New RTL-SDR Radio Data System (RDS) Decoder: Redsea

Signals hacker Oona Räisänen has released on GitHub a new software tool for the RTL-SDR called Redsea. On her blog she explains that Redsea is a Linux and OSX compatible perl based command line Radio Data System (RDS) decoder that uses the rtl_fm tool. Oona’s post explains a little about how RDS works and also explains how her software actually decodes RDS.

The Radio Data System (RDS) is a digital data subcarrier built into some broadcast FM signals. It usually carries information such as the station name and the song currently playing.