--- title: Hacking A Marine Radio Dish | daily.dev description: Melan repurposed an Intellian i4 marine satellite dish for use on land by tricking it into thinking it was still on a boat. She used an RP2040 microcontroller... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/hacking-a-marine-radio-dish-a2eytnpa1 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Hacking A Marine Radio Dish | daily.dev og:description: Melan repurposed an Intellian i4 marine satellite dish for use on land by tricking it into thinking it was still on a boat. She used an RP2040 microcontroller... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/hacking-a-marine-radio-dish-a2eytnpa1 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/A2eYtnpa1.png og:image:alt: Hacking A Marine Radio Dish og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Hacking A Marine Radio Dish **[Hackaday](https://daily.dev/sources/hackaday)** · 2 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Melan repurposed an Intellian i4 marine satellite dish for use on land by tricking it into thinking it was still on a boat. She used an RP2040 microcontroller with an RS-422 module to feed it fake NMEA heading sentences. After emailing Intellian to get its software running, she wanted to see if the dish could be controlled without it, so she reverse engineered the control protocol by sniffing traffic between the software and the Antenna Control Unit and decompiling the code. That made it relatively straightforward to command azimuth and elevation directly. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How do you get a marine satellite dish like the Intellian i4 to work when it's not on a boat? You feed it fake NMEA heading sentences so it believes it is still mounted on a vessel. One hacker used an RP2040 microcontroller paired with an RS-422 module to generate these sentences, which gave the Intellian i4's control software the heading data it needed to operate normally on land. _daily.dev surfaces hardware reverse-engineering writeups like this one for hands-on tinkerers._ ### How can I reverse engineer a proprietary antenna control protocol without using the vendor's software? Sniff the communication between the control software and the Antenna Control Unit, then decompile the software to understand the protocol. This approach revealed that the Intellian i4 dish could be pointed directly by sending simple azimuth and elevation commands, bypassing the vendor's application entirely. _follow reverse-engineering breakdowns like this on daily.dev before tackling your own proprietary hardware protocol._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Transponder Mania](https://daily.dev/posts/transponder-mania-qo2kgyozz) · Hackaday · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Commodore 128 Becomes Marine Vessel Tracker](https://daily.dev/posts/commodore-128-becomes-marine-vessel-tracker-6yhk6ylbh) · Hackaday · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Hacking washing machines](https://daily.dev/posts/hacking-washing-machines-ouhgmmfp7) · Hacker News · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [QuadRF can spot drones and see WiFi through my wall](https://daily.dev/posts/quadrf-can-spot-drones-and-see-wifi-through-my-wall-mndsr4njk) · Jeff Geerling · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#reverse-engineering](https://daily.dev/tags/reverse-engineering) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/hacking-a-marine-radio-dish-a2eytnpa1) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Hacking A Marine Radio Dish","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/hacking-a-marine-radio-dish-a2eytnpa1","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/hacking-a-marine-radio-dish-a2eytnpa1"},"datePublished":"2026-10-28T05:07:44.774Z","dateModified":"2026-10-28T05:43:59.579Z","description":"Melan repurposed an Intellian i4 marine satellite dish for use on land by tricking it into thinking it was still on a boat. 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One hacker used an RP2040 microcontroller paired with an RS-422 module to generate these sentences, which gave the Intellian i4's control software the heading data it needed to operate normally on land. daily.dev surfaces hardware reverse-engineering writeups like this one for hands-on tinkerers."}},{"@type":"Question","name":"How can I reverse engineer a proprietary antenna control protocol without using the vendor's software?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Sniff the communication between the control software and the Antenna Control Unit, then decompile the software to understand the protocol. This approach revealed that the Intellian i4 dish could be pointed directly by sending simple azimuth and elevation commands, bypassing the vendor's application entirely. follow reverse-engineering breakdowns like this on daily.dev before tackling your own proprietary hardware protocol."}}]} ```