Monthly Archives: July 2018

OP25 Raspberry Pi Streaming Part 2

So I finally figured out OP25 and I have this brand new Raspberry Pi 3 B + laying around doing nothing. In this segment we’ll install OP25 on Raspberry Pi and then take our police scanner feed and send it to the internet on Broadcastify.

As someone pointed out to me yesterday, “There’s an app for that” they are indeed correct. You can get Police Scanner Apps for IOS and Android. Guess where the feeds in those apps comes from? If you said Broadcastify you’d be correct. So if no one is feeding your municipality then there will be no feed in the app. We will be that feed.

So the assumption is that you have a Pi with Raspbian installed and you kind of know how to use it.

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OP25 For Dummies – Or how to build a police scanner for $30 (Part 1)

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OP25 is a program that decodes P25 Phase 1 and Phase 2 digital radio. Some municipal areas are upgrading to P25 Phase 2 so almost gone are the days that you can track them with a police scanner since P25 is a Trunked Radio system and not just a lone frequency to monitor. The only things that do Phase 2 are hardware scanners and hardware radios and OP25 for software radios. Bear in mind Phase 2 could be encrypted and nothing you can do will decode it.

OP25 is HARD. I’m a geek and I messed with it on and off for a year or more and it whipped me more than once. Now that I have it working I find that it is REMARKABLY easy and I’m mad at all the geeks out there who never made a simple tutorial. There are tutorials out there, some good but everybody leaves out the good stuff or the stuff they took for granted.

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Othernet

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We all know what the Internet is but what in the world is the Othernet? (It used to be called Outernet). The Othernet is unofficially dubbed “The Internet in Space” or “The Encyclopedia in Space” and it’s mission is to provide internet type information to the poor or to areas on earth which don’t have active internet.

I kind of view it as a back up to the internet and one more source of information in a SHTF scenario. When the grid goes down as long as you have an othernet receiver and a generator or some batteries and a laptop the satellite in space will probably still be working fine.

The project is housed here. Before you jump into the Othernet fire for the first time, know this. When you buy Othernet hardware, that’s all you get. No manual, no instructions. Nothing. That being said one of the users over there made an amazing guide to setting up the Othernet.

If you start digging into this guy a bit he’s highly credentialed and you can better believe this hobbyist believes everything he has to say in this paper. So it’s really all good.

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DOD CAC Card on Ubuntu Linux

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So, you are a government employee AND a Linux geek. Join the club. It is possible to use your smart card to access DOD CAC Card enabled sites. A must do project for the Linux geek in you.

I’m doing this with an IOGEAR GSR202 and it will work with a lot of other CAC Card readers as well. Also I’m using Ubuntu 18.04

First of all the information is taken from this excellent website. While almost perfect there are a few minor issues that could foul a fella up. I seek to clarify those here.

First lets download the Certs for your browser. They also come from the page I have linked above (MilitaryCAC.com). Download here. Hold tight. We’ll get back to them.

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