SDRAngel Features Overview: ADS-B, APT, DVB-S, DAB+, AIS, VOR, APRS, and many more built-in apps

SDRAngel is a general purpose software defined radio program that is compatible with most SDRs including the RTL-SDR. We've posted about it several times before on the blog, however we did not realize how much progress has occurred with developing various built in plugins and decoders for it.

Thanks to Jon for writing in and sharing with us a demonstration video that the SDRAngel team have released on their YouTube channel. From the video we can see that SDRAngel now comes stock with a whole host of built in decoders and apps for various radio applications making it close to an all-in-one SDR platform. The built in applications include:

  • ADS-B Decoder: Decodes aircraft ADS-B data and plots aircraft positions on a map
  • NOAA APT Decoder: Decodes NOAA weather satellite images (in black and white only)
  • DVB-S: Decodes and plays Digital TV DVB-S and DVB-S2 video
  • AIS: Decodes marine AIS data and plots vessel positions on a map
  • VOR: Decodes VOR aircraft navigational beacons, and plots bearing lines on a map, allowing you to determine your receivers position.
  • DAB+: Decodes and plays DAB digital audio signals
  • Radio Astronomy Hydrogen Line: With an appropriate radio telescope connected to the SDR, integrates and displays the Hydrogen Line FFT with various settings, and a map of the galaxy showing where your dish is pointing. Can also control a dish rotator.
  • Radio Astronomy Solar Observations: Similar to the Hydrogen line app, allows you to make solar measurements.
  • Broadcast FM: Decoding and playback. Includes RDS decoding.
  • Noise Figure Measurements: Together with a noise source you can measure the noise figure of a SDR.
  • Airband Voice: Receive multiple Airband channels simultaneously
  • Graves Radar Tracker: For Europeans, track a satellite and watch for reflections in the spectrum from the French Graves space radar. 
  • Radio Clocks: Receive and decode accurate time from radio clocks such as MSF, DCF77, TDF and WWVB.
  • APRS: Decode APRS data, and plot APRS locations and moving APRS enabled vehicles on a map with speed plot.
  • Pagers: Decode POCSAG pagers
  • APRS/AX.25 Satellite: Decode APRS messages from the ISS and NO-84 satellites, via the built in decoder and satellite tracker.
  • Channel Analyzer: Analyze signals in the frequency and time domains
  • QSO Digital and Analog Voice: Decode digital and analog voice. Digital voice handled by the built in DSD demodulator, and includes DMR, dPMR and D-Star.
  • Beacons: Monitor propagation via amateur radio beacons, and plot them on a map.

We note that the video doesn't show the following additional features such as an analog TV decoder, the SDRAngel "ChirpChat" text mode, a FreeDV decoder and several other features.

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Jon

A variety of antennas were used for the video, depending on the type of signal being received: Crossed Yagi for satellites; a magnetic loop for low frequency signals; 2.4m dish for radio astronomy, dipole for the rest.

MCK

What type of antenna does it recommend?

Phillip Jordan

Not impressed with SDR angel
Cant click on the waterfall to tune the radio dongle to visible radio activiy
The tuning is just a cumbersome as SDR Console Version 3.1
Tuning with mouse wheel or pgup /pgdn is still combersome.
The color theme of black is totally un apealing and does not seem customizable.
the water fall color scheme cant be customzed to my liking either
the software crashes far to often to be useful often after just changing from window pane to another.
when sdr angel hangs it usually hang the entire system requiring a reboot or can take up to 20min to realease the system to the user.

The decoding abilites might be useful if I can disable RTL-SDR dongle support completly and pipe Audio into sdr angel from sdr sharp via Virtual audio cable keep and sdrangel stricly as a Protocol decoder in a multi monitor screen setup.

to the author , not a bad attempt please keep working on SDR angel to make it better. thank you for releasing your work.

NaCl

It is so confusing at first, but it is designed for super flexibility to edit all of the parameters.
The new version is smooth without crashes.

RadioBG

It works for radio clock. Ticking a clock-2min.:
https://youtu.be/zG-iPg9gHM8
162 kHz TDF time signal from Allouis, France received in Sofia, Bulgaria, Distance: 1735 km.

radiotobg

Here: https://youtu.be/SvVV1U1V-cc
It works with NOAA satellites signal.

Jon

See https://github.com/f4exb/sdrangel/issues/600 for the Airspy issue in Ubuntu 20.04 – it needs a kernel upgrade to 5.8.14.

However, I’d recommend at least Ubuntu 20.10, as it includes a more recent version of Qt – needed for some of the mapping features.

JTC

Thanks for the tip. I’ll upgrade and try it.

JTC

I have yet to get any version of SDRAngel working with an Airspy under Ubuntu 20.04. The snap version on the software app on Ubuntu is outdated and appears not to include Airspy support. Trying to compile the most recent version from source, but it requires a boatload of dependencies many of which also have to be compiled from source. A real pain in the neck. Too bad, looks like a very useful program.