A MediaTek MT7996 radio chip inside the Gemtek W1700K WiFi 7 router can function as a software-defined radio receiver. Developer h0m3us3r published code on GitHub that streams raw I/Q data over Ethernet to a Linux machine, using the router's onboard SoC as the processing layer.
The setup covers 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz bands depending on which hardware variant you own. That upper-band limitation matters: most classic SDR use cases live below 1 GHz, which means a receive up-converter will likely be the next community target. A parallel hack already exists for the ESP32 at 2.4 GHz, so the pressure is building. What you can do right now is pull WiFi packet traffic into a waterfall display at zero additional hardware cost.
The real story here is not one router. It is the pattern. Consumer devices ship with capable radio silicon, undocumented raw streaming modes keep surfacing, and each find lowers the floor on what counts as an SDR. Read the original for the technical setup and the GitHub repo link. The comments section on the ESP32 comparison alone are worth your time.
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