Great Scott Gadgets Unveils the Bigger, Better, Wider-Range HackRF Pro Software-Defined Radio

Great Scott Gadgets has announced its follow-up to the popular HackRF One software-defined radio, a more powerful device it has very sensibly named the HackRF Pro.

"HackRF Pro from Great Scott Gadgets is a software-defined radio peripheral capable of transmission or reception of radio signals from 100kHz to 6GHz," the company says of its latest SDR device. "Designed to enable test and development of modern and next generation radio technologies, HackRF Pro is an open source hardware platform that can be used as a USB peripheral or programmed for stand-alone operation."

Designed by Michael Ossmann, the HackRF One — then known simply as the HackRF — attracted considerable attention with a highly successful crowdfunding campaign back in 2014. Its ability to transmit as well as receive, a feature lacking in entry-level receive-only SDR dongles, combined with the release of design files and source code under an open source license made the device popular with hackers, educators, and security researchers alike.

The HackRF Pro is, as the name implies, more of the same — but beefed up. It offers an increased operating frequency range of 100kHz to 6GHz, and is tunable from 0Hz to 7.1GHz, with what Great Scott Gadgets claims is a "improved RF [radio-frequency] performance with [a] flatter frequency response." It supports sample rantes up to 20 mega-samples per second (20MSps), includes software-configurable gain on receive and transmit, software-controlled radio-frequency port power, and a USB 2.0 High-Speed connection to a host device — now using a more modern USB Type-C connector.

Other claimed improvements over the HackRF One include better timing stability, a move to an FPGA to provide better power efficiency than the original CPLD-based design, the introduction of an extended precision mode that offers 16-bit sampling at low sample rates, increased RAM and flash memory, increased shielding, and the elimination of a potentially-annoying direct-current (DC) spike.

"Software that works with HackRF One is already compatible with HackRF Pro," the company promises. "We designed HackRF Pro for backward compatibility, following the same basic architecture of HackRF One but with many small enhancements. Prior to shipping HackRF Pro, we will publish a migration guide that will show software developers how to take advantage of certain new capabilities of HackRF Pro, but out-of-the-box HackRF Pro will behave like HackRF One with superior performance. In addition to host software compatibility, our migration guide will address firmware, allowing developers to port custom firmware to the new platform and take advantage of its unique capabilities."

More information on the HackRF Pro is available on the Great Scott Gadgets website; units are now available to pre-order from approved resellers for $400, with shipping expected to take place in September this year.