A few weeks back we posted about some slides from the Defcon conference by information security researcher Melissa Elliot which detailed how she used an RTL-SDR to explore the world of unintended radio emissions.
The talk to go with the slides is now available on YouTube
A few months back we posted about a tip to reduce RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) on the RTL-SDR. Now Akos from the SDR for mariners blog has tried this tip for himself and written about his experience with it, after getting inspired to by a post in the rtl-sdr.com/forum.
To reduce RFI, the tip recommends disconnecting the shield connection of the USB cable from the ground connection of the RTL-SDR dongle. This overcomes a design flaw in the RTL-SDR which allows the shield of the USB extension cable to act as an antenna, causing unwanted RFI.
What Akos did was to remove the metal part of the USB extension cables connector to prevent any ground connection. This already reduced an interfering signal by 10dB. He also found that wrapping the connection point in foil further reduced the noise. Connecting coax to the ground then coiling it up and putting the RTL-SDR in the center of the coil also appears to significantly reduce RFI.
Update: Akos has also tried using ferrite chokes on the USB cable, and also found they significantly reduce interference.
Check out the full post by Akos for more information here
The blog at needsec.com brings us news that Kali Linux is soon to be updated to version 1.0.5 which will come with several software defined radio tools preinstalled. Kali is a Debian Linux based operating system that is popular with the security and penetration testing community as it comes with several relevant tools preinstalled. This new version adds several useful SDR software programs including
Update: Official Release now out
Over on the SDR for Mariners blog, author Akos has reviewed the LNA4All low noise amplifier. The LNA4All is a 25 euro amplifier designed to improve the performance of the RTL-SDR.
His results show that the LNA works very well. Akos tested the LNA4ALL on multiple frequencies and applications including commercial radio, airband, NOAA weather satellites, AIS and ADSB. As an example of the improvement, his ADSB reception was improved from 83km to 94km. In his review Akos also shows how to provide power to the LNA, and puts the LNA through some simple stress tests.
Over on Reddit, user cronek discovered by using his RTL-SDR that the microphone on his HP EliteBook 8460p laptop computer was continuously and unintentionally transmitting the audio from the built in microphone at 24 MHz in FM modulation. He found that the only requirement needed for the microphone to transmit was that the laptop needed to be turned on – even muting the microphone did nothing to stop the transmission.
Click here to read the original post.
I accidentally stumbled upon a signal in the 24MHz range, appearing to be 4 carriers. I tuned to it and heard silence, then someone came into my office and started talking and I could hear them speak. The signal appeared to be coming from my other laptop (not the one running the SDR) and was pretty weak (my antenna, the crappy one that comes with the dongle, stuck to a metal stapler was right next to the HP laptop).
This is of potential concern as as the US Military is apparently transitioning to this particular laptop. However, this may be an isolated incident, as in the thread cronek explains that other laptops he tested did not display this behavior.
I’ve had a few email requests by different people over the past few months to start up a discussion forum.
The new forum can be found at rtl-sdr.com/forum, and can also be accessed from the Discussion Forum link in the top menu. Please register and post. If you have any suggestions for the forum such as categories you think should be added, you can reply in the welcome thread.
On YouTube user pe1etr shows us a video where he uses his RTL-SDR combined with HDSDR, Virtual Audio Cable and RDS Spy to decode a distant RDS signal. RDS Spy is a free advanced software program capable of decoding weak RDS signals contained in many broadcast FM radio stations.
RDS stands for Radio Data System and is a digital signal embedded into broadcast FM signals. It is used by radio stations to display the name of the radio station and current song playing on an LCD screen.
The popular digital speech decoder (DSD) software has now been wrapped into a GNU Radio Companion block. Previously, DSD required use of virtual audio cables to get decoding to work with GNU Radio, but now the signal audio can be passed directly into this block.
Luke Berndt from the HackRF-dev forums has posted his work to make the functionality of DSD available to GNU Radio users in the form of a GRC block. “I have been playing around a bit and found an easy way to receive and playback digital LMR. More and more of the radio systems are going from narrow band FM to Digital. This makes it tough to listen to them on GQRX. DSD is a great program which can decoded the audio you get when you tune in a system in GQRX, but you either have to run it on another machine with a audio cable in between or figure out how to do a virtual audio cable on your machine.
Luckily, someone wrapped the DSD libraries so they can be accessed as GRC blocks. I have put together a GRC file and a Python program that make it a little easier to use the block.
If you have a chance, give them a try and let me know if they work. There is a good chance I have messed up the values in the filters or else where, but I have gotten clean audio out of it.”
Download the files from GitHub.
DSD is a Linux and Windows software program capable of decoding popular digital speech codecs such as APCO P25 and MOTOTRBO/DMR.
