Category: Digital Signals

Using an RTL-SDR to Monitor A Tire Pressure Sensor used in Home Brewing

Over on YouTube Andreas Spiess has been helping his friend create a pressure monitoring system for his home brew beer bottles. In order to do this, Andreas uses an externally mounted after market wireless tire pressure sensor whose data can be received with an RTL-SDR and the rtl_433 decoder software. Modern vehicle tires contain a TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system) sensor, which keeps track of tire pressure, temperature and acceleration. The data is wirelessly transmitted via 433 or 315 MHz to the cars dashboard and computer for safety monitoring.

In the first video Andreas discusses tire pressure monitors and how they could be used for other non-tire applications, talks a bit about the wireless protocol used, and how to reverse engineer it. He notes that the author of rtl_433 was able to implement his particular tire pressure sensor brand's protocol into the rtl_433 database, so now anyone can decode them. Finally in this video he also shows that he can easily spoof a flat tire signal using a HackRF and GNU Radio which might cause a modern high end car to refuse to move.

The second video shows how to continuously monitor that TPMS data for the home brew set up. Andreas uses an RTL-SDR and Raspberry Pi running rtl_433, which outputs it's data into Mosquitto, Node-Red, InfluxDB and the Grafana. These programs help to read, manage, log and graph the data. The rtl_433 program is also monitored by Supervisord which automatically restarts rtl_433 if the program crashes.

If you are interested, there is a related video that was uploaded in between the two shown below which shows how he created a 3D printed cap to mount the valve and tire pressure sensor on the beer bottles.

#261 Measure Pressure Remotely (including TPMS Hacking / Attack) for Beer Brewing

#270 Safely Monitor and Alarm with Supervisord and Telegram

QIRX SDR Now Shows Received DAB Transmitters on A Map

QIRX SDR is an RTL-SDR compatible program that focuses on DAB+ decoding and listening. In a recent update programmer Clem notes that the newest feature is a map powered by OpenStreetMap that can display a the location of received DAB stations. He writes

The main new feature is the integration of Openstreetmap to display the locations of DAB transmitters (please see attached picture of a raw recording from England), together with the own position of the receiver.

In case the transmitter ident code (TII) is detected and the transmitter is contained in the database, it is displayed on the map as an icon, colored according to the TII signal strength.

The "Own Position" is indicated as a red or green dot, either (without GNSS sensor) placed by dragging the red circle with the mouse to its correct position, or by attaching a GNSS (GPS or GLONASS) sensor.

When recording raw I/Q data, the GNSS positions are written into a second file, parallel with the .raw file. On replaying, the current recorded geolocation is displayed synchronously to the recorded transmitters on the map. This might be useful in a mobile environment. The distances are displayed in the TII table.

The transmitter database comes from two sources:

  • UK: Public OFCOM database,
  • Rest of Europe: DABLIST (www.fmlist.org), as provided by the UKW/TV Arbeitskreis e.V. (www.ukwtv.de).

Currently, both databases are merged into a single, local Excel file, serving as the data source to the software.

QIRX SDR Screenshot with OpenStreetMap and Received DAB Transmitter Locations Showing
QIRX SDR Screenshot with OpenStreetMap and Received DAB Transmitter Locations Showing

SignalsEverywhere: P25 Trunking with Just One RTL-SDR and DSDPlus Fastlane

Over on YouTube Corrosive from the SignalsEverywhere channel has uploaded a new video showing us how to set up P25 trunking and decoding with DSDPlus Fastlane and only a single RTL-SDR.

Normally two dongles are required to follow a P25 trunking system. One dongle continuously receives the trunking channel, and a second tunes to the voice channel chosen by the trunking channel. However, the latest DSDPlus Fastlane has a feature that allows one only dongle to be used. It works by tuning back and forth between the control and voice channel. The disadvantage is that trunking information could be missed while tuned to a voice channel, so some calls could be missed.

RTL SDR Setup P25 Trunking With 1 SDR and DSDPlus FastLane

Decoding EMWIN Weather Information VHF Rebroadcasts with an RTL-SDR

EMWIN is an acronym for Emergency Managers Weather Information Network, and is a service for emergency managers that provides weather forecasts, warnings, graphics and other information in real time. EMWIN is broadcast from geostationary NOAA GOES satellites, and if you have a GOES SDR receiver setup it is possible to receive and decode EMWIN data.

However, if you don't want to set up a GOES receiver, KD9IXX writes on his blog how he investigated EMWIN and found that 24/7 dedicated EMWIN VHF repeaters are common around the US. Having found an EMWIN repeater in his area at 163.37 MHz he used the TrueTTY decoder and was able to successfully decode the 1200 baud 8-bit ASCII encoded signal and receive weather text information. He notes that VHF EMWIN is an excellent source of non-internet based weather data that could be useful to anyone requiring weather data in emergency circumstances.

EMWIN VHF Repeater Decoded with TrueTTY
EMWIN VHF Repeater Decoded with TrueTTY

Creating a DAB+ Radio Station with a LimeSDR

Thank you to Godrey L for submitting his article/tutorial that shows us how to broadcast a DAB/DAB+ radio station using a LimeSDR and ODR-mmbTools. The LimeSDR Mini is a US$159 12-bit TX/RX capable SDR that can tune between 10 MHz – 3.5 GHz, with a maximum bandwidth of up to 30.72 MHz. ODR-mmbTools is an open source DAB transmission chain which is compatible with USRP and LimeSDR SDRs.

DAB stands for Digital Audio Broadcast and is a digital broadcast radio signal that is available in many countries outside of the USA. The digital signal encodes several radio stations, and it is considered a modern alternative/replacement for standard analog broadcast FM.

The tutorial is split into four parts. The first part simply explains what SDRs are and in particular discusses the LimeSDR and how it can be used with ODR-mmbTools. Part two discusses what hardware you need, and explains what each component of the ODR-mmbTools software does. Part three gets into the actual setup of the software on Linux. Part four finishes with actually transmitting the signal and decoding it with an RTL-SDR and the Welle.io DAB decoder.

The end result is a DAB radio station with three stations being broadcast.

LimeSDR Transmitting 3 DAB stations, and receiving it with an RTL-SDR and Welle.io.
LimeSDR Transmitting 3 DAB stations, and receiving it with an RTL-SDR and Welle.io.

Scanner School Podcast Talks SDR Topics with Signals Everywhere Host

Recently Scanner School released episode 70 of their podcast, and on this episode they talk about various SDR topics with Corrosive from the Signals Everywhere YouTube channel. If you follow out blog, you'll know that Corrosive is a YouTuber that is consistently putting out high quality YouTube videos on a range of SDR and other radio related topics.

Scanner School is an online workshop that aims to help you get setup with an RTL-SDR based DMR/NXDN/P25 trunking system in four classes. They also have a weekly podcast. The description of this weeks podcast with Corrosive reads:

Corrosive has been working on his YouTube channel for about 4 years, and has a ton of videos on the SDR topic. If there is something that I am looking a trying when it comes to SDR, the first place I look is on Corrosive's channel.

Today we talk about some advanced SDR topics, both for receiving and transmitting.

While we talk about the more advanced topics of SDR today, I know we all have to start somewhere. If you are looking for online training to help you get started with SDR, check out our new Intro to SDR Workshop. This course will guide you though purchasing an excellent and affordable SDR to get started with.

Additionally, we will turn this SDR into a DMR, P25, and NXDN trunked receiver that can do more than your expensive scanner.


Help Support RadioCapture – A Project that Records Entire Trunked Radio Systems and Provides Online Access to Audio

RadioCapture.com is a website run by Matt Mills that is capable of automatically capturing trunked radio communications from various agencies such as the emergency services and creating publicly accessible historical and live logs of the audio. This is a concept different to radio scanner streams, as all audio is logged and historical audio can be accessed easily at any time.

The system is based on SDR hardware such as the RTL-SDR. Currently Matt runs a receiver in Denver and captures Denver PD which can be listened to on the site without needing to log in. Once logged in (registration is free), other talkgroups available include various agencies in Colorado, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

RadioCapture.com currently available Talkgroups being logged
RadioCapture.com: Currently available talkgroups being logged

Recently Matt has put a call out for people to help support the site via Patreon. He notes that RadioCapture is currently run as a hobby, but with monetary support he hopes to be able to expand the site into a business and have receivers listening and uploading worldwide. He writes:

Hey! Thanks for supporting the continued operation and development of Radiocapture.com. This is a hobby project I've been working on this since late 2011. I'd like to turn it into a real business with your help.

Radiocapture.com is a software defined radio system I built that captures entire trunked radio systems. It demodulates and captures every call on every channel of one, or many systems.

A single RadioCapture server can capture hundreds of simultaneous voice transmissions and a bunch of sites, additionally it's designed in such a way that it can run across multiple computers. My biggest RF site uses 3 machines to capture 19 P25 systems, and easily hits more than 100 active voice channels recordings simultaneously every day.

Matt has also noted that if the site is able to become self-sustaining via Patreon, he hopes to also be able to bring out a RadioCapture kit consisting of 10-16 RTL-SDR dongles, hubs and cables which would allow anyone to easily capture and upload almost all trunked communications from their area. He also notes that at the time of writing:

RadioCapture has 701790271 unique recordings of 503779875 unique transmissions (some calls get captured on multiple transmitters) from the 21 systems that have been captured

If you're interested in talking to Matt about the site, you can also join his Rocket.Chat room at radiocapture.chat.

RadioCapture logged audio
RadioCapture playing logged audio

SignalsEverywhere: Setting Up Priority and Groups in DSDPlus Fastlane

In his last video, Corrosive from the SignalsEverywhere YouTube channel showed us a quick guide on setting up a Phase 1 P25 digital voice decoder with two RTL-SDR dongles and the DSDPlus Fastlane decoder.

Now in his latest video Corrosive continues with the DSDPlus tutorial and this time explains how to set up priority and groups. On a trunked radio system there may be many different agencies using the same system simultaneously. Without priorities and groups, you would be listening to all communications in the system, and following a conversation within a particular agency would be difficult. Setting up priorities and groups allows you to filter out the conversations that you are not interested in, allowing you to focus on listening in to a particular agency only.

RTL SDR Digital Radio Scanning Priority and Groups With DSDPlus Fastlane Setup Tutorial