The December 2023 recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is a STEM Camp where students will have the opportunity to use the requested HackRF One to do a Quantum Physics experiment with laser light and modulated RF. We are excited to see how the experiment goes and to see pictures from the camp!

The November 2023 recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is Ryan. Ryan works as a wireless systems administrator for a public school. He coaches robotics and programming teams after school. Ryan has asked for a HackRF One to show the students in his clubs how to interact with the wirelss devices around them and to inspire them to explore RF as future career options.

The October recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is the Illinois Space Society, which is a student-run non-profit 501(c)3 aerospace organization at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. The Illinois Space Society hosts a variety of technical projects and educational outreach programs. One of their largest technical projects, Spaceshot, is aiming to be one of the first collegiate teams to build and launch a two stage rocket to 100km, also known as the Kármán line, the beginning of space.

Over the past two years they’ve been working on creating flight computers that can accurately conduct state estimation at extreme high altitude. The group says “GPS is undoubtedly the most accurate form of positioning we can utilize, but most consumer grade modules are not rated for those extreme altitudes or speeds. Our hope is to use the HackRF One as a GPS simulator to help test our modules in an easily reproducible manner without the need for an expensive test flight. With that said, a HackRF One would also allow us to expand beyond the range of our RTL-SDR to help debug our ESP32-S3 wifi modules and our upcoming wireless 5GHz video systems.” The Illinois Space Society also plans to use the HackRF One we send them to help kickoff their radio club. We look forward to seeing what projects the Illinois Space Society does from here!

We hope everyone has a great holiday season! If you are trying to get in touch with the Great Scott Gadgets team please know tomorrow (December 22nd) will be our last day in the office until the 2024 calendar year! This means that we will not be available through email, on Discord, or via GitHub. See you all in January!

The September recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is Erik. Erik is an Ojibwe filmmaker and artist. He has only had his amateur radio license for a short while but he is already assisting in running community demonstrations on how amateur radio can help in emergency situations. We are sending Erik a HackRF One so he can build a mobile training station and take his emergency preparedness demonstrations on the road to Native communities. As an avid camper and road tripper, Erik is also excited to eventually take his demonstrations into wilderness settings and rural communities. We look forward to seeing Erik’s mobile training station and getting updates on where he has taken it.

The August recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is The Factory, a student-run hardware design lab at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. The Factory aims to give students access to advanced tools for their hardware projects, space to work on their projects, and support in developing technical skills.

The Factory has previously offered workshops on VIM, VHDL, C, and PC building. They also run a Hackathon called The Forge. In one instance of The Forge students formed teams and built a line tracing robot to race against the other teams. In non-event related times, students in this lab have completed projects such as an IoT system for the trash cans on the McGill campus to alert the cleaning teams when a trash can is full, custom video game controllers, and an automated watering system for plants. About 40-50 students currently frequent The Factory, and they are all passionate about electronics, hardware, and related research.

We are sending The Factory a HackRF One so their lab members can fulfill their hopes of offering workshops and creating materials on wireless systems, satellite communication, and spectrum analysis. Good luck and have fun!

Great Scott Gadgets is on Mastodon! You’ll get a lot of the same information as you get on our other social media profiles, but if Mastodon is your platform preference, we now have you covered.

The July recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is Joona. Joona plans to use the YARD Stick One we are sending him to develop and test radios. He will be writing documentation and creating tutorials on his projects.

The June recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is Daniel. Dan is planning to use the HackRF One we are sending him to run workshops in his school and with his amateur radio group. He will also be creating videos with his new HackRF One on his YouTube channel “Radio Dan ZL2DTL”. Please welcome Radio Dan to the software-defined radio community!

The May recipient for the Great Scott Gadgets Free Stuff Program is the UCLA IEEE Wireless, RF, and Analog Project (WRAP). Participants in this club have the opportunity to learn hands-on radio engineering skills by designing, building, and testing a 2-way radio system capable of operating in the 100s of MHz. Through this project, students can learn digital and analog radio techniques like implementing filters and a mixer from discrete diodes and using coils for up/downconversion. WRAP asked for a HackRF One to aid in debugging wireless links, where they will use the HackRF One both as a modulated waveform generator for receiver testing and a real-time spectrum analyzer for transmitter and device debugging. We really look forward to seeing their end projects.