Category: News

Free Virtual Audio Cable Alternative

Virtual Audio Cable is an important software tool for the Windows rtl-sdr user. It allows an audio data stream to be piped from a software radio program such as SDRSharp, into a decoding program. Unfortunately Virtual Audio Cable is not free, which is not in the cheap spirit of rtl-sdr, and at $25 it costs more than the dongle itself. There is a trial version, but it periodically plays a watermark voice which can break decoding.

A free (donationware) alternative to Virtual Audio Cable that we recently found is VB-Cable. VB-Cable does exactly the same job as Virtual Audio Cable but for free. By donating any amount to the developer, you can unlock two more virtual audio devices, which is useful if you use multiple rtl-sdr dongles on one machine.

Note, one trick to installing VB-Cable is that I found that I had to run the installer in Administrator Mode on a Windows 7 machine to get it to work.

ADSB# Plugin for SDRSharp

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Update and Note: This plugin appears to be now dead. If you are simply looking for the ADSB# standalone program (not the plugin), it is located in the SDR# install folder from sdrsharp.com.
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A user by the name of darkscout.rm on the SDRSharp Yahoo group has posted version 3 of his ADSB# plugin for SDRSharp. The main purpose of this plugin is that it allows the waterfall to viewed at the same time as decoding, which may help with visually tuning the gain settings, or experimenting with ways to block out out of band interference. He has also added in a 1-bit error recovery by brute force option, which is used in dump1090 and may improve decode performance.

ADSB# is a standalone program to receive ADS-B signals and my ADS-B plugin does the same but from within SDR#. Continue reading →

2-in-1 RTL-SDR and HF Upconverter on a Single PCB

A Hungarian hardware developer has been working on what appears to be a 2-in-1 software defined radio, combining the rtl2832u and E4000 tuner chips together with a HF upconverter all on the same PCB. The device is able to tune from 1MHz to 1.7GHz, and has two antenna connectors, one for the HF antenna, and another for the VHF/UHF antenna. Using the Google translation is difficult, but it seems the board has a protection diode, 100MHz oscillator, low noise amplifier (LNA), isolation between the two antennas, and also retains the ability to receive DVB-T and DAB broadcasts.

The developers article in Hungarian on this combined tuner can be found here, and a Google English translation here. Another version of the page which looks to be a product ordering page can be found here, and Google English translation here. We aren’t sure if the developer is still shipping these devices as the eBay listings have all gone down, but it seems you can order one by contacting the developer from the website.

Update 27 May 2013: Version 3 of this combined rtl-sdr can be now found for sale at this link. http://janielectronics.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=94.

RTL-SDR Combined Tuner

Continue reading →

RTL-SDR Running ADS-B on a Quadrocopter

Blogger John Wiseman has managed to get ADS-B decoding using an rtl-sdr stick working on his AR.Drone quadrocopter. The AR.Drones run on the Linux operating system, so he was able to compile and install the Linux ADS-B decoder dump1090 on his drone.

Although the reception was hampered by RF interference from the drones electric motors, it was still able to pick up a number of ADS-B signals.

ADSB Drone

SDR Touch Updated to Version 1.4

SDR Touch, the popular software defined radio android app for rtl-sdr has been updated to version 1.4.

This version brings improvements to the LSB, USB and AM reception capabilities, some GUI tweaks, and pinch to zoom capabilities for fine tuning.

The latest version of SDR Touch can be downloaded here, and a discussion on the new improvements can be found here.

Analogue TV with RTL-SDR

A user on the SDR# Google Groups forum has posted a program based on ADSB# called TVSharp, which can be used to watch analogue PAL and NTSC TV using the rtl-sdr dongle. Download TVSharp directly here (Mirror 1) (Old Version Mirror 2 (with source)).

The rtl-sdr as a software defined radio actually does not have enough bandwidth to receive a PAL or NTSC signal properly. PAL and NTSC signals require more than double the 2MHz typical bandwidth of the rtl-sdr. But, a decent black and white signal can still be obtained by using some of the luminance part of the signal.  As only part of the signal is sampled, resolution will be lost. Also, as sound is broadcast on a separate frequency, a second rtl-sdr dongle will be required to receive the matching audio.

On YouTube, users Superphish and ek6rc have posted videos showing TVSharp in action.

Analogue PAL TV with RTL SDR (RTL2832) and TVSharp

TVSharp R820T SDR sound via Yaesu VX-7:)