Airspy is currently holding their annual summer sale which gives 15% off their line of products until June 25. The sale brings the price of the popular Airspy receiver products down to the following in US dollars (note that actual pricing may vary across local resellers):
Airspy R2: $169.00 $143.65
Airspy Mini: $99.00 $84.15
Airspy HF+ Discovery: $169.00 $143.65
Airspy SpyVerter R2: $49.00 $41.65
YouLoop Antenna: $39.95 $33.95
The sale is active at all participating resellers, which includes our own store where we have the YouLoop on sale for US$33.95 including free shipping to most countries in the world. Please note that due to new EU VAT collection laws, EU customers must purchase the discounted YouLoop from our eBay or Aliexpress stores.
OpenWebRX is an open source web based SDR receiver program that allows you or others (if you allow them to), to access your SDR over the internet. It is compatible with KiwiSDR, RTL-SDR, Airspy, SDRPlay and many other software defined radio hardware. It was originally developed by Andras Retzler, but since abandoned by him, with a semi-official fork being maintained at openwebrx.de. However, other forks like luarvique can exist that implement a new set of features.
The full set of additions and improvements reads as follows:
This is the package repository for the improved version of the OpenWebRX online SDR. The new and original features available in this version of OpenWebRX:
Built-in SSTV decoder with background decoding.
Built-in AIS decoder.
Built-in CW decoder.
Built-in RTTY decoder.
Built-in MP3 recorder for received audio.
Image browser for received SSTV images.
Adjustable noise filtering based on spectral subtraction.
Adjustable tuning step.
Improved touch screen operation, with panning and zooming.
Improved scroll wheel support, with tuning and zooming.
Improved tuning in CW mode.
Bandpass filter adjustable with scroll wheel.
More reliable SDRPlay devices operation.
Better map information, with distances.
Better APRS map information, with weather.
Configurable session timeout, with a policy page.
HTTPS protocol support (requires SSL certificate).
The code comes packaged for Ubuntu 22.04 (amd64, arm64) and Debian 11 (amd64 arm64, armhf). There is also a ready to use Pi 4 SD card image available, linked on the GitHub readme. The original forked code can be found at https://github.com/luarvique/openwebrx.
According to discussion over on the OpenWebRX groups.io, the fork also runs on a Pi 3. In the image Neil Howard from the groups.io forum demonstrates an SSTV image he received with an SDRplay clone using the luarvique fork of OpenWebRX.
SSTV Image received by the luarvique fork of OpenWebRX. Credit: Neil Howard
Stefan also notes:
The maker of OpenWebRX+ Marek and also the maker of the original version of OpenWebRX Jakob are reachable via a Telegram channel: https://t.me/openwebrx_chat
Paolo Romani (IZ1MLL) has recently released version 5.5 of his SDRSharp PDF Guide. The book is available for download on the Airspy downloads page, just scroll down to the title "SDR# Big Book" and choose your language. (At the time of this post only English and Italian are available for 5.5, but multiple languages are available for the older guides).
The latest version brings the book up to 214 pages in length, and adds information about the RTL-SDR Blog antenna kit, and new SDR# plugins like ListenInfo.
Airspy is holding their annual Black Friday sale, this year offering 20% off their range of products. The sale is active at all participating resellers, which includes our own store where we have the YouLoop on sale for US$31.96 including free shipping to most countries in the world, instead of the usual US$39.95. Please note that due to EU VAT collection laws, EU customers must purchase the discounted YouLoop from our eBay or Aliexpress stores.
The YouLoop is a low cost passive loop antenna for HF and VHF. It is based on the Möbius loop design which results in a high degree of noise cancelling. However the main drawback is that it is a non-resonant design, which means that it works best when used with ultra sensitive receivers like the Airspy HF+ Discovery.
During the sale the price of Airspy SDRs and their upconverters are:
Airspy R2: $160.00 $135.20
Airspy Mini: $99.00 $79.20
Airspy HF+ Discovery: $169.00 $135.20
Airspy SpyVerter: $49.00 $39.20
Contrary to what the politicians are telling you, the real inflation is most likely around 20%. We arranged a real Inflation Relief #BlackFriday offer for you. No money printing. No strings attached.
Paolo Romani (IZ1MLL) has recently released version 5.3 of his SDRSharp PDF Guide. The book is available for download on the Airspy downloads page, just scroll down to the title "SDR# Big Book" and choose your language.
As before the document is a detailed guide about how to use SDRSharp (SDR#), which is the software provided by Airspy. While intended for Airspy devices, SDRSharp also supports a number of third party SDRs, including the RTL-SDR, and it is the software we recommend starting with when using an RTL-SDR.
Paolo writes:
Youssef Touil hasn't rested for a moment and the SDR# releases have been moving forward in leaps and bounds with new Denoisers (NINR), CCC, Audio/Baseband records and the new menu features.
I also had to re-update my Big Book PDF to v5.3 as a result!!
I have also implemented the SpyServer section a lot in multi OS and a chapter "Ideas and Suggestions" with two paragraphs: SDR & MacOS and the other using SDR# with two multiple monitors.
SDRSharp (SDR#) is one of the most popular SDR programs that is used often with Airspy and RTL-SDR devices. Recently Youssef, the developer of Airspy products and the programmer behind SDR# has again been adding new enhancements to the software that allow AM DX listeners to easily receive channels that are even on top of each other in frequency.
The Co-Channel Canceller has been in SDR# since 2020, but recently enhanced for better performance and easier use, and a 'micro-tuner' feature has been added, allowing users to easily select the overlapping channel that needs to be cancelled.
Earlier in the year the noise canceller was also improved with a 'NINR' (Natural Intelligence Noise Reduction) algorithm that appears to be one of the best noise cancellers available in SDR software today.
Youssef's twitter @lambdaprog contains several videos demonstrating the effectiveness of the updates.
Playing around with a new feature of the Co-Channel Canceller. Still a lot of polishing, but it already shows some improvement over the old version. #airspy#sdrsharppic.twitter.com/CGfLHn9oZH
Airspy is currently holding a 15% off summer promotion which runs until June 30. The sale is active at all participating resellers, which includes our own store where we have the YouLoop on sale for US$29.71 including free shipping to most countries in the world. Please note that due to new EU VAT collection laws, EU customers must purchase the discounted YouLoop from our eBay or Aliexpress stores.
The YouLoop is a low cost passive loop antenna for HF and VHF. It is based on the Möbius loop design which results in a high degree of noise cancelling. However the main drawback is that it is a non-resonant design, which means that it works best when used with ultra sensitive receivers like the Airspy HF+ Discovery.
We also wanted to highlight some recent improvements to SDR#, the official software for Airspy products, and compatible with the RTL-SDR. One recent development is the introduction of the Natural Intelligence Noise Reduction (NINR) feature which results less audio artifacts, deeper noise cancelling, and lower CPU usage.
In his latest video Rob from the Frugal Radio YouTube channel has uploaded a video where he experiments with a SDR web interface and smartphone App called "Rdio-scanner". Rdio-scanner is an interface that tries to reproduce the user experience of using a real hardware scanner with an SDR and RF voice decoding/recording software like Trunk Recorder being used in the background. Rob writes:
rdio-scanner creates a customizable web interface from which to control your software defined radio. Using it, you can turn a computer, phone or tablet into something that closely resembles a hardware scanner!
Trunk Recorder is the software that decodes the unencrypted P25 signals and records them to disk. Here is it demonstrated working on a large Simulcast (LSM) site.
rdio-scanner reads the audio files. Through the rdio-scanner interface, you are basically choosing which audio files to play.
Rob runs the rdio-scanner software on his Panasonic Toughbook, noting that the interface looks really great in Tablet mode and works well with the touchscreen. He also notes that his toughbook has a SIM card socket, so a data SIM would enable him to access his P25 monitoring system at home from anywhere.
SDR experiments with Rdio-scanner, Trunk Recorder, Airspy Mini & Panasonic Toughbook on P25 LSM
