Hello,
First and foremost I want to introduce myself as I have visited this site many times, but never needed to make a post. Mostly I am a hobbyist, but I do occasionally develop, and code items that are used for work.

I am restarting a project that I abandoned awhile back due to the amount of false positives that I received back during my test run. It is being restarted due to an Innovation Competition internally at my place of work and I have decided to build it from the ground up.

What I am actually looking for is references to experts or a community dealing with RF. This is pretty much the closest I have come for what I am trying to achieve. I have managed to amplify a RF detector/sniffer to reach out a greater lengths, but I was trying to isolate only the the BlueTooth signals in area (specific ones).

It did work, but it was catching wifi as well even though some parameters which I helped out with were placed in. Since I am now revisiting this project again I think I need to consult with someone with a better understanding from start to finish. If you know of a group, community, person, or documentation please let me know. However, I am not interested in a pre-made product. Thanks in advance.

 

Hello,

It did work, but it was catching wifi as well (...) I am not interested in a pre-made product

Did you use a Bluetooth IC stack ? If so: which one is it ? Did you also respect the datasheet parameters, also PCB suggestions from manufacturer ? This is important.
You could start posting your project (here or on github) so someone could take it a look.
simozz

 

We have some members here who are pretty well learned in the field of RF. You might also find that the forum at RF Cafe is a good place to look for the expertise you seek.

http://www.rfcafe.com/rfcbb/

 

Hello,

Did you use a Bluetooth IC stack ? If so: which one is it ? Did you also respect the datasheet parameters, also PCB suggestions from manufacturer ? This is important.
You could start posting your project (here or on github) so someone could take it a look.
simozz

The first build was a pretty rugged proof of concept. While I could have cut a PCB board or utilized an arduino paired with some adafruit add on to achieve something of the same outcome I opted to simply cut out all of that and use an existing solution which was to solder the radio to a USB Bluetooth adapter with some minor modifications. From there you would need an interface to monitor frequencies. Running it against a database of well known declared Bluetooth device ids was not a problem. The unknowns which happen to be SSIDs for WIFI were. In answer to your question a Bluetooth stack is not out of the question since it is being built from the ground up. I need to focus on if I went wrong on hardware. Software can be corrected pretty easily even if i decide to go a different route. Thank you for your feedback

 

We have some members here who are pretty well learned in the field of RF. You might also find that the forum at RF Cafe is a good place to look for the expertise you seek.

http://www.rfcafe.com/rfcbb/

I will check it out. Thank you

 

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RE:"However, I am not interested in a pre-made product."

Sorry to note the fact that this sniffer is just the thingy what costs to buy no more than a glass of whiskey, but to design it DIY You must have a five years of free time and scientific degree instrumentation of dozen millions of honey-money. That is an instrument what ultimately must be bought ready-made.

Generally there are two kind of such - one is three-axis or one-axis RF field-strength meters, where one model I have is ebay.com/itm/Tenmars-TM-195-3-Axis-EMF-RF-High-Frequency-Filed-Strength-Meter-50MHz-3-5GHz-/162614749649?hash=item25dc9829d1:gNsAAOSw6WlZgaR7 capable between the 30MHz and 3GHz (brilliant and worth to trust instrument).

Other is rather cheap 5Hz to 6GHz one-axe instrument like GM3120 (ebay.com/itm/GM3120-Digital-Electromagnetic-Radiation-Detector-Meter-Dosimeter-Tester-Counter-/232392609611?epid=819168977&hash=item361badcf4b:g:q4EAAOSwFJBZVbZf) which is not very trustable but anyway the range is what I need sometimes.

When the need is more specific about frequency determination or multi-frequency detection or so much like a signal sequence (code) deciphering there is no better thingy at the markets like few dollars cheap SDR USB DVB-T like ebay.com/itm/DVB-T-DAB-FM-RTL2832U-R820T-Tuner-Mini-USB-RTL-SDR-ADS-B-Receiver-Stick-UP-/272782589898?hash=item3f831bffca:g:d4MAAOSw3v5XIwth
having a limit around 1,49 GHz what is hardly too small for my plays.

Therefore I obtained much expensiver thingy but more capricious in the work. It is Hack-RF like ebay.com/itm/HackRF-One-RTL-SDR-Software-Defined-Radio-Board-1MHz-to-6GHz-Open-Source-USB2-0-/282601665816?hash=item41cc5f3518:g:0wgAAOSwx6pYsuTv
only I bought it about twice cheaper. Its wondrous - few moments of headache and witchcraft into manuals, and You have a full spectrum of signal with each frequency measured, modulation specified and on demand a sequence saved. I checked it to my VW car, for my terrify, the sequence of door-lock after-played indeed opened the lock and security module obeyed. Damn the fools designed those lock. Anyway, there is no at the market beyond the million-cost products any better meter available. The range is 1 MHz to 6 GHz.