Hardware Portapack H4m

portapack-h4m

PortaPack H4M — add-on board giving a HackRF a screen, controls and standalone operation

Vendor: Community hardware (several builders)

Status: planned — catalogued ahead of hardware existing to test.

Not maintainer-verified: nobody on this project has run this hardware yet. The two facts are recorded separately on purpose (D-027) — a correct recipe and a tested device are different claims.

What it is

An add-on board that mounts on a HackRF and adds a screen, navigation controls and a battery, together with replacement firmware, turning it from a host-tethered SDR into a self-contained handheld device.

What you can do with it

Operate the radio away from a computer. What it can do in that mode is a property of the firmware loaded on it, which comes from upstream and runs on the device — per D-026, this project installs the tooling for talking to the hardware, not the device's own capability, and does not enumerate the latter here.

Setup

Not documented. Nothing has been tested on this hardware, and the setup path for a device that is primarily operated standalone is materially different from the tethered case this catalog is otherwise built around.

Known problems

Untested here. Structurally, the thing to know is that firmware and host tools are separate concerns for this device in a way they are not for a plain HackRF, and several builders sell boards under this name whose hardware differs.

What is not yet known

Nothing confirmed, and the shape of what is unknown is itself unusual. The PortaPack is an add-on board rather than a peripheral: the host generally sees the HackRF it is attached to, so this entry may or may not warrant its own USB identifier at all. Whether the combined device enumerates as the HackRF, as something distinct, or differently again while its own firmware is being updated, is not established here. The maintainer does not own one. Closing this needs lsusb output from an owner in each of those states, and the answer may be that the right record is a note on the HackRF entry rather than an identifier here.

Who can close it: nobody on this project owns one — an operator who does can close it with one lsusb (how).

Access and permissions

Group membership required: plugdev — added at install, applies at next login.

Software that makes it useful

hackrf

Upstream: https://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/