Receiving the SAQ VLF Signal with an Airspy + Spyverter and SDRplay RSP

Over on YouTube user Mile Kokotov has uploaded a video showing his reception of the SAQ very low frequency (VLF) signal. The SAQ transmitter is based in Grimeton, Sweden and transmits at 17.2 kHz, which is well below the frequency of most radio communications. SAQ only transmits its beacon on certain days, and last Sunday July 3rd 2016 the SAQ beacon activated to celebrate Alexanderson day, which is named after Swedish radio pioneer Ernst Frederick Werner Alexanderson.

In the video both the Airspy + Spyverter and the SDRplay RSP appear to receive the SAQ VLF signal equally well. In the video description Mile writes:

“SAQ”- Radio Station at Grimeton is a VLF transmission facility at Grimeton, Sweden. It has the only working Alexanderson alternator rotating armature radio transmitter in the world and is classified as a World Heritage Site.

The transmitter was built in 1922 to 1924 to operate at 17.2 kHz. The antenna is a 1.9 km wire aerial consisting of eight horizontal wires suspended on six 127-metre high freestanding steel pylons in a line, that function as a capacitive top-load to feed energy to six grounded vertical wire radiating elements.

Until the 1950s, the Grimeton VLF transmitter was used for transatlantic radio telegraphy to Radio Central in Long Island, New York, USA. From the 1960s until 1996 it transmitted orders to submarines in the Swedish Navy.

The Alexanderson transmitter became obsolete in 1996 and went out of service. However, because it was still in good condition it was declared a national monument and can be visited during the summer.

On July 2, 2004, the Grimeton VLF transmitter was declared a World Cultural Heritage site by UNESCO. It continues to be used on special occasions such as Alexanderson Day to transmit Morse messages on 17.2 kHz. Its call sign is SAQ.

Recent transmissions from SAQ on 17.2 kHz with Alexaderson 200 kW alternator, was on Alexanderson day (Sunday, July 3rd 2016) at 09:00 UTC.

Distance between SAQ transmitter in Grimeton, Sweeden and Macedonia where the signal was received is about 1850 km.

Receiving with:
1. AIRSPY R2 – SDR + Spyverter and SDRsharp software.
2. SDRplay RSP1 and SDRuno software.

Both SDR receivers settings were previously set for maximum S/N ratio.

Antenna is Mini-Whip 10cm homemade active antenna on 6.5 meter plastic pole.

The LPF filter (fc=535 kHz) is used also.

SAQ VLF Receiving with Airspy+Spyverter and SDRplay

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Making use of the Infrared LED on RTL-SDR Dongles

The infrared (IR) LED on most RTL-SDR dongles is a vestigial from the days when it was actually used for its original purpose as an DVB-T HDTV receiver. It was used to read a remote control that allowed you to change TV channels. For SDR use, the IR has little to no purpose and in many new dongles that come in metal cases (like ours) the IR LED is no longer even included on the PCB.

However, not one to waste a perfectly good interface, RTL-SDR experimenter R. X Seger created a new tool called rtl_ir which allows users to read IR data from any remote control with the RTL-SDR IR LED. Seger tested his program with the TV remote that comes included with some RTL-SDR dongles and was able to decode the scancode for power on/off as well as all the other buttons. He also tested an Apple and Siri Remote, and found that he was able to decode their scancodes too.

R. X Segers post goes over in detail what the IR spectrum is, how the IR driver works, and how to use the rtl_ir program and run it simultaneously with other RTL-SDR programs. He also shows an example on how it can be used to remotely power off a Raspberry Pi.

IR data received with rtl_ir.
IR data received with rtl_ir.
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LuaRadio: New Flowgraph Based Digital Signal Processing Framework for SDR

LuaRadio is a new Digital Signal Processing (DSP) framework for software defined radios such as the RTL-SDR. It is similar to GNU Radio in that the flowgraph is composed of graphical blocks that can be visually connected to one another in an editor. However compared to GNURadio it aims to be very lightweight in terms of disk space used (1 MB footprint) and the number of dependencies required (zero dependencies required unless you need real time highly optimized libraries). It is also written purely in the Lua programming language. The authors of LuaRadio write “LuaRadio is more inclined towards scripting and prototyping than GNU Radio, and emphasizes fast block development.”

On their website there are already several example application flowgraphs uploaded, such as decoders for WBFM Mono/Stereo, NBFM, AX.25, POCSAG, RDS, AM and SSB. Looking and building such flowgraphs is extremely helpful for learning DSP, and DSP languages like this are excellent for prototyping new signal decoders. In addition, if you are new to SDR they also have a very useful page that explains basic SDR and radio concepts.

A LuaRadio based POCSAG decoder flowgraph.
A LuaRadio based POCSAG decoder flowgraph.
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Building an ESP8266 Based Plane Spotter with an RTL-SDR Feeder

Living near Zurich airport, Daniel Eichorn wanted an easy way to show his house guests what planes are flying near him. Usually he opens up his Flightradar24 app on his phone, but he wanted a more permanent always on display. To do this Daniel has built an ESP8266 based OLED display which automatically displays the ADS-B flight information of aircraft outside his window. The ESP8266 is a very cheap and highly popular WiFi module which can give a microcontroller access to WiFi networks.

Daniel feeds his locally received ADS-B data to adsbexchange.com using a Raspberry Pi and RTL-SDR. While actually feeding ADS-B data with an RTL-SDR is not required to make the ESP8266 module work, this step ensures that he has good local coverage of his area. The ESP8266 module then queries the adsbexchange.com database via WiFi for information about planes in his area and displays the information on the OLED screen.

In previous posts we also showed how the ESP8266 could be used to transmit data like NTSC TV in a similar way to Rpitx.

ESP8266 + OLED screen displaying ADS-B data.
ESP8266 + OLED screen displaying ADS-B data.
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An RTL-SDR to RTL-SDR QSO with RTL-TRX: Transmit RTTY with the RTL-SDR

Back in 2014 oh2ftg discovered that the RTL-SDR could actually be used to transmit data by modulating leakage from its internal local oscillator. Now it seems that tejeez and oh2ftg have released a new program that makes transmitting with the RTL-SDR easy. The program is called rtl-trx. It runs on Linux and allows you to to transmit RTTY or a simple beacon with the RTL-SDR. The software is available on GitHub at https://github.com/tejeez/rtl-trx. About how it works, the readme says:

Local oscillator leakage from an RTL-SDR dongle can be used as a very low power FSK transmitter. This program transmits RTTY and also makes it easy to use the same dongle to receive RTTY in between transmissions. The goal is to make it possible to have a two-way QSO between two dongles.

Over on YouTube oh2ftg has also uploaded a video that demonstrates the software in action by doing a 1270 MHz RTTY QSO between two modified RTL-SDR dongles. He uses fldigi to decode the RTTY signal and the signal is sent with the following settings: 425 Carrier shift, 45.45 Baud rate, 5 Bits per character, none Parity, 2 Stop bits. 

This previous post shows the hardware modification that can be done to improve the output power. Again, as with the Raspberry Pi transmitters, the output power is very low and probably won’t cause any trouble, but still please do take care if you intend on actually transmitting anything as the output spectrum is probably not very clean.

RTL2RTL QSO! on 1270MHz

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SDR4Everyone: Getting Started with the RTL-SDR and SDRUno

Over on his sdr4everyone blog author Akos has uploaded a tutorial that shows how to set up the recently released SDRUno with the RTL-SDR. SDRuno is a spin-off of the (recently acquired by SDRplay) Studio1 software. Although designed and tailored for the SDRplay, SDRuno also supports any radio with an ExtIO interface available, such as the RTL-SDR. The one limitation is that the maximum bandwidth of radios other than the SDRplay is locked to 1 MHz at most.

Akos’ post shows where to download and add the required ExtIO file (it’s the same one used for HDSDR) and how to start the RTL-SDR in SDRuno, as well as a quick tutorial on changing some settings and tuning.

We note that the fact that you need to install the ExtIO dll file to the documents folder seems to be a bug in the latest version at the moment. In future updates they may fix this, and then the ExtIO dll will go back to needing to be added to the C:\Program Files (x86)\SDRplay\SDRuno folder, as it was in previous versions. We’ve also heard one or two reports of users stating that they needed to add in the libusb-1.0.dll file as well, but we can’t confirm if this is actually required as none of our test PC’s have needed it.

Also, a recent post on Nobu’s blog shows how to get rid of the center DC spike in SDRuno by adjusting the Channel Skew Calibration. The post is in Japanese, but the gist of it is that you just need to adjust the fine tuning DC offset slider in the Channel Skew Calibration settings. Nobu also points out that a handy shortcut to getting the ExtIO window to display is to simply press the ‘H’ key.

Setting up the RTL-SDR for use in SDRuno.
Setting up the RTL-SDR for use in SDRuno.
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Videos showing the LimeSDR in Action on HF with GQRX

Over on YouTube LimeSDR beta tester Marty Wittrock has uploaded several videos showing the LimeSDR receiving HF frequencies. In the first video Marty shows it receiving the USB voice on the 20m band during the 2016 ARRL field day. The second video shows reception of PSK31 signals. More videos are available on his channel if you are interested.

In the videos he uses GQRX and his own KN0CK HF upconverter. The LimeSDR should be able to receive HF on its own without an upconverter, but at the moment the HF capabilities have not been programmed into the drivers yet, so during this beta testing period an upconverter is required.

Marty also wrote in to us to make some comments on his experiences with the LimeSDR. He believes that the LimeSDR is amazing and writes:

The quality of the receive and audio [of the LimeSDR] is incredible against other SDRs I have in the house (Flex 5000A, RTL-SDR, HackRF, Red Pitaya – and soon SDRPlay).

Marty also writes that he will soon have more videos of the LimeSDR operating in Windows with SDRConsole in the near future, and we will post those videos too when they are ready.

LimeSDR Receiving 20m Voice on USB

LimeSDR Receiving PSK31 on the 20m Band

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Cyberspectrum #16: Software Defined Radio Meetup

Every month SDR evangelist Balint Seeber hosts the Cyberspectrum Meetup in San Francisco, where many SDR fans come together to listen to various presentations. This months meetup is due to be held on June 29 at 7 PM (San Fran time, about 18 hours from the time of this post). If you are in San Francisco you can attend the live meetup, but if not you can watch the live stream on YouTube.

This time the talks include:

• “Understanding the LTE Physical Layer” with Sandor Szilvasi (@sszilvasi)

LTE is an incredible, yet complex, cellular networking standard. Sandor will break it down and explain how a LTE signal is constructed. He will also live demo the demodulation and decoding of local carriers.

LTE_cyberspectrum

• “Interactive Install & Setup-fest” with the group

We would like to open up the forum to those who wish to get set up with SDR (hardware and/or software). Bring along your equipment, and as a group we can look at/debug the steps required to get you up and running. This could also include setting up an app, or fixing an Out-Of-Tree module, or even an environment issue on your laptop.

• “GNU Radio Tutorial Part 2” with Neel Pandeya

The tutorial series will continue! This time we will look at how to construct an FM radio receiver, and decode the RDS digital subcarrier. This will include:

• Explain concepts behind commercial FM and RDS
• Receiving mono FM using a from-scratch flowgraph
• Showing how to build ‘gr-rds’
• Demonstrate stereo FM+RDS reception using ‘gr-rds’
• Building GQRX
• Demonstrate FM reception using GQRX

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