In the last few months we added some exciting new features to the PandwaRF. Here’s what changed:

New connection security mechanism

Since PandwaRF Android Release 1.4.0 we have added a new security mechanism to protect your PandwaRF from unauthorized access. The new unauthorized access protection feature uses the BLE bonding process.

You now have to choose whether you want to use this new security feature or not.

  • If you enable unauthorized access protection, a smartphone can only connect to your PandwaRF after pressing the SW2 button on the PandwaRF board.
  • If you disable unauthorized access protection, any smartphone can connect to your PandwaRF, without any button pressed.

More details here in the PandwaRF Android Pairing Bonding page.

RF Power amplifiers

The RF power amplifiers are now handled by the app, in the RF Power page.

  • If your RF capture returns no data, or SpecAn RSSI is a bit low, just make sure you have enabled the RX power amplifiers.
  • At the inverse, if the RF data looks saturated (all 0xFF), disable the RX power amp.
  • If you notice a short range transmission from your PandwaRF, just make sure to turn on the TX amplifier.

RfCat script updated

For those who don’t know yet, PandwaRF is compatible with the RfCat Python script, which allows controlling the PandwaRF from a Linux terminal with an interactive Python shell.
PandwaRF has its own version of RfCat so we have updated the RfCat Python scripts to add the Python functions equivalent to what we do natively in the Android App:

  • Data rate measurement
  • Jamming
  • Brute Force

See more in our Linux RfCat For PandwaRF page.

PandwaRF Android SDK

Remember PandwaRF has an Android SDK hosted in a Maven repository.
We provide the Gollum Android Library for free to developers. This is the same library which powers our app. We also provide a sample Android application to show how to use it.

We regularly make a new release of the Android SDK, but maybe not as often as we should.
As a result of which, the Maven Gollum Library is sometimes a bit behind the library used in the app. If you notice such a gap and need the latest version of the lib, just email us /chat us/forum-ize us (pick one) and we will catch up on this.

We hope you enjoy the latest updates and feel free to tell us what you think. As always, any feedback is more than welcome 🙂