Show HN: PIrateRF – Turn a $20 Raspberry Pi Zero into a 12-mode RF transmitter

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...

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rasz 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

This is very bad. No filtering, all transmissions on harmonics.

Emotes in readme, emotes in scripts, emotes in source files, lol libs used = LLMed up the ass. Someone pointed Claude (yes, CLAUDE.md is in the repo) at https://github.com/F5OEO/rpitx and told it to wrap it around in fluff go code, then sprinkled profanities and pirate theme on top.

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userbinator an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I don't recall many, if any, Github repos containing this emoji-vomit before the rise of AI, and likewise natural human conversations in forums and such were also not like this, so I find it very odd and distinctly unnatural. Where did this "vibe coded" style actually originate from?

	▲	drum55 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I occasionally saw a readme with a couple of Emoji in it, but the behavior where every title, every bullet point, every sentence ends with one or more of them is utterly obnoxious. There's something about the sources that chatGPT uses which causes it just sprinkle Emoji absolutely everywhere, it's one of the most obvious tell tales that it came from chatGPT without a prompt to tell it otherwise.

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jrmg an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don’t see a CLAUDE.md (or any mention of Claude) in the repo that’s posted or the one you quoted?

	▲	drum55 43 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		https://raw.githubusercontent.com/psyb0t/piraterf/88c5fc416d... That's because it's in the .gitignore. It's just very obviously made with claude, from the style, to the commits of tens of thousands of lines of code a day, to the parts where Claude commits something sensible and the author goes back to add in curse words. Nobody has ever developed software in the same way that claude tends to, where suddenly a whole readme appears in a commit fully formatted and filled with emojis.

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SanjayMehta an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It's like Usenet but with emojis.

I miss those days, zero snowflakes, all trolls. Now we have more verbiage in CoCs than code.

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Saris 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How are you doing output RF filtering? Fixed filters or some kind of adjustable one?

	▲	teraflop an hour ago \| parent [-]
		There is no filtering. Apparently if you just say > Built for engineers who understand that good RF practices matter more than arbitrary administrative boundaries then actually following good RF practices is optional.

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iberator 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

why not PSK31, JT-8 etc?