Tagged: rtl-sdr

The Design and Test of a Filtered Low Noise Amplifier for LRPT Weather Satellite Reception

Recently Salil (aka NUCLEARRAMBO) uploaded a blog post on his website detailing how he designed and tested a low noise amplifier (LNA) with a filter for 130 - 160 MHz, which is useful for improving reception for the Meteor M2 LRPT weather satellite. If you were unaware, an LNA can help improve the reception of an SDR by reducing the noise figure of the system, and by overcoming losses from long coax cable runs. The filter helps reduce the strength of out-of-band signals which if too strong, can desensitize and cause imaging on the RTL-SDR.

In his design, Salil used a PGA-103+ LNA chip which has excellent noise figure and OIP3 specifications. His blog post details how he designed the circuit around the PGA-103+, added a bias tee for power, and how he designed the filter.

In part 2 of his post, he details how he tested the LNA+filter combinations frequency response, input voltage range, noise figure, and bias tee with an RTL-SDR Blog v3 and a NanoVNA V2.

Salil's low noise amplifier
Salil's low noise amplifier

DragonOS: Setting up AISMon with WINE and Virtual Audio Sink for HackRF and RTL-SDR

Over on his YouTube channel Aaron, creator of the DragonOS image (a Linux image with many built-in SDR compatible programs) has uploaded a new video showing how it is possible to run the Windows only AISMon software on Linux, using WINE. WINE is a Windows emulator for Linux which allows users to run some Windows software on Linux.

In the video Aaron shows how to set up WINE on the DragonOS Linux image, how to run AISMon with it, and how to set up the Virtual Audio Cable sink which is required to pass the audio from SDR++ to AISMon. He also shows how he tests his setup using the AIS-Simulator software with a HackRF, and an RTL-SDR for receiving.

DragonOS FocalX Setup AISMon with WINE + Virtual Audio Sink (HackRF, RTLSDR, SDR++, AIS-Simulator)

Setting up the Cheapest FlightAware ADS-B Feeder with RTL-SDR and Raspberry Pi 2W

Over on his YouTube channel, TAKEAPART has recently uploaded a new video showing how to set up a cheap ADS-B FlightAware feeder using an RTL-SDR Blog dongle, and a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W. The Raspberry Pi 2W is a US$15 computer that is capable of running the PiAware ADS-B feeding software which uploads ADS-B data to the FlightAware.com flight tracking service. If you are a contributor to this service, you can get a Premium FlightAware subscription for free.

In the video, TAKEAPART shows how to install the PiAware software on the Pi 2W, and how to configure the PiAware settings. Finally, he shows it in action, receiving flight data with a homemade 1/4 wave ground plane antenna.

Cheapest ADS-B feeder RTL-SDR and Raspberry Pi Zero 2W (PiAware/FlightAware)

Weather Satellite HRPT and LRPT Megaprojection Project Nov 30 – Dec 1

Over on the /r/amateursatellites subreddit, user elmarkodotorg is organizing a group megaprojection project. The Megaprojection Project seeks to create a composite of as much of the earth as possible from weather satellite images captured by hobbyists in a single day, via data from NOAA and Meteor polar-orbiting satellites. They will be accepting HRPT or LRPT data from either Nov 30 or Dec 1 (date yet to be confirmed).

Hobbyists can receive these satellites' LRPT and HRPT signals using an RTL-SDR and appropriate antenna setup.

If you want to contribute, you can join DerekSGC's Discord server, https://sgcderek.github.io, where coordination will be carried out. elmarkodotorg writes that currently, they have confirmed contributors with stations from the west coast of the US all the way over to the western edge of Asia. Currently, they are still hoping to find contributors from the Canary Islands, Turkey, Equatorial Africa, the general area of Indonesia, and Northern Australia. In a more recent Reddit thread, elmarkodotorg provides a link to a Google docs sheet, where you can also register interest.

Recently, on November 16 a test was carried out and they were able to successfully combine 24 images received across the world.

Megaprojection Nov 16 Test: 24 contributors from all over the world submitted HRPT and LRPT images received from their home satellite ground stations.
Megaprojection Nov 16 Test: 24 contributors from all over the world submitted HRPT and LRPT images received from their home satellite ground stations.

Paper on Building a Low Cost RTL-SDR Based Hydrogen Line Radio Telescope

Back in 2020, we posted a tutorial on how to set up a low-cost Hydrogen Line radio telescope using an RTL-SDR, LNA, and WiFi grid antenna. Since then we have seen similar setups successfully replicated in the community many times.

In a recent Hackaday post, we discovered a paper by Jack Phelps who has written an in-depth technical and scientific description of his attempt at Hydrogen line radio astronomy with similar equipment. His paper goes into deeper scientific explanations and describes the experiment and hardware setup in detail including some signal processing, observation, and calibration equations that might be useful for those looking to understand the science more deeply. 

Jack Phelps Radio Astronomy Setup and some Results
Jack Phelps Radio Astronomy Setup and some Results

Setting up an ADS-B Radar in a Vehicle Android Head Unit

Over on YouTube channel 'TAKEAPART' has uploaded a short video showing how he tracks aircraft via an RTL-SDR Blog V3 dongle and his car's Android head unit. The head unit is capable of running the ADS-B Radar App available on the Google Play store.

Once the app is installed, it's a simple matter of plugging in the RTL-SDR Blog V3 unit and running the app to start tracking aircraft.

How to ADS-B Radar in the CAR - Tracking Planes...

A Video on Radar-TUI: A Terminal User Interface Based ADS-B Display

Back in 2022 we first posted about adsb_deku and radar-tui, a TUI (terminal user interface) for displaying ADS-B aircraft locations with an RTL-SDR receiver. A terminal user interface means that no desktop GUI is required, instead, the map and aircraft are drawn in the terminal window using just text characters.

adsb_deku and radar-tui are based on the open-source ratatui library. Recently, Orhun, one of the maintainers of ratatui wrote in and wanted to share a YouTube video he created demonstrating radar-tui in action. In the video, Orhun explains the RTL-SDR, shows how to set up radar-tui, and shows a demo of it in action.

If you're interested in this type of application, another similar terminal based ADS-B UI is coole-radar which we also posted about previosuly in 2019.

RADAR-TUI: View planes around you from the terminal! (Terminal Tool of the Week #1)

Guglielmo FM and DAB Receiver Software Updated to Version 0.6

Thank you to Marco, Guglielmo's programmer, for letting us know that his software has recently been updated to Version 0.6.

Guglielmo is Linux, Windows (and, in this recent update, x86 MacOS) based RTL-SDR FM and DAB tuner software that supports SDRs, including the RTL-SDR, Airspy, SDRplay, HackRF, and LimeSDR. It is designed to be easy to use for media users rather than hobbyist technical users.

Version 0.6 fixes bugs and adds the following features:

  • Software automatic gain control
  • Support for multiple devices for RTL-SDR and SDRplay
  • Support for RTL-SDR V4
  • New RTL-SDR and SDRPlay device drivers
  • New Portaudio sound driver
Guglielmo: Screenshot of the DAB Interface