Category: Applications

Transmitting ADS-B with a HackRF and Receiving it with an RTL-SDR

Over on YouTube user Jiao Xianjun has uploaded a video showing how he was able to transmit an ADS-B signal from his HackRF One and receive it using an RTL-SDR with dump1090. He transmits a low power signal which shows a fake plane flying over the Senkaku islands.

Important Note: While this warning is also on the video we feel that we should re-emphasize that you should never transmit anything at 1090 MHz unless you are authorized to do so and are in a controlled RF environment.

ADS-B out by HACKRF and received by rtl-sdr + dump1090

Signal Mapping using RTLSDR Scanner and GPS on an iOS Device

Recently we posted how RTLSDR Scanner has been updated to allow interfacing with a GPS device. This allows you to make signal strength maps by driving around and recording both signal strength and GPS location together.

As most people don’t have a dedicated GPS device, Reddit user soooooil has put together a short guide on how he was able to use his iPhone as the GPS device and interface it with RTLSDR Scanner.

RTLSDR Scanner with iOS GPS device.
RTLSDR Scanner with iOS GPS device.

New RTL_POWER Based Wideband RTL-SDR Scanner GUI

Rtl_power is a command line program that can do a very wideband frequency scan by quickly tuning through 2 MHz chunks of bandwidth and recording radio power values.

Now a new GUI frontend for Windows rtl_power called rtl panorama has been released which simplifies the use of the command line tool. To use it download rtlpan.exe from the sourceforge page and then copy the rtlsdr.dll, libusb-1.0.dll and rtl_power.exe files from the official Osmocom librtlsdr download to the same directory as rtlpan.exe.

You can hover over each of the controls to see a tool tip explaining which each button does.

Recently a similar rtl_power GUI was released and shown in this post. There is also the more featured python based RTLSDR Scanner that is not based on rtl_power which does a similar job. However, the rtl_power based GUIs appear to be much faster at scanning.

New rtl_power GUI called rtl panorama.
New rtl_power GUI called rtl panorama.

RTL-SDR based Passive Multistatic RADAR used to Track Aircraft

Over on YouTube user Ben Silverwood has uploaded a video showing the results of his RTL-SDR passive radar. The passive radar works using two RTL-SDR dongles receiving a DAB radio tower’s radio waves that are reflected off the aircraft. On the video you are able to see the aircraft radar blip on the animated Matlab plots.

Previously we posted about another similar passive radar project in this post.

Low cost RTL-SDR passive multistatic DAB radar.

ScanEyes: Software for Visualizing, Listening to and Archiving Trunked Radio Traffic

Back in March we showed a beta version of Tyler Watts ScanEyes trunked call log recorder software. Now Tyler has released a more complete version of his ScanEyes software. A live version of the software can be found at sdrscan.com. ScanEyes works by using a software defined radio such as the RTL-SDR combined with trunking following software Unitrunker and optional P25 decoder DSD/DSD+ to archive all calls made on a trunked radio system. A user can then later go into the web interface and view and listen to archived calls.

ScanEyes Flow Diagram
ScanEyes Flow Diagram

Hak5: Improvements to the ADS-B Antenna Drone

Previously we posted about the Hak5 teams attempt to create an ADS-B quadcopter receiver which carried a coax collinear antenna, ran the ADS-B decoder dump1090 on board and then transmitted the decoded ADS-B data back to a laptop on the ground via WiFi. Their results were poor due to various factors.

In the latest video they read comments from fans which explain why they had such poor results, then apply some of those recommendations to a second experiment. Previously they had trouble keeping the WiFi connection alive due to poor reception, so now they use a WiFi Yagi to boost the signal strength. They also reduced the number of elements on their coax collinear antenna and moved away from the broadcast RF transmitter that they were near in their last video.

There isn’t a big increase in the number of planes picked up in the second experiment but it was much more successful compared to the first.

A Better Aircraft Seeking Drone Antenna, Hak5 1613

New RTL-SDR Panoramic Spectrum Analyzer

A Ukrainian developer has released his new RTL-SDR Panoramic Spectrum Analyzer software. The software utilizes the command line rtl_power software for its backend processing, so it is essentially a GUI for rtl_power.

The developer has uploaded two videos to YouTube showing the software in action. The software can be downloaded from here.

An alternative program similar to this one is RTLSDR Scanner.

RTL-SDR Panoramic Spectrum Analyzer

Panoramic observation of the PMR + LPD. Part 2

ADS-B Decoder dump1090 now Available on Windows

Dump1090 is a popular command line ADS-B decoder which many people believe has superior decoding performance compared to other decoding software. Previously it has only been available for Linux and Mac operating systems, however recently it has been updated with a Windows command line version. The most up to date branch of dump1090 can be downloaded from GitHub here.

To install dump1090 on Windows follow these steps:

  1. Download the dump1090 zip file from the GitHub download link.
  2. Download the official RTL-SDR Windows release from http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/attachment/wiki/rtl-sdr/RelWithDebInfo.zip.
  3. Copy the libusb-1.0.dll, rtlsdr.dll and pthreadVC2-w32.dll files from the official RTL-SDR Windows release zip file to the dump1090 folder. Rename pthreadVC2-w32.dll to pthreadVC2.dll.
  4. Double click on dump1090.bat.

The batch file starts a dump1090 webserver which can be viewed in any browser by going to http://localhost:8080. You may wish to edit the batch file and add extra flags such as –aggressive and/or –fix to improve decoding.