAT_MODULE
  • ROLL_JAM_MODULE

For more information, check out the Modules section.

Example Configurations

ESP32 + CC1101

This is the declaration of an RFQuack dongle based on an featheresp32 board and 1 CC1101 radio.

General Configuration

This is the declaration of a featheresp32-based board in PlatformIO:

platformio.ini
; ...you can ignore what's above this...

[env:featheresp32]
extends = env:espressif32
board = featheresp32

Now let's combine it with a CC1101 radio.

Radio Configuration

build.env
RADIOA=CC1101
RADIOA_CS=2
RADIOA_IRQ=5
  • Chip select (CS) to pin 2, which means that your radio's CS is connect to pin 2 on the featheresp32 1.
  • Interrupt (IRQ) to pin 5, which means that your radio's default 2 digital I/O pin is connected to pin 2 on the featheresp32.

More Examples

We'll add more examples in this section. Meanwhile, please check the examples/ folder for inspiration.

  1. See the Adafruit Feather ESP32 pinout definition. ↩

  2. See Figure 9 and Table 19 of TI CC1101 datasheet for more details. ↩