In the latest video on the Signals Everywhere YouTube channel, Sarah investigates how a PlutoSDR can be used as a Spectrum Analyzer with the SATSAGEN software. The SATSAGEN software is able to work as a spectrum analyzer by rapidly sweeping over multiple frequencies and stitching the spectrum slices together. It support SDRs like the HackRF, PlutoSDR and RTL-SDR (in receive mode only). The PlutoSDR can transmit, so it is able to work as a full spectrum analyzer with tracking generator, allowing users to measure RF devices such as filters, tune antennas, and work as a frequency generator.
In the video Sarah demonstrates how to use the PlutoSDR and SATSAGEN to measure our RTL-SDR Blog Broadcast FM filter, and to tune our multipurpose dipole antenna.
Spectrum Analyzer and Tracking Generator with Pluto SDR
Thank you to everyone who has backed or been following our KrakenSDR project on Crowd Supply. The initial funding campaign has now concluded with almost 5x our minimum funding goal! If you missed out, please don't worry as the product is will still be available for sale on Crowd Supply at the campaign price, but later orders may receive units from the second batch produced a few months after the first.
Thanks to the successful funding campaign we now have all the required parts on order and we expect the factory to receive them in a few weeks time. The final confirmation prototype is in production now, finishing touches to the enclosure are being worked on, a QC process is being developed and EU compliance certification and logistics details are being worked through.
At the same time work on on the DFing software is continuing to progress as well. If you are testing the software with the older KerberosSDR units, please note that the software is still in beta and that a thorough reading of the documentation is required to understand the DAQ control parameters. As direction finding with an SDR can involve learning a lot of new technical information, we are aiming to significantly simply the knowledge that is needed to understand the DAQ parameters, and hope to have a simplified version released with a tutorial by mid-December. So if you have a Kerberos, and are struggling with the setup, please kindly wait until the official release, unless you are interested in learning the nitty gritty technical details.
Recently we have also been working on improvements to the intermittent signal squelch handling and we are also working on multichannel DFing capabilities. We have a new developer starting work on a multiplatform networked mapping program too.
We are also looking to sponsor some accelerator projects such an GNU Radio integration and beam forming investigations for applications like radio astronomy. If you have DSP programming skills, and you're interested in helping on this, or have the DSP skills and interest in developing another project, please email us at [email protected] with details.
In this weeks Frugal Radio episode Rob explores some low cost "Step Up" radios that for a moderately higher price, can give improved receiver performance when compared to RTL-SDRs .
In the video Rob overviews and compares the Airspy Mini ($99), SDRplay RSP1A ($119), Airspy R2 ($169) and the Airspy HF+ Discovery ($169). He discusses their differences such as the tuning ranges, bandwidths and ADC bit depths and why these parameters matter.
Over on Reddit u/Xerbot has posted about the release of his new software called "LeanHRPT". When combined with a software defined radio, this software can be used to decode and view HRPT weather satellite images received from satellites such as NOAA, Meteor, MetOp and FengYun. We note that unlike APT and LRPT weather satellite signals which transmit in the VHF bands, HRPT signals are generally at ~1.70 GHz and require a motorized or hand tracked satellite dish to receive. u/Xerbot writes:
LeanHRPT is a flexible, easy to use and powerful set of tools for the manipulation of HRPT data (maybe I could be convinced to add LRPT support).
When used properly LeanHRPT Decode can generate (almost) L1B data usable in actual land/weather observation, or just pretty images :)
The LeanHRPT project also contains LeanHRPT Demod, as you probably guessed, a HRPT demodulator. It features an incredibly high sensitivity as well as being able to do both realtime (through SoapySDR) and offline demodulation (baseband).
Back in July we posted about the release of Viol Tailor's "uSDR" software, which is a lightweight general purpose multimode program for Windows which supports the RTL-SDR, Airspy, BladeRF, HackRF and LimeSDR radios. Recently Viol has updated the software to V1.4.0. The new release brings SDRplay support, and various performance and GUI improvements listed below.
This week on the Tech Minds YouTube channel Matthew introduces the "Cloudmarkers" plugin for SDRuno. SDRuno is the official software for the SDRplay RSP line of software defined radios, but the EXTio version also supports the RTL-SDR.
Cloudmarkers is a plugin that allows users to query the online Cloudmarkers database to determine what an unknown signal at the currently tuned frequency might be. The database is created by other Cloudmarkers users, so if you have your own information to add you can add information about particular frequencies to the database for others to query later.
In the video Matthew shows the Cloudmarkers plugin in operation and notes that the plugin can work with both SDRplay SDRs and the RTL-SDR.
Sarah from the SignalsEverywhere YouTube channel is back this week with a video review and demonstration of our RTL-SDR Blog Active L-Band patch antenna, which is designed for receiving Inmarsat and Iridium satellites between 1525 - 1660 MHz with an RTL-SDR or other bias tee capable SDR.
In the video Sarah demonstrates the patch antenna in action running in SDR++, discusses some of the features and compares it against another patch antenna. She goes on to briefly show JAERO receiving and decoding an 8400bps AERO voice channel.
The patch is currently in stock in our store for $49.95 shipped worldwide, or on Amazon USA for US customers. We note that previous problems (as explained in our earlier post) with cracks in the plastic in the latest batch with grey enclosures have been resolved now, and units shipping now are without defect.
Just a few days ago we posted about Job Geheniau's success at radio imaging the Cygnus-X star forming region at 1424 MHz with a 1.9m radio telescope, an RTL-SDR and some additional filtering and LNAs.
Now in his latest post on Facebook Geneniau has also shown that he has successfully imaged Cassiopeia A with the same equipment. Cassiopeia A is a supernova remnant known for being the "brightest extrasolar radio source in the sky at frequencies above 1 GHz" [Wikipedia]. Geheniau writes:
A new observation from JRT. These are driftscans of Cassiopeia A to make a radio plot. Several driftscans are made last week and combined. Always nice to see whats possible with a 1.5-1.9 meter dish. 2 LNA's and a bandpass filter, connected to a RTL-SDR at 1424 MHz. Happy that I got Cygnus complex and now Cassiopeia A which is the second radio source which is possible to receive with this dish.
The dish is fully remote controlled 50 km away.
Job Geheniau - The Netherlands
Cassiopeia A Radio Imaged with an RTL-SDR and 1.9m dishJob's Radio Telescope
