Hardware Hacking for Beginners: The Ideal Kit Under €150
Get started with hardware hacking for under €150: the 4 disciplines, the basic tools, three costed setups at €60, €125 and €150, and a first-week plan.
You don't need to spend €400 to get started with hardware hacking: a radio receiver, a logic analyzer, a few NFC cards and a multimeter cover the essentials for under €150. What matters is choosing kit by the disciplines you want to explore, then following a plan for the first week instead of piling up tools. This guide gives you three costed setups and what to do with each.
If you're planning a gift, our beginner hacker gift guide covers the same ideas from a gift angle.
The 4 disciplines of hardware hacking (radio, RFID/NFC, serial buses, firmware)
Hardware hacking means understanding how a device works physically in order to find its weaknesses, on hardware you own or are authorised to test. It splits into four disciplines, each needing a different tool.
| Discipline | What you study | Entry tool | Indicative price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Radio | Wireless signals: remotes, sensors, aircraft, satellites | RTL-SDR receiver | €60 |
| RFID / NFC | Contactless badges and cards | NFC phone + blank cards | €14.90 for 15 cards |
| Serial buses | Traffic between chips: UART, I²C, SPI | 8-channel logic analyzer | €19.90 |
| Firmware | The software stored in a memory chip | SPI programmer + clip | Not in our current kits |
Radio is the easiest way in. An RTL-SDR, a USB stick that turns a computer into a receiver, covers roughly 24 MHz to 1.7 GHz and only listens.
RFID and NFC start with a smartphone. NFC is the 13.56 MHz variant used by contactless payments and many badges. The professional tool, the Proxmark3, comes later: it also reads low-frequency 125 kHz badges.
Serial buses are the "conversations" between components on a circuit board. UART, a serial port often left on boards for debugging, is the "hello world" of the field.
Firmware, the program stored in a chip, is often the final reward: once extracted, you can analyse it with tools such as binwalk. It's the most advanced discipline; tackle it after serial buses.
Basic tools (soldering iron optional, multimeter, leads)
Before specialist tools, a little general-purpose kit saves a lot of frustration.
- A multimeter. It measures voltage, continuity and resistance. It's how you find the ground and voltage of a serial port before connecting anything. An entry-level model is fine to start.
- A 3.3 V USB-to-serial adapter. It connects a board's UART to your computer. Make sure it works at 3.3 V: many boards don't tolerate 5 V.
- Dupont leads and test hooks. Dupont leads plug onto pins; test hooks (small grabber clips) latch onto a component leg without soldering.
- A target of your own. An Arduino or ESP32 board, or an old second-hand router, makes an excellent lab target, because it belongs to you.
- A soldering iron, optional. Many boards expose pads without pins, and then you have to solder. But you can do your first weeks without an iron, using test hooks and development boards. None of the products in this guide needs soldering.
On the software side, everything is free and open source: SDR++ and rtl_433 for radio, PulseView (part of the sigrok suite) for the logic analyzer, NFC Tools on a phone.
Kits at €60, €125 and €150: our 3 setups
Prices below are our retail prices. Our products are being launched: sign up on a product page to hear when orders open.
Setup 1: about €60, radio first
- RTL-SDR: €60.
This is the best first purchase if you can only make one. In one evening you see aircraft on a map; within a week you're decoding your neighbourhood's weather sensors. Add the SDR antenna kit (€17.90) when the budget allows: reception improves noticeably.
"Electronics first" variant: a logic analyzer (€19.90) and blank NFC cards (€14.90), so €34.80, plus a multimeter and a USB-to-serial adapter. For someone who already owns an Arduino and prefers circuits to radio.
Setup 2: €125, the complete radio box
- Hacker Starter Gift Set: €125, with an RTL-SDR, an Evil Crow RF v2 board and a getting-started guide.
The Evil Crow RF v2 is an open-source board with an ESP32 microcontroller and two CC1101 radios covering the 300–348, 387–464 and 779–928 MHz bands. It receives and transmits in those bands, the ones used by remotes and sensors at 433 and 868 MHz. With the RTL-SDR to observe and the Evil Crow to experiment on your own remotes, you have a real radio lab. Bought separately, the two cost €138.
One rule applies as soon as you transmit: only towards your own devices, within the authorised bands, and never any jamming.
Setup 3: about €150, all four disciplines started
- Hacker Starter Gift Set: €125.
- 8-channel logic analyzer: €19.90.
- Total: €144.90, plus an NFC phone you probably already own.
You cover radio (reception and sub-GHz), serial buses, and NFC through the phone. Firmware follows naturally once UART is no longer enough.
Receive-only variant, with tools: RTL-SDR (€60), antenna kit (€17.90), logic analyzer (€19.90) and NFC cards (€14.90), so €112.70. The rest of the budget can go on the multimeter, USB-to-serial adapter and leads from an electronics retailer; check current prices.
| Setup | Price | Radio | RFID/NFC | Serial buses | Firmware |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. RTL-SDR | €60 | Receive | Phone | No | No |
| 2. Starter Gift Set | €125 | Receive + sub-GHz transmit | Phone | No | No |
| 3. Gift Set + analyzer | €144.90 | Receive + sub-GHz transmit | Phone | Yes | Groundwork |
| 3b. Receive-only | €112.70 + tools | Receive | Blank cards | Yes | Groundwork |
What none of these setups does: read low-frequency 125 kHz badges, or extract firmware directly from a chip. For that you need a Proxmark3 and an SPI programmer, purchases to consider after a few months.
What to do in your first week
A tool sleeping in a drawer teaches nothing. Here's a plan for seven evenings of about an hour, designed for setup 3; adapt it to yours.
Day 1. Install and listen to FM. Install the drivers and SDR++, plug in the RTL-SDR, find an FM station. On Debian or Ubuntu:
sudo apt install rtl-sdr
rtl_test
If your stick is an RTL-SDR Blog V4, some distributions ship packages that are too old: follow the official guide on rtl-sdr.com. Our RTL-SDR beginner guide covers installation on Windows, macOS and Linux.
Day 2. Watch the aircraft. Tune to 1090 MHz and run an ADS-B decoder; ADS-B is the system aircraft use to broadcast their position. Put the antenna near a window.
Day 3. Decode the sensors at home. Run rtl_433 and watch wireless thermometers, weather stations or your own sensors appear:
sudo apt install rtl-433
rtl_433
Day 4. Programme an NFC card. With NFC Tools, write a URL to a blank card, then read it back. Note the chip type and available memory.
Day 5. First logic analyzer capture. Install PulseView, clip the analyzer onto the serial output of an Arduino sending "hello" in a loop, and decode the UART frame.
sudo apt install pulseview sigrok-firmware-fx2lafw
Day 6. Read a real serial port. On a board you own, find the TX, RX and GND pins with the multimeter, connect the USB-to-serial adapter and read the boot messages. Our article What is UART? walks through the method.
Day 7. Observe your own remotes. With the RTL-SDR, look at the signal from your own gate remote or smart plug, without transmitting anything. Note the frequency and the shape of the signal. If you have the Evil Crow, its web interface then lets you go further on those same devices.
By the end of the week you'll have touched all four disciplines and you'll know which one draws you in. That's the one that justifies your next purchase.
Common first-week mistakes
- Connecting a serial adapter without measuring. A 5 V pin on a 3.3 V adapter, or the reverse, can damage one of them. Always check the voltage with the multimeter before connecting.
- Swapping TX and RX. The board's TX (transmit) goes to the adapter's RX (receive), and vice versa. If nothing shows up, check that first, along with the baud rate.
- Forgetting a common ground. Without a ground (GND) wire between the board and the analyzer or adapter, the signals are unreadable.
- Leaving the radio gain at maximum. Too much gain overloads the receiver and drowns weak signals. Turn it down until the noise floor settles.
- Judging an RTL-SDR by its stock antenna. Bundled antennas are a compromise. Before deciding "it picks up nothing", move the antenna near a window or adjust its length for the band you want.
- Buying a third tool before using the first two. Kit piles up fast; skill comes from practice.
What after the first week?
Pick one discipline and a project of a few weeks. For radio, a permanent ADS-B station on an old computer or a Raspberry Pi. For serial buses, the boot console of a second-hand router, then identifying its memory chip. For NFC, comparing the chip types of your own cards. Each project will tell you exactly which tool is missing, and that's the right time to buy it.
Where to practise legally
The basic rule is simple: you can test anything that belongs to you, and nothing that belongs to someone else without their written permission. Unauthorised access to computer systems is a criminal offence across Europe, for example under article 323-1 of the French Code pénal or the UK's Computer Misuse Act 1990. For radio, receiving is far less regulated than transmitting: any transmission must respect the authorised bands and power levels, and jamming is prohibited. This reminder isn't legal advice.
In practice, the safe training grounds are:
- Your own hardware: your remotes, your sensors, your cards, a router bought second-hand for a few euros.
- CTF platforms, built to be attacked: Hackropole, from the French national cybersecurity agency ANSSI, has a hardware category; picoCTF and Root-Me offer online challenges, and CyberCTF, our sister site, realistic pentest labs you run at home.
- Physical CTF puzzles: our CTF puzzles put a challenge inside an object (a Bluetooth beacon, NFC tags, a memory chip), with three levels and nothing to solder. They open from 2027.
- Events: CTFs at conferences such as BSides events, Le Hack or BreizhCTF sometimes include hardware challenges.
If you don't know where to start, the Hacker Starter Gift Set matches our setup 2, and adding a logic analyzer gets you setup 3. Sign up on its page to hear when orders open.