SatDump 1.2.1 Released

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:

  • Meteor-M Calibration - Temperatures and radiances are now available from the Meteor-M infrared channels, including enhancements like Cloud Top IR.
  • Archive Loader & EUMETSAT Archives (and EUMETCAST) Support: Metop, Meteosat, Sentinel-3 and more! - Users can now open data from the EUMETSAT archives in SatDump.
  • Windows ARM64 Support - One of the few SDR programs that has Windows ARM64 support.
  • JUICE Support - JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) is an ESA probe tasked to study three of the Galilean moons of Jupiter, namely Ganymede, Callisto and Europa. During a recent Earth slingshot it was possible to receive.
  • AIRS and CERES Support - Hyperspectral sounder and radiation budget instruments on the Aqua satellite
  • Arctic Weather Satellite Support - AWS is a weather satellite recently launched in July 2024 with 1707 MHz downlink and similar parameters to METOP, so it should be accessible to many.
  • IASI (imaging channel) Calibration - Calibration for the hyperspectral sounder onboard METOP satellites.
  • GOES-R L2 Product Support - Pre-processed models from NOAA that include Rain Rate per Quarter Hour, Land Surface Temperature, Sea Surface Temperature, and more.
  • GOME Fixes - True Color for METOP satellites.
  • Miscellaneous AVHRR and MHS Fixes - Calibration stripes and other strangeness is less likely to occur even with a bad signal.
  • Miscellaneous Composites - Many new composites are available.
  • Automatic Filename Templating - Customizable filename templates
  • More Quality-of-Life Features - Various tools and warnings added
  • RFNM Support - Support for the new RFNM SDR
  • Library Directory Fixes on Linux - Fixes SatDump on Gentoo and OpenSUSE among others.
  • Advanced Mode - Lets you change all TLE settings, composite configs, default pipeline settings, and more
  • Themes - Various new themes added
  • More Satellites Support - Initial support for XMM-Newton, VERONIKA and ACE
  • Experimental Windows XP Support - A special version of SatDump now runs on Windows XP SP3.
  • Various Bug Fixes
SatDump Running on Windows XP
SatDump Running on Windows XP
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Turning an Elecrow Pi Terminal into a Standalone SDR Radio with an RTL-SDR Blog V4

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.

How to turn a 7 inch Elecrow Pi Terminal into a standalone SDR Radio

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Building an “HF Helper” for Improving RTL-SDR HF Reception

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.

RTL SDR HF Helper improves reception

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.

Hear HF VHF UHF on an Android phone

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Project H Line 3D: YouTube Talk

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.

Alex Pettit & Jamison Adcock: H Line 3D project

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Seeve: A 95% Smaller RFNM Board

If you were unaware, RFNM is a relatively new affordable $299 software defined radio. It is based on the 12-bit LA9310 baseband processor chip, and together with either a 'Granita' or 'Lime' daughter board it is capable of tuning from 10 - 7200 MHz or 5 - 3500 MHz respectively. It is also capable of wide bandwidth - up to 153.6 MHz on a host device like a PC. Recently we gave an initial thoughts review here.

Recently RFNM announced 'Seeve', a version of their RFNM SDR which is 95% smaller, and comes with an MT3812 daughter board and 1W power amplifier built in. Seeve appears to be designed for industrial and commercial customers, via integration into an existing design. Some potential applications they mention include an HD FPV transmitter and as a building block for 5G user equipment.

Pricing is $199 each at 1k quantities or $2k for a devkit.

RFNM Seeve Board
RFNM Seeve Board
RFNM Seeve Devboard
RFNM Seeve Devboard

 

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ARMSDR.COM: Tracking Support for Windows 11 ARM64 Compatible SDR Applications

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.

Screenshot of armsdr.com
Screenshot of armsdr.com
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Project H Line 3D: Beginners Guide to Hydrogen Line Antenna Fabrication, Reception, Software and Graphic Display

Thank you to Alex Petit Jr who wanted to submit 'Project H Line 3D' which is a collection of documents and programs designed to be a beginners 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.

If you were unaware, the Hydrogen Line is an observable increase in RF power at 1420.4058 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 cheap 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 view of the antenna.

The project includes a design for a 13-element circular path feed Yagi that can be built using common materials available from a hardware store. Alex started with a Yagi design using circular director elements but found these difficult to find and fabricate. However, through NEC antenna analysis software he found that replacing the circular elements with more commonly found and easier-to-fabricate square elements had a negligible effect on the antenna's performance, unlocking a cheaper build. The 13-element Yagi results in about 15dBi gain and a 30-degree 3dB bandwidth.

Plate Yagi gives an almost identical Hydrogen line detection as the Disk Yagi
Plate Yagi gives an almost identical Hydrogen line detection as the Disk Yagi

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.

Project H Line 3D
Project H Line 3D
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Videos from the Software Defined Radio Academy 2024 Conference Now On YouTube

Videos of talks from the Software Defined Radio Academy 2024 (SDRA'24) conference have recently been uploaded to YouTube. SDRA'24 was hosted primarily as an online conference but was also held physically at the German Friedrichshafen HAMRADIO conference in June 2024.

The talks are slowly being released on YouTube with eight talks released so far on their SDRA'24 playlist. Make sure you subscribe to their YouTube channel to be notified when more talks are released.

Some of the talks of interest that are released include:

  • FobosSDR by RigExpert
  • CW Bandwidth Optimization
  • DMR Tier III base station - TRX in software defined radio
  • High Res Propagation Measurements

You can find the titles of talks of videos that haven't been released yet on the SDRA'24 programme page. Some interesting yet to be released talks include:

  • High Resolution Propagation Measurements Using a WSPRSONDE-8 beacon and a RX888 SDR
  • GNU Radio Project Update
SDRA'24 - 01 - Welcome and Introduction

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