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  1. Taubin

    I’m very much looking forward to your antennas, it opens a whole new bit of SDR that I’ve not had a chance to experiment with. I can’t wait!

    Reply
  2. jeff

    every time my freezer kicks in i loose reception on sdrsharp /hdsdr..and i have to turn my pc of and start over again if i don’t turn pc of sdrshsrp /hdsdr wont work .but i can still get the internet ok .just the radio wont work ..
    i have used different plugs in home but still the same thing..

    Reply
  3. cristian76

    congratulations, but do you think it’s possible to make a system with a small rotor? The idea is to move the camera in vertical and horizontal axis. Obviously, the camera should move automatically considering the adsb data and its own gps position.

    Reply
    • Casper

      Of course it is possible. PTZ camera for example. You would need a bit of calibration, but it is possible. The data that the system send is the X Y gps coordonate, but also the altitude. By knowing where you are, you can hardcode your location or add a small gps module (cheap on the chinese marketplaces), hard code the compass or get a compass module (again chinese market). Now you can calculate the angles and distance from you to the aircraft.

      Ex, the data comming out could be: compass 250°, elevation 30°, distance 13531ft. Now you just need to turn the camera so it point to 250° and lift it to 30°. Since it is 13531ft away, if it have zoom capability, probably go to max zoom.

      An amelioration would be to calculate the zoom factor based on the distance and imprecision of the system, as to get as close as possible without missing it. After all, even if the information is basically real time, there is still some lag. You can compensate for it too, in part with trial and error (aka: change the delay compensation until it work) or do some researches and testing to figure it out. Trial and error is probably easier, go with like 0.5secs and start from there.)

      Reply
  4. Ben Barrett

    Now add passive radar and take a picture of airborne objects that are not transmitting an ADSB signal, too 😉
    (Use some image recognition to tag birds of different types, and tag the other ones as interesting haha)

    Reply
    • Timmy

      The problem with most of the current home passive radar is that they only use two receive channels (LimeSDR,SDRplay duo) and any hardware that could provide more than two phase coherent receive channels (hackrf one,LimeSDR,airspy R2) gets expensive fast.

      I suppose what I’m trying to say is that with only 2 variables, (one antenna pointing at the signal source and one pointing away from it), you can not calculate a three dimensional location in space. It is a two dimensional Radar, you know the rough distance (Slant Range – http://www.radartutorial.eu/01.basics/Slant%20Range.en.html) and approximate speed (doppler shift), but not the height or the angle (if you had either you could approximate the Down Range).

      But with one or more KerberosSDR devices then the possibility of tracking aircraft in three dimension space using passive radar at a low price may become possible. But with only 8-bits of dynamic range there is at least one cool trick that might not be possible. The reflected RF will be re-modulated by the vibrations on the surfaces of the aircraft, so at least in theory it should be possible to hear and distinguish, after processing, the downconverted audio returned by a helicopter, a propeller aircraft and a jet engine aircraft.

      Reply
  5. moeses

    I have a nesdr smart v4 dongle and I don’t believe that it has the bias tee built in. When I doubled checked the specs on amazon it didn’t mention anything about a bias tee which is why I suspect that it doesn’t have one. Also, just to test if it does anything out of the box I plugged it directly into the dongle with no antenna (USB>SDR>LNA>Nothing) and tuned to local FM to see if anything happened. Nothing happened.

    The weird thing that maybe someone can explain is that if I lightly press the male pin connector of the SMA to the female connector of the LNA and give it a jiggle then all of a sudden it seems to work for a moment. If I hold the SDR dongle against the LNA just right it almost seems to work exactly like it should. BUT…this doesn’t happen if SMA pin goes into the LNA hole (for a proper connection). Any thoughts on what might be happening?

    Reply
    • admin

      You’re probably just jiggling it in a way that the adapter looses it’s shield connection briefly, and so signal can enter (but not via the LNA). It definitely needs bias tee power to amplifiy. The dongle you have doesn’t have a bias tee unless you specifically purchased the version with the hard wired bias tee. If you have our RTL-SDR Blog V3 then those all have a bias tee that can be turned on with software. Either purchase a dongle with bias tee power, or you can find cheap external bias tees that you can power yourself on eBay etc.

      Reply
  7. GREGORY MENGELL

    THANK YOU. I WAS PART OF THE 80-90S GOES/ POLAR SAT. MOVEMENT VIA NOAA. FOR AWHILE I RAN JAESUG. THANKS AGAIN FOR ALL YOUR EFFORTS WITH THIS TUTORIAL.

    Reply
  9. Max

    Why do you need a specific software that will only show you the waterfall?
    Why not using SDRsharp?
    I am probably missing something here.

    Reply
    • admin

      It’s probably possible to install this onto a low power computing device, like a Pi 3, or even something cheaper and weaker. Then combine it with an LCD screen and you have a standalone panadapter.

      Reply
  10. wayne bernier

    I have the same issue as above with the “Cannot access RTL device” and I did run the install-rtlsdr.bat and followed the startup guide. When I initially set this up everything seemed ok, then I removed the dongle for some reason (most likely to use another USB device)and when I reinserted the dongle in the same USB port that’s when I got this error. I did re-run the bat file but that didn’t help. When in step 10. loading the driver I know see the following in both boxes. “WinUSB (v 6.1.7600.16385) RTL2832UUSB) on the left side(1st box)
    Is there anyway to uninstall and start again?
    Please advise.

    Reply
    • admin

      Same for Europe, take a look at EUMETCAST. It’s a different set up though, you need DVB-S2 receiver, satellite dish with LNB, and you need to purchase a hardware licence dongle and licensed software. Seems that liecencing costs 100 euros. http://y2u.be/UvA-iRr2wOo

      Reply
  12. simplio

    trying to build it on debian buster. downloaded the sqlite (newest) then extracted it to the same directory level as adsbox but make cant find sqlite3.h

    Reply
    • Josef

      you need to download/install the sqlite-dev package too. RTLSdr looks for the sqlite dev files in a neighbor folder. I use /adsbox and /sqlite for the sources.Amplitude

      Reply
  13. EA5AEL

    ¿Anyone can confirm that Omnirig work well on this version 2.80?
    I can not work with it. Have a message say “Could not find Omnirig” but when i usse
    V2.76a is fine work.

    Reply
    • EA5AEL

      Yes! Solvented in Shortcut icon on the desktop in advanced options Administrator privileges . Now Omnirig is runnig well.

      Reply
  14. Tovpv

    Awesome guide with extreme attention to detail. I gave this project a shot a week ago and even though my vit(avg) was ~ 600, I still managed to snag all the full disk images before the sun came up!

    Reply
  16. Gérald

    That is very close to something i’m thinking about for a while: capture magnetic head’s raw RF signal of any kind of magnetic tape or disk device, and then do all the demodulation and signal treatment by software.
    SDVCR, SDTapeDeck, SDTapeReader… for instance.
    i believe it could be pretty useful and could provide much better image/sound/data quality, by bypassing all old and often badly aligned signal treatment’s electronic, and replacing it with much powerfull software (possibly adding some refined treatment unavailable on original device).
    But my first wonder about it is how to connect, for example, a VHS VCR’s video head directly to an SDR’s input? I guess that some electronic would be needed for, at least, impedance matching?

    Reply
    • snn47

      From what I remember from analogue video recording on magnetic tapes there are similar things to observe as I wrote before. VHS VCR had an AM modulated RF and the analogue video out with a varying bandwidth 0 to 3.5 MHz or more, the bandwidth is higher the better the recorder and used magnetic tape material was.
      Do you want to detect the combined video or Synch RGS and the BW picture seperately?
      Is it a Single or Multi-Standard-, VHS or SHS support for a recorder?
      Which Standards are supproted NTSC, PAL and SECAM, and equally important
      which version of NTSC, PAL and SECAM, e.g. resolution and tone carrier placement, 50 Hz or 60 Hz?
      Is ist a true norm compliant recording or somewhat quick and dirty solution stretching standards and what variations in bandwidth and (stereo) sound carrier offset to the carrier are supported.

      How early do you want to pick up the signals before they are combined as combinded “sync, BW-, colour-, tone-carrier(s)-output or sync-, BW, RGB-signals provided by the VCR? Which signals and where do you want to pickup the signals?
      As early as when the VCR provided the signals from the many heads they use or after the VCR had combined the signals from the various heads?
      You still depend on the use of all the mechanics and control circuits involved to get the tape aligned and transported, tape speed controlled …..
      Which enhancements do you want to implement e.g. a comb filter to avoid cross color flimmer ……
      Unless you want to demodulate the RF AM modulated signal you would have to use a number of AD converter and not just impedance matching.
      But still you have the limitations that tapes are stretched, have deformations at the edges …
      Unless you are really into electronic SM and intend to reverse engineer the (S)VHS-VCR design you have in order to process the many internal signals that the analogue video signal is composed of, why don’t you try a a good but old USB or Firewire-Wire Grabber using a Windows version that supports the software and or Firewire (e.g. PCMCIA card if Firewire is not in the Notebook) and not some of the small 15€ quick and dirty grabber. I still have my Firewire and USB 2 and wou would be astonished how good they are in converting what is provided, meaning the signal left of tapes on stretched tapes with deformations at the edges after such a long time.

      Reply
    • admin

      As far as i’ve seen, all the geosynchronous sats available to Europe are encrypted, so only available to organizations who pay.

      But take a look at EUMETCAST on the Ku band. That needs a DVB-S2 receiver and a satellite dish with LNB. Plus licensed keys and software that seems to cost 100 euros together.

      Reply
  18. TrollDetector

    Nice HowTo !
    Mucky that now there are some opensource software to decode Xrit.

    USA-Satcom (Joe) No comment LoL … if they sell software like they reply to people … better to win lottery.

    Reply
    • Th0m

      Joe’s Twitter is full of favorites of right wing conspiracy theories and Q BS. So if you follow USA SatCom expect to be getting a bunch of that in your timeline.

      Reply
      • TrollDetector

        Making software do not give you the right to be rude & thoug.
        He can be a fan of Maga Trump or any Alien conspiracy … i do not care , it is just showing the kind of guy …. that think USA is center of universe….

        Reply
  19. snn47

    Receiving Black and White picture is elementary, while decoding analogue color requires knowledge of which of the many varients of analogue color TV were used.
    Color information was “added” to the existing Black and White (BW)-TV signals using AM with a reduced carrier and one sideband with additional carrier(s) for sound. The color information is interleaved into the existing Black and White (BW) signals (HV-sync and picture) in such a way, that there is only minor degredation e.g. cross-color flimmer.
    Every analogue TV receiver would receive color TV signals and display them as BW picture. Most TV-receiver were very tolerant for off spec signals like from the Aplle II. If you had a 50 Hz TV you would receive also 60 Hz based signals, but without having support for the correct sound carrier frequency you had no sound.
    It a long time until the necessary chipsets were available that would allow to built Multi-Standard color TV receiver that supported not only all three variations used for color adding color information (NTSC, PAL and SECAM), but also supported the existing variations in bandwidth and (stereo) sound carrier offset to the carrier.
    That is why I find it unlikely that color support is that easily to achieve unless you know which color encoding system and which parameters were used.

    Reply
  20. R

    how can you measure an antenna’s ADSB suitability if this device can only handle f up to 900 MHz while ADSB is 978/1090?

    Reply