I'm reasonably good at computers, and I even have a small understanding of electronics and radio, but I bought a HackRF One about 6 years ago, and every time I try to use this stuff I get hopelessly lost. Most of the time I can't even get the software running, or figure out which software I need to get running, and when I do I'm hopelessly lost. The only thing I ever managed was to listen to an FM radio station with a program that simplified the interface down to a frequency slider.

I would love to do things like investigate how my water meter broadcasts its readings, but "latent" doesn't even begin to cover how inaccessible this stuff is. There are "tutorials", but they just say "Stick these parts together. There, now you have stuck these parts together!" (https://wiki.gnuradio.org/index.php/Simulation_example:_Narr...)

I know, open source, I should learn everything and then write better documentation.