Looking for some new ways to use my phone beyond reading and comsuming media.

What are some advanced apps/uses that you guys are using?

  • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    Using a software defined radio (SDR). However you would need additional hardware. The most popular one, RTL-SDR works well with Android apps. There’s a lot you can do with SDRs. With my phone I mostly use it for receiving satellite imagery from the NOAA-15, 18 and 19 which transmit APT around 137MHz making it easy to receive with a simple V-Dipole antenna. Recently Meteor M N2-3 has launched which also transmits LRPT, which is digital at 4 times the resolution. Unfortunately, its LRPT antenna has not deployed properly so the signal is very poor. Ideally I’d use a Yagi-Uda antenna for that. For decoding LRPT, I use SatDump, for APT I record it as audio in SDR++, then use noaa-apt in Termux, but SatDump can decode it too.

    I also use it for receiving DAB+ radio with welle.io. A separate DAB+ receiver would cost me just as much as the RTL-SDRv3 + Dipole kit.

    ADS-B is also fun to look at.

    Anyway, there’s a lot to do with it ranging from just listening to FM radio, up to (illegally) decrypting GSM phone calls and SMS texts. Crazy Danish Hacker has a series on the latter: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRovDyowOn5F_TFotx0n8A79ToZYD2lOv but that you can’t do on a phone anymore.

    Edit: I forgot to mention Android Proxy Server which is useful on school network to go through my data.