Category: Other

August 18, 2026

AntSDR T510 Pre-launch: A 1 MHz to 6 GHz SDR with 2 GHz Bandwidth and a Built-In NVIDIA Jetson

MicroPhase has just announced the pre-launch of its AntSDR T510 AI software-defined radio platform. This high-end device combines the AMD Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC ZU47DR with an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano. The AMD ZU47DR RFSoC alone is already a beast, covering 1 MHz to 6 GHz, with 14-bit ADCs and 8 RX and 8 TX channels. This is a direct-sampling SDR, meaning no tuners are used, and the ADC simply samples at an extreme 5 GSPS. After the DDCs, each channel has a maximum bandwidth of up to 2 GHz, but smaller channelization can easily be achieved within the large FPGA embedded in the RFSoC.

Obviously, processing a large amount of data requires powerful computing, so the AMD ZU47DR RFSoC is combined with an NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX for real-time AI signal processing and intelligent spectrum analysis.

MicroPhase also notes that the AntSDR T510 AI will be open source, allowing developers to easily work with the hardware. It will ship with an Ubuntu 22.04 system preconfigured with CUDA, include GNURadio and SoapySDR compatibility, and include GPU-accelerated demos for real-time Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and modulation classification using RF data captured by the platform.

This is a high-end SDR comparable to Ettus products that cost US$30k+ like the USRP X410, but Chinese manufacturers like MicroPhase may be able to bring the pricing down. The ANTSDR-T510 non-AI version without the Jetson is already available on Chinese marketplace sites for about US$5000, so with the additional $500 Jetson Orin Nano added, this version should only be a little more expensive.

August 11, 2026

ESP32 Bit Pirate Updates: New LoRa and Meshtastic Analysis Features

Back in September 2025, we posted about the "ESP32 Bus Pirate" firmware, which transforms an ESP32-S3 into a multi-protocol debugging and hacking tool. We later covered an update in March 2026 that added waterfall displays, cellular modem support, and an external radio expander.

Although the ESP32 does not have true SDR capabilities, it can leverage its numerous built-in radio hardware components to achieve a range of interesting SDR-like features. Recently, "Geo," the creator of the ESP32 Bus Pirate, wrote in to share some recent firmware updates with us.

Geo notes that the project is now called "ESP32 Bit Pirate" and now includes LoRa/SX1262 support and Meshtastic analysis features.

ESP32 Bit Pirate can now transmit and receive LoRa packets, monitor RSSI, scan frequency activity, display a simple waterfall view and perform Channel Activity Detection. Radio parameters including frequency, bandwidth, spreading factor, coding rate, transmit power, preamble and sync word can be configured directly from the interface.

Packets can also be recorded to the ESP32 filesystem and replayed later together with their original radio configuration.

A dedicated Meshtastic analysis shell has also been added, allowing users to send, receive and inspect Meshtastic packets. The goal is not to replace a Meshtastic node, but to provide a debugging and experimentation interface for understanding and interacting with LoRa/Meshtastic traffic.

The latest update has also added new LoRa hardware support for the Heltec Vision Master T190 and Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 V4, a browser-based debugging ecosystem, a Python scripting lab, and a BPIO2 USB adapter mode.

The project is entirely open source, and the code can be found on their GitHub page.

August 11, 2026

Open Source Firmware for the DeepSDR 101

Thank you to Esteban Benito (EA8DGL) for writing in and sharing news of a bare-metal open source firmware for the GD32F450-based DeepSDR 101. The firmware is a collaborative effort developed by Esteban Benito (EA8DGL), Alexandr (UA6YKK), and Blas (EA7GIB). The DeepSDR 101 is a popular low-cost hand-held SDR, covering 100 kHz to 149 MHz, with a bandwidth of 192 kHZ, and a 4.3-inch screen. Various clones of the DeepSDR 101 also appear on marketplaces.

Esteban notes that the motivation for writing custom firmware was that the DeepSDR 101 and its clones have had only one firmware update since it came out. While the stock firmware currently works well, it lacks certain features such as selectable filter bandwidths and some demodulation modes, and it needs an updated interface.

Esteban writes:

The idea was to take genuinely inexpensive hardware - a GD32F450 microcontroller, an 800x480 touchscreen, a TLV320AIC3204 audio codec used as the I/Q front-end, and an MS5351 (Si5351-compatible) local oscillator - and turn it into a receiver with features you'd normally only find on much pricier radios:

- A real-time spectrum/waterfall panadapter with adjustable zoom (1x-8x), smoothing, and trace styles
- AM, USB, LSB, NFM and WFM demodulation, with adjustable channel bandwidth and squelch
- One-tap band presets (shortwave, airband, 2m, HF ham bands, FM broadcast, CB, and more), each pre-loaded with the right mode and tuning step
- A touchscreen settings menu with configurable AGC profiles, PGA gain, backlight, and more
- Encoder-based tuning down to 100Hz steps across 4.8-180MHz

Everything is bare-metal C - no RTOS, direct register access for clocks/DMA/I2S - and the whole firmware, from the I2S/audio bring-up to the DSP chain to the UI,

With this being fully open, it also opens the door to things like CW, RTTY, SSTV, HF FAX or FT8 decoding down the line - none of that requires new hardware, just firmware that's actually open enough to build on.

So really, the goal isn't to replace or criticize the original firmware - it's to give the community a base to build on, so one of the most affordable and easy-to-use SDR radios out there can keep getting better over time instead of staying frozen after a single update.

AI-Disclaimer: We point out that Esteban discloses that this firmware is primarily being written with AI.

July 29, 2026

Building a $50 BOM Software Defined Radio with a HT9201 20 MHz ADC and an FX2LP USB Controller Clone

Over on Hackaday, we've seen that Anders Nielsen gave a talk at Hackaday Europe 2026 about his effort to build a software-defined radio with 20 MHz of bandwidth on a bill of materials of under US$50. We've posted about his work before, first with the PhaseLoom quadrature sampling front end, and later with PhaseLatch, which combined a 20 MSPS ADC with a 50-year-old MOS 6502 CPU. In this latest work, the 6502 is still part of the stack, but for the wideband work the samples bypass it entirely.

The RF side is a discrete Tayloe detector built around a TLV3253 analog switch, sampling the signal four times per local oscillator cycle to give downconversion and quadrature in one step. A Si5351 provides two clocks offset by 90 degrees from the same PLL, an ADA4891 op amp buffers into a HT9201 dual 20 MHz 10-bit ADC, and an FX2LP clone streams the parallel data over USB 2.0, avoiding the cost and tool chain of an FPGA. USB bandwidth forces a choice between 20 MHz at 8 bits or 10 MHz at 10 bits, and he notes that PCB design was critical in getting a flat frequency response.

Anders ran a live demo streaming 19.375 MHz into GQRX and showing the whole FM band at once, with tuning handled by firmware running on the FX2LP's own 8051 core. Still to come are bias and offset calibration to suppress the mirror images, better filtering and layout, and a front-end mixer to get past the roughly 100 MHz ceiling of the Si5351. He is also looking for help with the SoapySDR driver, so take a look at his GitHub if you have the skills.

Hackaday Europe 2026: Anders Nielsen - High Performance SDR on the Cheap

Watch this video on YouTube

Below, we're also embedding the video from his YouTube channel, which covers the same project.

Cheapest 20MHz SDR You Can Build

Watch this video on YouTube

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.

May 28, 2026

Receiving ADS-B With a Semtech LR2021 LoRa Chip

Over on his blog, Zoltán Papp and team have created an interesting write-up investigating whether Semtech's LR2021, one of the latest LoRa transceiver chips, which draws only 10.4 mA at 3.3V, can be used as a single-chip ADS-B receiver at 1090 MHz. The LR2021 natively supports OOK modulation, and the datasheet even hints at ADS-B reception. Building on prior work, the team captured live ADS-B signals with an SDR and replayed them into the LR2021 eval board for repeatable bench testing.

The initial 3 MHz Rx bandwidth configuration had only a 50% packet success rate with no reception above -50 dBm, because the AGC could not settle within the short 8 us preamble. Extending the sync pattern into the Mode S 'df' field enabled reception across the full dynamic range, but at the trade-off of broadcast message reception only. Manchester decoding and CRC also had to be moved to the host, since, for an unknown reason, Manchester decoding with inverse polarity would not work on the chip.

Measured sensitivity came in about 5 dB shy of the theoretical -89 dBm, with most of the gap blamed on the eval board's front end being matched for 868 MHz rather than 1090 MHz. The team notes that with a modified front end, the theoretical sensitivity should be possible.

With the rise in Raspberry Pi costs due to the consumer memory chip crisis, cheaper ADS-B receiver hardware is welcome. Some existing microcontroller-based ADS-B decoders that we've seen recently include ADSBee and PicoADSB.

Signal Hound SDR Hardware used to Capture and Replay ADS-B For Testing

May 21, 2026

RPITX-UI: A Modernized, Easier to Use Fork of the RPITX Raspberry Pi Transmitter Software

Thank you to Ihar Yatsevich for writing in about his release of rpitx-ui, a modernized fork of F5OEO's popular rpitx project. If you were unaware, rpitx is software that turns a Raspberry Pi (most Pi hardware apart from the Pi 5 is supported) into a low cost RF transmitter by generating signals directly on a GPIO pin, requiring no extra hardware beyond a wire antenna. Ihar writes:

rpitx-ui started as a fork of F5OEO’s rpitx and has evolved into a modernized, easier-to-use version of the original Raspberry Pi RF transmitter project. The goal is to make rpitx easier to build, install, use, and extend on modern Raspberry Pi OS systems.

In rpitx-ui, the build system has been migrated to CMake, the project installs system-wide, and it has been adapted for 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS (Debian Trixie). Most transmitter binaries have been rewritten in modern C++20 with shared DSP, audio, and CLI libraries. SSB and AM now use an internal DSP chain with direct DMA output instead of shell pipelines (removing the large SSB startup delay), NFM is a standalone transmitter with wide/narrow deviation presets, WFM with RDS has configurable PI, PS, RadioText and 50/75 us pre-emphasis, CW/Morse has safer parsing with adjustable WPM, and a new RFgen mode supports noise, sweep, and multitone generation. Audio modes also now accept any libsndfile compatible format rather than only WAV.

The UI itself has been improved with file selection for common modes, loop or once playback, custom messages for POCSAG/RTTY/CW, Opera call sign input, SSB sideband selection, NFM deviation selection, and RDS parameter setup. Full source and build instructions can be found on the rpitx-ui GitHub page.

May 15, 2026

PicoADSB: An Ultra-Compact All-in-One ADS-B Receiver Now on Kickstarter

Over on Kickstarter, Lambda58 LLC has released a campaign for their PicoADSB product, a self-contained 1090 MHz ADS-B receiver that replaces a typical SDR plus Raspberry Pi feeder setup with a single SD-card-sized PCB measuring 25mm x 15mm and weighing only 3 grams. At the time of this post, the campaign has reached around $12,700 against a $10,000 goal, and closes on May 16. The maximum claimed reception range is 500km+. At this time, there is no support for 978 MHz UAT, though they mention staying tuned for updates.

A photo of the board shows that it is based on an ESP32-C3-Mini-1 for the WiFi web server, and on what appears to be a separate microcontroller and an L-band tuner chip. The antenna input is fed via a U.FL connector to a 1090 MHz SAW filter, an LNA, and then the tuner. We suspect that the microcontroller is used for its ADC and for ADS-B demodulation.

PicoADSB appears to compete with ADSBee, which we previously covered. ADSBee is based on the Raspberry Pi Pico chip. However, ADSBee supports both 1090 MHz and 978 MHz on the same board, but costs a little more at US$152 for a set.