wfb-link, a userspace WiFiBroadcast radio stack for macOS
Hi HN, I’ve been working on a Rust userspace radio stack for running WFB-style links from macOS using RTL8812AU USB adapters. Full disclosure: I'm a software engineer, but not really a hardware or embedded systems engineer, so Codex GPT 5.5 has done the lion-share of the work here along with a bit of help from Claude Opus 4.7 here and there. It's taken about 1.5 to 2 weeks to get from zero to this first release. macOS doesn't expose the monitor-mode / packet-injection path that WFB systems normally rely on. I really didn't like the idea of needing a separate linux box just to talk WFB…
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Hi HN, I’ve been working on a Rust userspace radio stack for running WFB-style links from macOS using RTL8812AU USB adapters. Full disclosure: I'm a software engineer, but not really a hardware or embedded systems engineer, so Codex GPT 5.5 has done the lion-share of the work here along with a bit of help from Claude Opus 4.7 here and there. It's taken about 1.5 to 2 weeks to get from zero to this first release. macOS doesn't expose the monitor-mode / packet-injection path that WFB systems normally rely on. I really didn't like the idea of needing a separate linux box just to talk WFB to other edge devices, like drones. This talks to the ALFA AWUS036ACH as a USB peripheral directly, initializes the RTL8812AU, submits raw 802.11 WFB frames over bulk OUT, receives frames over bulk IN, and bridges them to WFB-NG’s distributor/aggregator UDP protocols. Basically, this is what's working (you can see more detail in the readme): - native macOS userspace RTL8812AU bring-up - TX/RX of WFB datagrams - production-ish service runtime - macOS utun bridge helper (if you need an IP-based link) - RF diagnostics, telemetry, LED heartbeat, TDD airtime controls There's a GitHub alpha release with arm64 macOS binaries This is definitely still alpha. The direct-radio path is currently macOS-focused and tested with ALFA AWUS036ACH adapters on both sides (the other side is a Raspberry Pi 5 running Bookworm). macOS 26 works through IOUSBHost as libusb is not reliable there. Linux should still use native WFB-NG + rtl88xxau monitor mode rather than this USB bridge. Long-range RF quality and calibration work are ongoing. So far, some short range profiles are showing pretty good results. I’m sharing early because getting WFB-like radio links working from a Mac seemed unlikely when I started, and the path turned out to be more interesting than expected. My goal is for this to be cross-platform as-needed. Next up is an attempt at Android support via USB-OTG. We'll see how that goes.
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