Tagged: rtl2832

Radio For Everyone: Testing the RTL-SDR.com Triple Filtered ADS-B LNA, Amplified Coketenna

Akos, author of his blog 'Radio for Everyone' has recently reviewed our new RTL-SDR.com Triple Filtered ADS-B LNA. In the review he compares our ADS-B LNA against another external ADS-B LNA by Uputronics and against the FlightAware Prostick and Prostick+. The tests use the external LNA's plugged directly into the dongle in order to more fairly compare against the FlightAware dongles which have LNA's built in to the dongles themselves. From his results the RTL-SDR.com ADS-B LNA appears to have near identical results with the Uputronics LNA, and slightly better results compared to the FlightAware dongles. Akos has not yet tested the main use-case of the LNA, which is to use it at the end of a run of coax cable, however he plans to do this in a future test. Also in his second post Akos shows how to build a simple amplified Coketenna using our ADS-B LNA.

On the subject of ADS-B performance we note that there are two ways to set up a system for optimal reception (apart from the antenna). The first is to place the computing and radio devices (such as a Raspberry Pi and RTL-SDR) as close to the antenna as possible (leaving a ~1m coax run to avoid local interference from the Pi). For this type of setup it is cheaper to use a FlightAware Prostick Plus RTL-SDR dongle since this has an ADS-B LNA built into it. However, the disadvantage is that you may need to set up a Power over Ethernet system, or find a remote power source, and possibly place the Pi in a difficult to service location such as in an attic or up a mast.

The second option is to use an external ADS-B LNA close to the antenna, and run coax down to the computing device which is positioned in a more accessible location. The LNA will negate any losses in the coax cable, and with high enough gain on the LNA, using quality coax is not such a high requirement since those losses are negated by sufficient LNA gain. Both methods will yield similar excellent performance.

Tested ADS-B LNA's and ADS-B RTL-SDR Dongles
Tested ADS-B LNA's and ADS-B RTL-SDR Dongles

Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Released: Faster CPU, Faster Networking and Power over Ethernet

RTL-SDR dongles and other SDRs are often used on single board computers. These small credit sized computers are powerful enough to run multiple dongles, and run various decoding programs. Currently, the most popular of these small computers is the Raspberry Pi 3.

Just recently the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ was released at the usual US$35 price. It is an iterative upgrade over the now older Raspberry Pi 3 B. The 3B+ has an improved thermal design for the CPU, which allows the frequency to be boosted by 200 MHz. WiFi and Ethernet connectivity has also been improved, both sporting up to 3x faster upload and download speeds.

The Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Power over Ethernet Hat
The Raspberry Pi 3 B+ Power over Ethernet Hat

The 3B+ also implements new Ethernet headers which allows for a cleaner Power over Ethernet (PoE) implementation via a hat. Previous PoE hats required that you connect the Ethernet ports together, whereas the new design does not. PoE allows you to power the Raspberry Pi over an Ethernet cable. The official PoE hat is not released yet, but they expect it to be out soon.

The faster processing speed should allow more processing intensive graphical apps like GQRX to run smoother, whilst the improved WiFi connectivity speeds should improve performance with bandwidth hungry applications like running a remote rtl_tcp server. PoE is also a welcome improvement as it allows you to easily power a remote Raspberry Pi + RTL-SDR combination that is placed in a difficult to access area, such as in an attic close to an antenna. Placing the Pi and RTL-SDR near to the antenna eliminates the need for long runs of lossy coax cable. If the Pi runs rtl_tcp, SpyServer or a similar server, then the RTL-SDR can then be accessed by a networked connected PC anywhere in your house, or even remotely over the internet from anywhere in the world. 

The Raspberry Pi 3 B+
The Raspberry Pi 3 B+

Welle.io DAB Decoder updated to Version 1.0

Welle.io is a Windows/Linux/MacOS/Android/Raspberry Pi compatible DAB and DAB+ broadcast radio decoder which supports RTL-SDR dongles, as well as the Airspy and any dongle supported by SoapySDR. It is a touch screen friendly piece of software which is excellent for use on tablets, phones and perhaps on vehicle radio touch screens.

DAB stands for Digital Audio Broadcast and is a digital signal that is available in many countries outside of the USA. The signal contains digital broadcast radio stations, and is an alternative/replacement for standard broadcast FM.

Early last year we posted about Welle.io a couple of times, but now the software has reached maturity as version 1.0 has just been released. Author Albrech writes to us:

We fixed a lot of bugs again and added the translation to Hungarian, Norwegian, Italian and French.

Binary packages are available for Windows, Linux and Android (APK and Play store). The macOS support is possible via Homebrew and we now that welle.io runs also on a Rapsberry Pi 2 and newer.

For questions and support please feel free to use the new forum (https://forum.welle.io).

The Welle.io GUI
The Welle.io GUI

A Discone Antenna Made from 3D Printed Parts and Aluminum Tape

A Discone is a type of antenna that is designed to be resonant over a wide range of frequencies. Most antenna designs only really receive well on a few resonant frequencies, but a Discone is resonant over a much wider frequency range. This makes it a good partner for RTL-SDR and other SDR units as many SDRs tend to have wide tunable frequency ranges. With a wideband antenna like a Discone connected to an RTL-SDR one can scan over the almost entire tunable frequency range without needing to change antennas for each band. The drawbacks to a Discone however is that the antenna gain is not very high, and that it makes the SDR more susceptible to out of band interference. They also tend to be fairly expensive and difficult to build.

However now over on Thingiverse, mkarliner (aka Mike) has a remedy for the difficulty in building a Discone with his 3D printable Discone design. To construct it you simply need the 3D printed parts, some .3mm and 2mm plastic sheets, a 25mm plastic conduit and some aluminium tape. Mike's design works from 400 MHz and up, but the design could be easily enlarged for better performance on the lower frequencies. He writes:

The Discone antenna is remarkable in that it is capable of receiving and transmitting over a wide range of frequencies with good matching. Because of this, it is a good match for SDR receivers such as the popular RTL-SDR sticks.

The only really tricking thing about making a discone is that the disc has to be balanced at the very top of the cone, which is mechanically awkward.

The two parts here allow the cone to be solidly clamped and provide an adequate base for the disk. There also two holes for bring the coax centre and braid out to the disc and cone.
The base part has a socket at the bottom for 25mm (1 inch) plastic conduit for mounting

This antenna illustrated is designed for 400MHz and up, and as such transmits well on the 70cms amateur band, US and UK PMR channels and 23cms. It also receives aircraft ADS-B signals very well. I used .3mm plastic sheet for the cone and 2mm plastic for the disc, and then covered them with aluminium weatherproof tape. Be sure to check for continuity across the tape stripes.

The screenshot is of a calculator by VE3SQB which can be downloaded from http://www.ve3sqb.com/ if you want to make attenna's for other ranges.

A 3D Printed Discone
A 3D Printed Discone

If you're interested in building wideband antenna there is also the planar disk antenna (pdf) which can be built out of pizza pans.

Enumerating Multiple RTL-SDR Dongles Deterministically for rtl_tcp in Linux

Thanks to user 'luma' on our forums for submitting his technique for managing multiple RTL-SDR dongles on a Linux system. The problem is that rtl_tcp tends to enumerate devices depending on the order they are plugged in. This can create problems like not knowing which dongle is connected to which antenna without physically checking. He writes:

I was looking to utilize a couple RTL dongles to monitor two ISM band frequencies commonly used in LoRa without buying an SDR with wide enough bandwidth to cover both ranges. I pretty quickly ran into issues with how SpyServer and rtl_tcp enumerate devices, which appears to be based mostly upon the order in which each device had been plugged in.

With some work, I think I've come upon a flexible and secure solution to handle an arbitrary number of dongles on one system while maintaining deterministic control of each device. This means I can label an individual dongle, connect it to the desired antenna, and then connect to that dongle on the assigned TCP port every time, without regard to the order in which things have been plugged in.

The rest of his post shows the steps which include creating an unprivileged service user, using rtl_eeprom to set device serial numbers and using a script that automatically runs on startup which will enumerate the dongles deterministically each time.

New Apple iOS (iPhone/iPad) RTL-SDR rtl_tcp Client App in Beta Testing

Over on our forums poster hotpaw2 has released news about his new RTL-SDR app for iOS (iPhones/iPads). If we're not mistaken, this will be the first app that enables RTL-SDR usage on iOS. However, as iOS devices don't allow RTL-SDRs (or any arbitrary USB device) to connect directly to devices, you still need to use a Raspberry Pi or other network connected computing device as an rtl_tcp server. So the RTL-SDR does not plug directly into the iOS device. Currently he is looking for beta testers to help test a pre-release of the software. Hotpaw2 writes:

Hi. A first version of my iOS SDR app is nearing completion. So I'm interested finding a few users who would like to beta test a pre-release of the app, and provide some feedback. The beta test requirements are having a 64-bit iOS device (iPhone or iPad) running iOS 11.2.x or newer, having Apple's TestFlight app installed, having a Mac, PC, Raspberry Pi (or other Linux box) that already has rtl_tcp installed and ready to run. (And an RTL-SDR obviously.) The rtl_tcp server must be on a fast WiFi network reachable by your iOS device. Note that iOS TestFlight app distributions do have an expiration date.

iOS does not recognize arbitrary USB devices such as an RTL-SDR. This is even true when using Apple's Lightning Camera Connection kit to provide an iPhone with a wired USB port. So an adapter must be used. I use a headless Raspberry Pi 3 running rtl_tcp as the USB adapter to provide raw IQ samples from the RTL-SDR to the iOS app. A Raspberry Pi Zero W would also work. I then connect to the server either over WiFi, or via wired ethernet. 

This iOS SDR app is fairly simple. I've been experimenting with developing low-level DSP code in Swift. So this SDR app was written from scratch in the Swift programming language. Because the app is targeted for the iOS App store, it uses none of the existing SDR C++ code base. 

The app currently demodulates AM, N-FM, and mono W-FM. It also displays a spectrum and rudimentary waterfall, and allows one to swipe-to-tune. There are not a lot of controls, as screen real-estate on an iPhone is quite limited. But I can walk around the house and, from my iPhone, monitor if my RTL-SDR or AirSpy HF+ are picking up any interesting signals.

Contact info for beta testing can be found here: http://www.hotpaw.com/rhn/hotpaw/ 

Source code to librtlsdr and rtl_tcp can be found in many repositories on github, but zero support for finding or installing such, and/or setting up your Raspberry Pi, will be provided by me.

Screenshot of the RTL-SDR iOS app
Screenshot of the RTL-SDR iOS app

 

Decoding Meteor-M Images on a Raspberry Pi with an RTL-SDR

Thanks to Andrey for writing in and showing us his Java based Meteor-M decoder for the RTL-SDR which he uses on a Raspberry Pi. The decoder is based on the meteor-m2-lrpt GNU Radio script and the meteor_decoder which he ported over to Java. Essentially what he's done is port over to Java a bunch of GNU Radio blocks as well as the meteor decoder. The ported Java blocks could also be useful for other projects that want to be cross platform or run without the need for GNU Radio to be installed.

In his blog post (blog post is in Russian, use Google Translate for English) Andrey explains his motivation for writing the software which was that the Windows work flow with SDR# and LRPTofflineDecoder is quite convoluted and cannot be run headless on a Raspberry Pi. He then goes on to explain the decoding algorithm, and some code optimizations that he used in Java to speed up the decoding. Andrey notes that his Java version is almost 2x slower compared to the GNU Radio version, but still fast enough for real time demodulation.

Meteor-M2 is a Russian weather satellite that operates in the 137 MHz weather satellite band. With an RTL-SDR and satellite antenna these images can be received. Running on a Raspberry Pi allows you to set up a permanent weather satellite station that will consistently download images as the satellite passes over.

Decoded Images with Andry's Meteor-M software on Raspberry Pi.
Images received with Andry's Meteor-M software running on a Raspberry Pi.

FOSDEM 2017/2018 SDR Conference Videos: Passive Radar, Radio Telescopes, SatNOGS and Wireless Traffic Lights

Fosdem 2017 and 2018 were conferences on software development that occurred on 4 & 5 February 2017 and 3 & 4 February 2018. The conference features several software defined radio and RTL-SDR based talks which appear to have recently been uploaded to YouTube. Below we're posting some of our favorite SDR related talks, but the full video list can be found here, and here is the SDR playlist from Fosdem 2018.

(Yet another) passive RADAR using DVB-T receiver and SDR

by Jean-Michel Friedt @ FOSDEM 2018

In this presentation Jean-Michel shows a GNU Radio passive radar implementation utilizing two coherent RTL-SDR dongles. During the talk he demonstrates his results with RTL-SDR passive radar operating on planes, boats and cars.

Slides: http://jmfriedt.free.fr/fosdem2018.pdf
Paper: http://jmfriedt.free.fr/URSI.pdf

(Yet another) passive RADAR using DVB-T receiver and SDR.

Intro to Open Source Radio Telescopes

by Martin Braun and Sue Ann Heatherly @ FOSDEM 2018

In this talk Martin and Sue discuss how amateur radio astronomy can be performed using lost cost software defined radio tools such as an RTL-SDR. They show how to receive solar flares and detect the 21cm hydrogen line and focus on showing how easy it can be to do these projects in a classroom environment.

Intro to Open Source Radio Telescopes

Claim Space, the Libre Way, using SDRs

by Manolis Surligas @ FOSDEM 2018

In this talk Manolis from the Libre Space Foundation and SatNOGs discusses how they use RTL-SDR's and other SDR's in their volunteer run network of satellite ground stations to create an online database of received satellite data.

Claim Space, the Libre Way, using SDRs

Receiving Wireless Mobile Traffic Lights

by Bastian Bloessl @ FOSDEM 2017

Wireless mobile traffic lights are often used to secure construction sites when roads are partially blocked. Some day, when a pair of them was placed close to our home, I set off to explore how they are working. In this talk, I will describe how I used a cheap RTL-SDR together with GQRX, Inspectrum, and GNU Radio to reverse engineer the modulation and frame format of different types of wireless traffic lights. With some patience, I could also make some sense out of the bits. In particular, I was able to extract the signal state and display it in a web interface, mirroring the traffic light. A closer look at the frame format and the apparent absence of any authentication might leave one with a bit of a worrying impression regarding the security of those systems.

Receiving Wireless Mobile Traffic Lights