Gabe Emerson's Spacedeck Is a Radio-Packed Upcycled Luggable for "Legal Satellite Hacking"

Self-described "amateur mad scientist" Gabe Emerson has put together a cyberdeck design for "legal satellite hacking," dubbed the Spacedeck — and cramming a whole host of useful radio tools into a single luggable unit.

"Since I’ve been doing a lot of stuff with old satellite dishes lately, I figured it was time for a more organized, self-contained control and receiver setup," Emerson explains. "The result is [the Spacedeck], made from a surplus police car computer, digital satellite meter, various software-defined radio stuff, and nearly the entire contents of multiple spare parts bins."

Emerson's plan didn't start with salvage, though: the project was originally designed around more modern hardware, including a compact laptop with solid-state storage, a DisplayLink screen, and more — but, the maker explains, nothing worked quite the way he wanted, leading to a decision to reject modernity and build around tried-and-tested classics instead.

"Everything in the current cyberdeck version is [Microsoft] Windows XP era [2001-2008]," Emerson explains. "I'm actually using Q4OS Linux, but it looks and feels just like Windows XP. The whole thing probably cost under $50, as most of it was stuff I already had lying around. I did spend the big bucks on a new 60 per cent keyboard and a couple [of] battery packs."

Inside the rugged housing is a salved all-in-one touchscreen computer, originally built for use in police vehicles, connected to an RTL-SDR dongle for software-defined-radio workloads. There are a number of Wi-Fi modules, numerous filters and amps, and a dedicated satellite meter, plus hardware for handling satellite dishes including a Low Noise Block (LNB) power injector and an alignment control unit for powered satellite dish pointers.

"The system is fairly modular and expandable, with most major components simply stuck in with Velcro tape," Emerson says. "If I want to swap modules for a different experiment, I can just pop them out and replace with something else. Most of the ports and controls are exposed in two custom-made panels. A friend asked if I were getting these laser cut… nope, just plexiglass on the table saw, print the layout on a vinyl sticker, and slap em together!"

Emerson's full write-up is available on his website.