Lazy Hacking a Software Defined Radio USB Dongle with a Website!
I love a bit of hacking, and these small SDR USB dongles are popular and cheap (see mine inset). I bought mine years ago and it's sort of collected dust in my project drawer for years while I tried to come up with time or an excuse to fiddle with it.
https://radio.ea1iti.es
Well, go find yours, plug it in to your computer, and visit the website linked above. You'll need to select which SDR you have from a dialog box before you can really play. Thankfully, my local FM radio band is chock full of stations, and the web page immediately started rebroadcasting 88.5 FM radio to my delight! No software to load, no command-line twiddling of installing drivers, it just works!
Quick Hint: Hit the Right Arrow 'Play' button in the 'Controls' panel dialog box to get started. It'll then ask for permission via dialog box then start making noise!
There's a lot to explore, and you can prolly figure where your local radio stations are by multiplying their FM frequency by 1000 - i.e. 91.7 FM is found at 91700, 93.3 is found at 93300 and so on. You can click in the window to slightly 'tune' the channel, and the waterfall color data helps you find the data streams vs. static.
The real hacking is, of course, listening in on channels that don't advertise, like Air Traffic Control, local Police and Fire private communications channels. Ya know, stuff that makes a hacker a hacker. That'll take a bit of Google-Fu on your part to figure which channels they work on in your neighborhood, but rest assured, most of the 'good stuff' is usually encrypted broadcast, to you couldn't hear it even if you wanted to.
Still, the intention of this project is to get started easily. Plug in, visit a web url, Ta-da! You've now hacked it to work quickly! You've completely and utterly justified buying this USB SDR gimmick, as you now have the tools to use it and amaze your friends!
Cancel your Spotify subscription and listen local!
Yes, for the cost of a single month's subscription to Spotify, you could buy on of these cheap USB SDR thingys and tune into local FM radio using your laptop wherever you go in the world, and never need to pay for music again! Constantly interjected advertising is the small price you pay for this... But you do get access to dozens of useful stations (and millions of shit religious radio stations) broadcast locally but unseen in the invisible airwaves.
Special Thanks to my friends at TinyJPG, who easily shaved more than two thirds off those images, making this page load fast!