NyxScope: A Windows Multi-Protocol SDR Decoder Program with Multiple Digital Native Decoders
WARNING: Multiple people have noted that this program is not working as expected and may be overly buggy.
Recently, we've learned about NyxScope, a multi-protocol SDR receiver program for Windows that comes with multiple native decoders built right into the software. Their own description describes this all-in-one program best:
You get spectrum and waterfall, multiple concurrent VFOs, trunked-radio following, digital voice, aviation and marine tracking, paging, ISM sensors, HD Radio, and transcription, in one binary.
NyxScope includes decoders for P25 Phase 1 and Phase 2 voice, EDACS and NXDN control channels, ADS-B, AIS, ACARS, POCSAG, FLEX, LoRa CSS PHY + LoRaWAN MAC, Morse, RDS, CTCSS/DCS, Iridium decoding (with voice), and also includes a signal classification tool, Bluetooth LE scanner, and Whisper voice-to-text transcriber. It also outsources decoding of other protocols to mature decoding software such as multimon-ng, rtl_433, dsd-neo, nrsc5, direwolf, dumpvdl2, dump978, rs41mod where required, noting that the outsourced decoders are bundled with the software, meaning no extra installation work is required.
The software supports RTL-SDR, HackRF, Airpsy, bladeRF, SDRplay, Fobos and PlutoSDR. It also supports using multiple SDRs used in parallel.
The software does not appear to be open source, but it is provided for free with a limitation of 3 concurrent VFOs and a limitation on recording, transcribing, and pager messages. A perpetual per-machine license for $89.95 can be purchased to lift these restrictions and add access to their FCC frequency lookup database.
AI-Disclaimer: While the developers have not noted any use of AI tools, we suspect that AI was used in the creation of this software.
Yeah no this is a hard pass for me. I was interested in Mykola as well but he’s dragging his feet and putting the app behind the Microsoft Store.
I didn’t like the MS store decision either, but at least Mykola actually works unlike NYXscope. I can’t get it to decode any signal. Tried, AM, FM, WFM modes with RTL-SDR v2, RTL-SDR v4 and Airspy R2. Nothing.
I’d stay away from this program. It’s obviously AI-generated, and the developer is blatantly violating the GPL. Between the contradictory privacy policy, the fact that the repo is quite new, and the code being closed-source, it looks a lot like malware.
Definitely. $89.95 is an ABSURD amount of clams for something like this.. I don’t like how most of these posts are just AI vibe-coded and commercial products. One day something interesting will pop up.
We have recently seen a major increase in SDR programs that have been developed with the aid of AI being submitted to the blog. This one was not submitted by the dev, but by a reader who used it and liked it. We won’t gatekeep a program from being published just because the developer used AI, but we are now adding an AI disclaimer to programs that mention that they used AI tools, or if we suspect AI was used.
Thats very good news and I did see those disclamers – Thanks!
This application does seem very sketchy though.. Are there any checks or verification before these get posted?
We don’t test every program submited to us as we trust those submitting to us (and this was submitted by a regular reader who has submitted many tips to us) and we’re not here to judge the quality of a program as that is done by the community. But we did check this program and give it a quick run to see if it could at least demod FM and it worked.
Thanks – 73
What about the fact they are trying to dodge the conditions of the GPL and also profiting off of the dodging?
The software downloads the GPL SW binaries on first run, so the GPL SW isn’t distributed with the program, and the GPL binaries run as their own processes. That is pretty commonly done with many other closed source programs that we’ve seen and this seems to be legal and within the scope of GPL.
The main issue with this software is that its ‘native’ decoders don’t actually seem to work. I suspect the author’s AI just hallucinated an implementation, or implemented placeholders.
Yeah most likely. I saw a comment that said a satellite decoder started decoding without an antenna ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
@GeoGuessr
Things like mountains, weather, signs, and streets can reveal so much about a location, making every guess feel like solving a detective case.
Seems to crash continually. Pretty much unusable at this point with Airspy R2. Using v 1.32.
i just tried it. it seams to be some sort of AI code scam. the L band Satellite decoders work and show data even with no antenna connected
That sucks, looks like a sweet program
ok this actually made me laugh a lot ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜