WSPR (pronounced "Whisper") is short for Weak Signal Propagation Reporting, and is a HF ham mode typically run on very low power levels such as 1W. The data from WSPR reception can be used to determine how good or bad HF propagation is currently around the world as each WSPR message contains a callsign, 6-digit locator and the transmit power level used. Received messages are all reported to the internet and can be viewed on an online map at http://wsprnet.org/drupal/wsprnet/map.
With an RTL-SDR V3 running in direct sampling mode it is possible to receive and decode these messages on a Raspberry Pi 3 using the WSPRD software.
Over on his website IT9YBG has uploaded a tutorial for a method that allows the WSPRD software to automatically change bands depending on the time of day. The method simply uses the crontab in Linux to automatically run a script that stops and then restarts WSPRD on a new frequency at certain times of the day. This is useful because different WSPR bands tend to become active at different times of the day due to changing HF propagation conditions.
WSPR messages received by IT9YBG from all over the world.
Jon Hudson, head of marketing at SDRplay has recently released a helpful tutorial that shows how to access remote servers in SDR-Console V3, and also how to set up your own server too. As you may already know, SDR-Console V3 provides a remote server platform which allows you to access all sorts of SDR hardware remotely over a network connection or over the internet. Some SDR hardware owners even opt to share their radio hardware publicly over the internet for anyone to access. The video description reads:
This video is a screen-by-screen guide to both accessing, and setting up your own, remote SDR radio using the new (Feb 2018) SDR Console V3 software from SDR-Radio. Although the guide uses an RSP2 from SDRplay, this will work with all the popular SDRs
Please note - you need to have a good internet connection since (unlike in V2), the entire I/Q data is being sent over the internet. This also limits how much visual bandwidth you are can see at any one time.
SOME IMPORTANT WARNINGS IF YOU ARE ADDING YOUR OWN SDR! Be careful not to plug multiple SDRs into a single USB2 socket - for multiple SDRs, you may need a powered hub ( like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/UGREEN-Adapt... )
Once you are up and running - please go to http://www.sdr-radio.com/Software/Ver... and view your listing - if there is a yellow triangle, then you are not accessible outside your own firewall - attention is needed! Just because you can access it on your own LAN doesn't mean it's accessible via the internet!!!
The RSP family of SDRs from SDRplay cover 1kHz to 2 GHz with no gaps and give up to 10MHz spectrum visibility.
Jon's video first shows how to use SDR-Console V3 to access those publicly shared SDR radios over the internet. The second part of the video demonstrates how to set up your own server that you can use remotely for personal use, or to share over the internet.
The SDR-Console V3 server accepts various kinds of SDR hardware including RTL-SDR, Airspy, SDRplay, HackRF, Elad, LimeSDR and many more SDR units so this is a good way to explore various types of hardware, or simply to explore signals from different areas around the world.
Recently Eddie MacDonald has been pumping out simple but useful plugins for SDR# including the SDR# Dark Mode and Visual Tuner Knob plugins. Recently he released a new plugin called "FFT Window Screen Grabber". This plugin simply helps you to easily take a screenshot of the FFT and waterfall displays in SDR#. It could be a useful plugin if you are constantly finding interesting signals that you want to document, or upload to sigidwiki.com.
Thanks to RTL-SDR.com reader Lee Donaghy for writing in and little us know that RTLSDR-Airband was recently updated to include SoapySDR support. This allows the software to now work with almost any SDR including the RTL-SDR, Airspy, SDRplay, HackRF, LimeSDR and more. They have also removed the 8-channels per device limitation and applied various bug fixes too. The full changelog is posted at the end of this post.
RTLSDR-Airband is a Linux based command line tool that allows you to simultaneously monitor multiple AM or FM channels per SDR within the same chunk of bandwidth. It is great for monitoring narrowband communications such as aircraft control and can be used to feed websites like liveatc.net, or for use with a Icecast server, or simply for continuously recording multiple channels to an MP3 file locally. It is also very useful for those running on low powered computing hardware who want software that uses less CPU power than a full GUI program like GQRX or CubicSDR.
Version 3.0.0 (Feb 10, 2018):
Major overhaul of the SDR input code - now it's modular and hardware-agnostic (no longer tightly coupled with librtlsdr).
Support for SoapySDR vendor-neutral SDR library - any SDR which has a plugin for SoapySDR shall now work in RTLSDR-Airband.
Support for Mirics DVB-T dongles via libmirisdr-4 library.
Support for RTLSDR is now optional and can be disabled at compilation stage.
Removed the 8-channels-per-device limit in multichannel mode.
Configurable per-device sampling rate.
Configurable FFT size.
Support for multibyte input samples.
Support for rawfile outputs (ie. writing raw I/Q data from a narrowband channel to a file for processing with other programs, line GNUradio or csdr).
INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: removed rtlsdr_buffers global configuration option; buffer count can now be adjusted with a per-device "buffers" option.
INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE: removed syslog global configuration option; syslog logging is now enabled by default, both in foreground and background mode. To force logging to standard error, use -e command line option.
Added -F command line option for better cooperation with systemd. Runs the program in foreground, but without textual waterfalls. Together with -e it allows running rtl_airband as a service of type "simple" under systemd. Example rtl_airband.service file has been adjusted to reflect this change.
Added type device configuration option. It sets the device type (ie. the input driver which shall be used to talk to the device). "rtlsdr" is assumed as a default type for backward compatibility. If RTLSDR support has been disabled at compilation stage, then there is no default type - it must be set manually, or the program will throw an error on startup.
Frequencies in the config can now be expressed in Hz, kHz, MHz or GHz for improved readability.
SDR-Console V3 is the latest in the line of the free SDR-Console software packages from developed Simon Brown. Recently SDR-Console V3 left its 'preview' software status and moved into 'beta' production status.
SDR-Console is a general purpose SDR program similar to other software like SDR#, HDSDR and SDRUno. SDR-Console V3 however sets itself apart by being one of the most feature rich packages with goodies like advanced DSP and NR options, frequency favorite lists, IQ recording and playback with reverse and fast forward, built in CW Skimmer and satellite tracker, independent receiver control with matrix view, signal history export, a recording scheduler, remote server and in the future support for SDRs with transmit capability.
SDRConsole V3 Beta Supported Radios
One interesting feature released with the beta version is the SDR-Console server, which allows you to use an SDR remotely over a network such as a local LAN or over the internet. We tested the server on our local machine. After setting up the server account, adding an RTL-SDR radio definition and installing the server Windows service we were able to successfully connect and receive flawlessly. The server appears to limit the maximum bandwidth to 1 MHz.
SDR-Console and the server currently support multiple SDR hardware including the RTL-SDR. SDRplay have blogged about support for their line of RSP products too, and have also created a public internet connected RSP1A demo which anyone can connect to and use (assuming that you have a decent enough internet connection). A list of public Console V3 servers can be found by clicking on the 'SDR Space' button when adding a 'V3 server' radio definition in SDR-Console V3. Currently there are multiple locations and SDR hardware publically available including ELAD FDM-S1's, SDRplay units, Airspy HF+'s as well as RTL-SDR's. We tested a few remote servers and were able to easily connect to most of them and get good smooth throughput.
Below we show a screenshot of SDR-Console V3 Beta 1 receiving from a remote SDRplay RSP1A with multiple IF channels selected and with matrix view active on a second screen.
SDR-Console V3 Beta 1 Receiving Remote RSP1 in Matrix View
Over on YouTube user Tech Minds has uploaded a useful video which shows how to set up DMR decoding with SDR#, VB-Cable, DSD+ and an RTL-SDR dongle. He also uses the DSD plugin for SDR# which makes controlling the command line DSD+ software a little easier. If you are interested we also have a short tutorial on DMR/P25 decoding available here. The video starts from downloading and installing the software, and explains every step very carefully, so it is a very good starting video for beginners.
DMR (aka MotoTRBO or TRBO) is a digital voice protocol used by Motorola radios. Software like DSD+ is required to listen to it, but it can only listen in if the signal is unencrypted.
Tech Minds has also uploaded several other tutorial videos to his channel over the last few months including guides on how to set up the ham-it-up upconverter, ADS-B tracking, using a Raspberry Pi to create a FM transmitter and more.
How To Setup SDR # Sharp To Decode DMR Digitial Using DSD Plus And An RTL SDR Receiver on Windows 10
Thank you to Eddie MacDonald for submitting his new SDR# plugin to us via our forums. Eddie's plugin is called the 'Tuner Knob Plugin', and simply enables a visual tuner knob on the screen for adjusting the frequency. This plugin could be useful especially for those running SDR# on touchscreen tablets or laptops. To install the plugin copy the .dll file to the SDR# directory and copy and paste the magicline.txt into the plugins.xml file. We tested the plugin on our PC and found it to run well.
Programming the plugins is not so easy considering their is very little documentation and few examples on the net. There may be a few bugs I have not caught (but i hope i have caught them all.)
This DLL was compiled and tested on a Windows 7 x64 machine and the DLL is compiled for both x86 and x64 platforms. I have tested it on SDR# Version v1.0.0.1635
I am not certain which previous versions it may or may not run on. However, being built on the 4.6 .Net framework it should work with Win7 on.
I built this plugin because i got tired of holding down buttons and waiting for the frequency changes. I figured this was a simpler method (even though some people hate rotary style controls on windows) It works exceptionally well with a touch screen.
As previously mentioned in the forum post I created the 'remote' to test my programming for future plugins for DSP
While some may not find a use for the remote I made it this way for my wife who like to cruise the dial and just see what she can pick up.
Most readers are familiar with the Raspberry Pi 3 and how it can be used with RTL-SDR applications such as ADS-B reception. However, one does not need to dedicate an entire Pi 3 to a single task as they are more than powerful enough to run multiple applications at once.
Over on his blog 'Radio for Everyone' Akos has uploaded a tutorial that shows how he set his Raspberry Pi 3 up as a simultaneous Network Attached Storage (NAS), Torrentbox and ADS-B server. A NAS is simply a hard drive or other data storage device that can be accessed easily over a network instead of having to be connected directly to a PC. A torrentbox is a device such as a Raspberry Pi 3 running torrent software so that you can download torrent files 24/7 without needing a PC on all the time.
Akos' tutorial shows how to set everything up from scratch, starting from writing the Raspbian SD Card and connecting to it via SSH. He then goes on to show how to install the torrent software, set up the NAS and finally set up ADS-B reception.
