June 18, 2026

V2X2MAP: Visualize European 5.9 GHz V2X Vehicle and Traffic Signal Messages with an Android App and ESP32

Thank you to Peter for writing in and sharing news about his Android app called V2X2MAP, which makes Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) radio traffic visible on a live map via an attached ESP32 board. The app is not free but costs only a small US$2.49 fee.

V2X is a cooperative wireless system in which vehicles and roadside infrastructure continuously broadcast small messages in the 5.9 GHz band. Equipped cars broadcast their position, speed, heading, and brake status about 10 times per second, while traffic signals broadcast their phase and timing, lane geometry, and event-driven hazard warnings. It can be thought of as something like ADS-B or AIS for cars, though at a much shorter range (typically a couple of hundred meters), with the added feature that roadside infrastructure also transmits.

V2X is designed to enhance vehicle safety, allowing vehicles to know about obstacles, traffic phases, and road geometry in advance. Currently, two incompatible standards are used: the older DSRC (Wi-Fi-based) and the newer C-V2X (cellular-based). Most markets are moving towards C-V2X because it provides short and long-range communications.

The V2X2MAP Android app works together with a $20 Waveshare ESP32-C5 board, which has an onboard 5.9 GHz WiFi 6 radio. The ESP32 receives the older Wi-Fi DSRC signals, particularly the ITS-G5 standard, which appears to be used only in Europe. Once running, V2X2MAP and the ESP32 decode the surrounding V2X broadcasts and plot live vehicles, hazard warnings, and traffic-light countdowns on a map of your immediate area.

Vote

June 18, 2026

HamDash: A Free Real-Time Ham Radio Dashboard with a Browser-Based RTL-SDR Receiver

Thank you to several readers who have pointed us to HamDash. HamDash is a new free real-time ham radio dashboard that aims to be the always-on monitor for your radio shack. Built by Peter (G0LIW), the web-based app combines HF propagation, space weather, DX cluster spots, POTA and SOTA activations, a contest calendar, and a greyline map into a single customizable view. There's no account or subscription, and it runs in any browser, making it a good fit for a dedicated second monitor, a tablet, or a Raspberry Pi sitting in the shack. We note that despite being free, the project doesn't appear to be open source, as we could not find any public source code repo.

The dashboard includes live solar flux, K-index, X-ray flare, and aurora data so you can tell when the bands are open, plus VOACAP-based propagation predictions and Met Office/MeteoAlarm weather alerts useful for portable operating. A Visual Layout Builder lets you arrange modules into rows and slots exactly how you want, and a touchscreen-friendly on-screen keyboard makes it usable on a mouse-only or kiosk-style setup.

Of interest to RTL-SDR users, HamDash includes a browser-based SDR receiver called SDRCOM that works with an RTL-SDR V3 or V4 dongle over WebUSB, so you can run it in Chrome or another Chromium browser like Edge or Opera directly. The free SDRCOM Lite edition is included with HamDash and covers AM/FM/SSB/CW tuning, a waterfall display, an FT8 decoder, a basic 3-band EQ, and a 100-slot memory bank. There's also a paid SDRCOM Pro edition for a one-year license with no auto-renewal $9.99 fee that adds enhanced waterfalls, FT8 and FT4 decoders, an ADS-B engine with 3D aircraft tracking, 4-band noise-reduction DSP, an auto-lock band scanner, a WAV recorder with scheduler, and a 1000-slot memory bank.

AI-Disclaimer: While not advertised as AI-coded, the author's company, Nemeta AI Software Services LLC, and the UI-style hints at AI development tools having being used.

Vote

June 11, 2026

NRSC5 Studio: A New Feature-Rich Windows GUI for the nrsc5 HD Radio Decoder

We've recently had several submissions about the release of a new program called NRSC5 Studio, a new native open source Windows and Linux supported GUI for the nrsc5 HD Radio decoder. We note that in the past, we've posted about nrsc5 and the NRSC5-DUI interface.

nrsc5 is an open source decoder for the proprietary HD Radio digital audio standard used by FM broadcasters in North America, and it works with low-cost RTL-SDR dongles. NRSC5 Studio is written in Rust with an egui-based dockable interface, and it wraps nrsc5 to provide tuning, HD1 to HD4 subchannel selection, station presets, and now-playing metadata with album art and station logos.

NRSC5 Studio appears to be quite feature-rich. There's a live FFT spectrum and waterfall display tapped from the same I/Q stream feeding the decoder, a QPSK constellation viewer driven by live MER readings per sideband, and a closed loop AGC that automatically tunes the R820T2 gain table to maximize MER. Other extras include a rolling 8-hour album art collage heat map, a 24-hour song log with CSV export, and TPEG traffic map and animated weather radar decoding on stations that broadcast it (currently iHeartMedia stations only).

A portable zip release is available on the GitHub releases page, requiring no installer or admin rights.

AI-Disclaimer: The software Readme credits GitHub Copilot, an AI tool.

Vote

June 11, 2026

AirPulse Desktop: Turn an RTL-SDR into an Amateur Radio Repeater Activity Reporting Station

Thank you to the team at Feedline Labs for writing in and sharing news of their new project called AirPulse Desktop. AirPulse is a Windows desktop application that turns an RTL-SDR into a small repeater activity monitoring station.

The software continuously scans the output frequencies of nearby amateur radio repeaters, detects when a signal exceeds an activity threshold, and reports those hits to Feedline Labs' live "Greyline Fabric" system. The idea is to build a real-time map of which repeaters are actually in use, rather than relying on static directories that are often outdated or filled with abandoned systems.

For the launch, Feedline Labs is granting free lifetime AirPulse Desktop licenses to the first 75 users who get set up and begin contributing activity reports. The installer is not being posted publicly for now, so interested RTL-SDR owners will need to request access through feedlinelabs.com. A short video demonstrating the concept, the desktop app, and the scanning and reporting process is available below:

Own an SDR? Help Build the Greyline Live RF Intelligence Fabric | AirPulse Desktop Beta

Watch this video on YouTube

AI Disclaimer: We note that this project appears to make heavy use of AI-generated images. We do not know if AI-generated code is used as the code appears to be closed source.

Vote

June 8, 2026

QuadRF: 4-Element Beamforming SDR Tile Coming to Crowd Supply

Back in January, we posted about open.space and their mission to unlock affordable open source earth-moon-earth (EME) bounce communications for the amateur radio public. Recently, we've seen that the project has been renamed to ScaleRF, with the EME system renamed to MoonRF, and the invisual tile renamed to QuadRF. They've also put out a new update post with a lot of interesting information and demonstrations. In the latest update, they also announced that the QuadRF 4-element tile will soon come to Crowd Supply for crowdfunding.

MoonRF is a software-defined radio-based tiling system that enables users to easily create large phased arrays by combining multiple smaller 'QuadRF' tiles consisting of four tile elements, a custom SDR, and a built-in Raspberry Pi 5. Although the ultimate goal is to produce a large system capable of working EME bounce communications, they show that a single QuadRF tile has considerable utility on its own.

An interesting application they show is the ability to visualize and track RF signals using a single QuadRF and their augmented-reality smartphone app. QuadRF appears to be limited to the C-band (4.9–6.0 GHz), but many modern devices, such as smartphones and drones, operate at these frequencies, and in the video, they are able to track these devices with perfect accuracy.

They also show that QuadRF has built-in web browser access to various programs, including a wireless camera decoder for drones.

Quad RF: A Closer Look

Watch this video on YouTube

Vote

June 5, 2026

Receiving US Nuclear Detection Satellite Signals with RTL-SDR, Discovery Dish and Discovery Drive

Over on the Saveitforparts YouTube channel, Gabe has documented how he accidentally discovered signals coming from the GPS-satellite-based US nuclear detection system.

While scanning the GPS L3 frequency around 1381 MHz with his RTL-SDR, Discovery Dish, 1420 MHz Hydrogen line Discovery Dish feed, and Discovery Drive, Gabe caught short intermittent data bursts instead of the usual navigation signals. It turns out L3 is used by the GPS constellation for nuclear detonation detection, as the satellites double as arms-control sensors. When one detects a possible event, it relays the message across the network, the only time this frequency sees activity.

Later in the video, Gabe also swaps the dish feed to compare against a regular GPS L1 signal at 1575.42 MHz, and notes that radio astronomers are reverse-engineering L3 to filter it out, since it sits close to the protected 1420 MHz hydrogen line.

I Found The US Nuclear Detection System In Space

Watch this video on YouTube

Vote

June 5, 2026

SkyLight Ceiling: Projecting Live ADS-B Aircraft Positions Onto your Ceiling

Recently, Cameron Paczek has created a new project called SkyLight, where art meets technical implementation by displaying a live view of aircraft flying overhead on your ceiling. SkyLight consists of a projector, Raspberry Pi 5, RTL-SDR dongle, and some custom software.

The Raspberry Pi 5 and RTL-SDR receive live ADS-B data from local aircraft, and the projector points up at the ceiling and displays the live locations of aircraft as they fly overhead, effectively giving you a simulated X-ray through your roof. The projections also include the sun, moon, bright stars and constellations, and live satellites.

This project reminds us of a British Airways billboard in 2014 that used live ADS-B data to have a child on the screen point directly at incoming aircraft. We note that these SkyLight and billboard projects would not be possible without live ADS-B data, as ADS-B aggregation sites like ADSB-Exchange and Flightradar24 typically have a few-minute delay and require payment for their APIs.

Cameron aims to productize his idea into a ready-made kit and crowd-fund it in the near future. If you are interested, you can sign up for his notification mailing list over at skylightceiling.com.

AI Disclaimer: We note that this project appears to have been coded with the help of AI tools.

Skylight Ceiling Projecting Live Aircraft via ADS-B data on the Ceiling

Vote

June 5, 2026

Dump1090 For Android Updated to V2

Thank you to Christian from ebcTech for writing in and sharing with us that their Dump1090 app for Android has recently been completely redesigned. We first posted about this app back in 2021. The developer notes that the V2 redesign is faster and has an improved UI.

The app allowes users to use an RTL-SDR dongle connected to an Android device to receive ADS-B signals from aircraft and plot their locations on a map. When selecting an aircraft, the app also shows the aircraft's live flight data and a picture of the aircraft.

RTL-SDR ADS-B Dump1090 Android

Watch this video on YouTube

Vote