Retro Ethernet Sniffer

A WiFi sniffer that identifies devices communicating on your network (Ethernet) and displays their MAC addresses in binary form on an LED Matrix, giving it a retro style.

Hardware

Prerequisites

• Raspberry Pi (3B or later)

• LED matrix driven by MAX7219. It is recommended to use at least 4 8x8 matrix modules. A module containing 4 matrices on a single board is recommended and costs around CNY 17.6.

• Level shifter (optional). Although not required, it is recommended by the developers of luma.led_matrix to add a level shifter between your Raspberry Pi GPIO and LED module for better performance.

• Wires, power supply, etc.

Wiring

Board Pin	Name	Remarks	RPi Pin	RPi Function
1	VCC	+5 Power	2	5V0
2	GND	Ground	6	GND
3	DIN	Data In	19	GPIO 10(MOSI)
4	CS	Chip Select	24	GPIO 8(SPI CE0)
5	CLK	Clock	23	GPIO 11(SPI CLK)

The above table is copied from the luma.led_matrix documentation and it should work for most setups.

Software

After configuring all the hardware components, it's time to run this exciting project!

To run this script, you need to first install Python 3 and pip on your Raspberry Pi (in my case, it's a Pi 3B).

sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3 python3-pip

Next, install Scapy and luma.led_matrix. You can install them using pip.

# You can use either of the following commands
pip install -r requirements.txt
# or
sudo pip install luma.led-matrix
sudo pip install scapy
# I personally prefer the first option.

After installing the required Python packages, enable the SPI interface in raspi-config using the following command:

sudo raspi-config

In the Interface submenu, find the SPI option and turn it on. Then, reboot your Raspberry Pi. You can also perform this step in the GUI, but I find the command-line interface more convenient.

Finally, you can run the script with the following command:

sudo python3 ./main.py

Enjoy! (If it works :)