Over on YouTube channel 'TAKEAPART' has uploaded a short video showing how he tracks aircraft via an RTL-SDR Blog V3 dongle and his car's Android head unit. The head unit is capable of running the ADS-B Radar App available on the Google Play store.
Once the app is installed, it's a simple matter of plugging in the RTL-SDR Blog V3 unit and running the app to start tracking aircraft.
Back in 2022 we first posted about adsb_deku and radar-tui, a TUI (terminal user interface) for displaying ADS-B aircraft locations with an RTL-SDR receiver. A terminal user interface means that no desktop GUI is required, instead, the map and aircraft are drawn in the terminal window using just text characters.
adsb_deku and radar-tui are based on the open-source ratatui library. Recently, Orhun, one of the maintainers of ratatui wrote in and wanted to share a YouTube video he created demonstrating radar-tui in action. In the video, Orhun explains the RTL-SDR, shows how to set up radar-tui, and shows a demo of it in action.
If you're interested in this type of application, another similar terminal based ADS-B UI is coole-radar which we also posted about previosuly in 2019.
Thank you to Marco, Guglielmo's programmer, for letting us know that his software has recently been updated to Version 0.6.
Guglielmo is Linux, Windows (and, in this recent update, x86 MacOS) based RTL-SDR FM and DAB tuner software that supports SDRs, including the RTL-SDR, Airspy, SDRplay, HackRF, and LimeSDR. It is designed to be easy to use for media users rather than hobbyist technical users.
Version 0.6 fixes bugs and adds the following features:
SatDump is a popular program used to receive and decode images and other data from various weather satellites. SatDump works great RTL-SDR Blog dongles and with our Discovery Dish, an easy-to-use dish and feed for receiving L-band and other weather satellites. Recently SatDump version 1.2.1 was released, which brings several new features including:
Over on YouTube Mirko Pavleski has uploaded a video showing how he took a US$199 "Pi Terminal-7” 1024*600 All-In-One Module Raspberry Pi" from Elecrow, and combined it with an RTL-SDR Blog V4 to create a portable standalone SDR radio platform.
The build includes a cooling fan, external WiFi antenna, speaker, power switch and physical tuning knob. The built-in Raspberry Pi 4 compute module runs the HamPi image which includes multiple free SDR programs. In the video, Mirko shows the system in action with it running SDR++ and GQRX.
Mirko has also provided a text guide that explains how to replicate his setup.
Over on YouTube Amateur Radio VK3YE has uploaded a video showing his 'HF Helper' project. The HF Helper is a tunable HF filter and attenuator that helps improve HF reception when in the presence of strong overloading signals. VK3YE writes:
Using an RTL-SDR.COM dongle (genuine model V4) and a computer with SDR Sharp you can get quite good reception of HF signals. However reception can sometimes be spoiled by overload from signals on or away from the desired reception frequency. The 'HF Helper' presented here can reduce these problems. And you can use it in conjunction with a QRP transmitter to form a simple transmitting station.
Also as a bonus, in a related video VK3YE also shows the RTL-SDR Blog V4 being used on SDR Touch on an Android phone for portable HF, VHF and UHF reception.
Last week we posted about Alex Petit Jr's 'Project H Line 3D' which is a collection of documents and programs designed to be a beginner's guide to antenna fabrication, reception, recording, software processing, and graphic display of the 21 cm Hydrogen line. The project makes use of an RTL-SDR and LNA as the radio front end.
This week Alex gave an online talk to the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers (SARA) discussing the project and giving an overview.
Project H Line 3D' is a collection of documents and programs designed to be a beginner's guide to antenna fabrication, reception, recording, software processing, and graphic display of the 21 cm Hydrogen line. The project makes use of an RTL-SDR and LNA as the radio front end.
The Hydrogen Line is an observable increase in RF power at 1420.MHz that is created by natural hydrogen atoms. The Hydrogen line is most easily detected by pointing a directional antenna toward the Milky Way where neutral hydrogen is abundant. Properties of the hydrogen line curve such as its shape and Doppler shift can be used to measure the shape and properties of our galaxy.
Alex's project H Line build is designed to be inexpensive and easy for students to build and set up for drift scans which involve pointing the antenna towards the sky and letting the Earth's rotation drift the Milky Way into and through the view of the antenna.
The project includes a design for a 13-element circular patch feed Yagi that can be built using common materials available from a hardware store. The 13-element Yagi results in about 15dBi gain and a 30-degree 3dB bandwidth.
The software portion of the instructions uses the SDR# IF Average plugin, and uses that to record log files every few minutes. The log files are then converted by an included Java program by Jamison Adcock into a logarithmic dB scale and a format compatible with Rinearn 2D and 3D graphics packages.
We've recently come across an X post by Jamie Vital who notes that he has created a site called armsdr.com which is dedicated to tracking which SDR-related software has support for Windows 11 on ARM64.
The Windows OS is most commonly run on x86 and X64 CPU hardware. However, in recent years Microsoft have been pushing to add support for ARM CPUs as well. ARM CPUs are generally lower performance, but significantly more efficient in terms of power use, so they are excellent for battery-powered devices, and so they are commonly used in devices like phones and single-board computers.
Linux is well supported on ARM CPUs, and recently Apple have begun selling computers with ARM CPUs, the Apple M1 and M2. However, Windows support for ARM is still quite lacking, and not very popular. This leaves people who unwittingly purchase a Windows 11 ARM64 laptop mostly out of luck when it comes to running common SDR programs, as programs written and compiled for x86/x64 CPUs will not run on ARM64.
armsdr.com notes that currently only one program, SatDump, has official Win11 ARM64 support. Other programs like rtl_433 and SDR++ have unofficial support, and pretty much every other program has no support, although some may work in emulation mode. But to complicate matters, for emulation mode to work without dropping samples, you need to use librtlsdr drivers that have RAW_IO enabled.
Importantly, the armsdr.com site also provides a process for installing the WinUSB drivers on Win11 ARM64, as the typical process involving Zadig does not currently work. The process requires manually installing the drivers through device manager.
We note that some developers of programs like SDR++ are also refusing to add official Win11 ARM64 support due to the feeling that Windows on ARM has too many issues to be worth supporting. Combined with how low the Win11 ARM64 userbase is, this is most likely the attitude of most developers. Because of these reasons, we strongly suggest avoiding purchasing Win11 ARM64 machines if you want to run SDR software.
