This lamp appears to be a typical wall light, but what truly sets it apart is its flickering, pulsating glow. Rootkid, the creator of this brilliant idea, refers to it as the Spectrum Slit. Every time it blinks or flashes, it is caused by radio waves in the air, Wi-Fi signals clogging up your home network, Bluetooth traffic jostling for space, and even your microwave churning away at 2.4 and 5GHz.
It all relies on the little but extremely powerful HackRF One software-defined radio, which can scan frequencies ranging from 10MHz to 6GHz. But it doesn’t do that. No, Rootkid has specifically programmed it to listen in on overcrowded residential frequencies. Behind the scenes, a Raspberry Pi Zero W processes the data in real time, breaking it down into 64 small bits and putting them into the light filaments.
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When traffic is light, the filaments just sort of… hum along, a little dull and scattered, like the steady hiss of background electromagnetic noise you hear in any city apartment. But then something happens: video begins to stream, people begin texting, and your neighbor accidentally connects to the same Wi-Fi channel, causing the entire display to go crazy. Bands of bright yellow light suddenly appear and begin to intensify, following the rhythm of the digital beat. Strong strikes push the filaments to their limits, while gentler parts dissolve back to mild pulses.
You can’t ignore the sound, either, because the coils in the driving circuits begin buzzing away in reaction to the same data, resulting in this low hum. The pitch varies based on the strength of the transmission, and the bursts of activity indicate that the tone is zooming all over the place. Combine light and sound to create a covert observatory for all wireless traffic in a 30-meter radius.
Rootkid has done it all with a creative eye rather than a technical one, creating this elegant, horizontal design that just mounts flat to the wall, with the HackRF tucked away behind the ends of the filament. The filaments themselves are simply a collection of warm yellow LEDs that appear soft and pleasant, much like an old incandescent bulb, but with just the appropriate amount of control for this project. It all seems like a giant visual equalizer, but what you’re seeing is real-time electromagnetic traffic, not an audio source.
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