There are lots of "this" in that article. There is SDR, satellite downlinks, Amateur Radio protocols, and receiving equipment.
My path started when I bought one of the RTL-SDR bundles from Nooelec (https://www.nooelec.com/store/). It came with four different antennae and some adapters to connect it to your own antenna.
I spent some time reconstructing projects that people had posted on rtl-sdr.com (https://www.rtl-sdr.com/). I installed Gnuradio companion (and various Gnuradio bits) and built an FM receiver as well as a receiver that could see the signals coming from a wireless light switch.
I decided I wanted to transmit too so I bought a HackRF-one (https://www.nooelec.com/store/hackrf.html). It covers way more spectrum than the RTL-SDR and it has great support in a lot of packages. What I wasn't able to do very successfully with it was look at cellular signals so when Crowd Supply ran a campaign for the Lime SDR (https://www.crowdsupply.com/lime-micro/limesdr) I got one of those. I recreated the cell basestation setup that the Myriad folks did using an old GSM phone I had in my drawer (marked "Cingular" :-))
I realized I wanted to be able to send more complex things at different frequencies so I took a detour and studied for, and received, my Amateur Radio "Extra" license (AI6ZR). Which allows me to transmit at much higher powers on many more bands.
There was a company near me that was making SDRs and they needed software help, I offered to help if they would let me use their very well equipped lab of RF gear. That gave me both access to and training on "real" RF gear and helped me understand what would be useful and what wasn't needed in my own explorations. Then I started haunting ebay, swap meets, and various auction sites to track down the gear I was missing. (A spectrum analyzer, a vector signal generator, and a vector network analyzer).
Bottom line, this rabbit hole just keeps going and going and going ...
My path started when I bought one of the RTL-SDR bundles from Nooelec (https://www.nooelec.com/store/). It came with four different antennae and some adapters to connect it to your own antenna.
I spent some time reconstructing projects that people had posted on rtl-sdr.com (https://www.rtl-sdr.com/). I installed Gnuradio companion (and various Gnuradio bits) and built an FM receiver as well as a receiver that could see the signals coming from a wireless light switch.
I decided I wanted to transmit too so I bought a HackRF-one (https://www.nooelec.com/store/hackrf.html). It covers way more spectrum than the RTL-SDR and it has great support in a lot of packages. What I wasn't able to do very successfully with it was look at cellular signals so when Crowd Supply ran a campaign for the Lime SDR (https://www.crowdsupply.com/lime-micro/limesdr) I got one of those. I recreated the cell basestation setup that the Myriad folks did using an old GSM phone I had in my drawer (marked "Cingular" :-))
I realized I wanted to be able to send more complex things at different frequencies so I took a detour and studied for, and received, my Amateur Radio "Extra" license (AI6ZR). Which allows me to transmit at much higher powers on many more bands.
There was a company near me that was making SDRs and they needed software help, I offered to help if they would let me use their very well equipped lab of RF gear. That gave me both access to and training on "real" RF gear and helped me understand what would be useful and what wasn't needed in my own explorations. Then I started haunting ebay, swap meets, and various auction sites to track down the gear I was missing. (A spectrum analyzer, a vector signal generator, and a vector network analyzer).
Bottom line, this rabbit hole just keeps going and going and going ...