alphafox02

Standalone Iridium satellite burst detector and demodulator in C

49
5
100% credibility
Found Feb 17, 2026 at 17 stars 3x -- GitGems finds repos before they trend. Get early access to the next one.
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AI Analysis
C
AI Summary

A lightweight standalone tool that detects and demodulates Iridium satellite radio bursts from affordable radio receivers or recorded signals, producing output ready for further message decoding.

How It Works

1
🔭 Discover satellite signals

You hear about Iridium satellites zipping overhead sending secret messages and want to listen in with a simple radio gadget.

2
📦 Get the sniffer ready

Download the free tool to your computer and prepare your radio receiver antenna.

3
🚀 Tune to the sky

Point your radio at the L-band sky frequencies where satellites broadcast bursts of data.

4
📡 Catch the bursts

Watch as the tool spots short radio bursts from satellites flying by, pulling out the hidden signals.

5
🗺️ See satellites live

Open the built-in map to spot satellite positions and active phone calls in real-time.

Decode the messages

Feed the bursts into free tools to reveal emails, texts, and calls from anywhere on Earth.

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Star Growth

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AI-Generated Review

What is iridium-sniffer?

Iridium-sniffer is a standalone C tool that detects and demodulates Iridium satellite bursts from live SDR captures or IQ files, outputting RAW frames compatible with iridium-toolkit for ACARS/SBD recovery. Like a whisper standalone github for satellite signals, it skips GNU Radio entirely, running lightweight on x86 or Raspberry Pi 5 with HackRF, BladeRF, USRP, or SoapySDR. Fire it up with `./iridium-sniffer -l` for real-time bursts, or pipe to parsers.

Why is it gaining traction?

It crushes gr-iridium on frame recovery—37% more IDA frames via Chase BCH decoding—while adding killer user perks like a beta web map (`--web`) for live satellite positions and GSMTAP (`--gsmtap`) straight to Wireshark. No Python pipelines needed for parsed IDA (`--parsed`), and optional GPU burst detection keeps it snappy at 4-5x realtime. Devs dig the cmake auto-detection and FFTW wisdom for ARM, making it a true standalone github copilot for iridium sniffing.

Who should use this?

SDR hackers tracking Iridium traffic for research or reverse-engineering, satellite enthusiasts visualizing ring alerts on a map, or toolkit users ditching GNU Radio bloat for embedded deploys. Perfect if you're feeding Wireshark GSMTAP or reassembling SBD without extra scripts.

Verdict

Grab it if you need a lean iridium burst detector/demodulator—docs and benchmarks are pro-level, and it outperforms alternatives on weak signals. With just 10 stars and 1.0% credibility, it's early; validate on your hardware before production.

(198 words)

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