SWSCAN – A Console Based Shortwave Broadcast Scanner for the RTL-SDR

Over on the Reddit discussion boards user gat3way has posted about his newly released software project called swscan. Swscan is a Linux console based program that can be used to scan and listen to shortwave broadcast stations. It has a built in database of shortwave station frequencies as well as their broadcast schedules and it will even show you the stations power level and distance you are from the transmitter. Swscan is based on GNU Radio 3.7, so you will need to have that installed first.

As shortwave stations exist at frequencies below the normal tuning range of the RTL-SDR, you will need an upconverter or be using the latest R820T experimental driver which can tune down to around 1 MHz.

Swscan can be downloaded from http://www.gat3way.eu/poc/swscan.tgz.