Tagged: heat map

Creating a Signal Strength Heatmap with an RTL-SDR

Over on Reddit, user tautology2 has linked to his project which is software that can create a heatmap of signal strengths. His software uses the data that is output from RTLSDR Scanner which is a program that will collect signal strength data over any desired bandwidth and at the same time also record GPS coordinates using an external GPS receiver. RTLSDR Scanner can also create a heatmap by itself, but tautology2’s heatmap is much clearer and has good web controls for choosing the heatmap signal frequency.

Tautology2 writes about his program:

Eartoearoak’s rtl-sdr scanner can save GPS location data along with spectrum samples, I had put USB GPS unit and SDR’s antenna on the top of my car, put my notebook with running scanner on the front seat and driven it around.

Then I saved results both as an image sequence (which you can see at the bottom of the map) and as the raw data in json format. My script (scan2web.rb[3] ) parses raw data, filters out redundant samples (which were captured standing at the traffic lights etc) and computes normalized spectrum power for eight 300-KHz bands for each spatial sample. Results are saved in heatmap.json[4] , which is rendered using Google maps v.3 heatmap API.

The Reddit thread discussing his project can be found here.

Tools used for making the heatmap: Laptop, RTL-SDR with stock antenna and a GPS.
Tools used for making the heatmap: Laptop, RTL-SDR with stock antenna and a GPS.
Heatmap of GSM Signal Strengths
Heatmap of GSM Signal Strengths

Triangulation of a VHF Signal with RTLSDR-Scanner

A few months back we posted about how the the RTLSDR-Scanner software had been updated to include signal triangulation capabilities. Now blogger Tobby has written a post about his attempt at triangulating the source of an encrypted police signal with RTLSDR-Scanner.

To do this he set up a laptop in his car with RTLSDR-Scanner installed and connected his RTL-SDR with stock antenna and a GPS receiver. After driving around for only 15 minutes he was able to get a triangulation heat map of reasonable accuracy.

RTLSDR-Scanner Signal Triangulation Heatmap
RTLSDR-Scanner Signal Triangulation Heatmap