rtl_fm / rx_fm: Allows you to decode and listen to FM/AM/SSB radio. rtl_sdr / rx_sdr: Allows you to record raw samples for future processing. rtl_power / rx_power: Allows you to do wideband scans over arbitrarily wide swaths of bandwidth by hopping over and recording signal power levels over multiple chunks of spectrum.
rx_tools is based on SoapySDR which is an SDR abstraction layer. If software is developed with SoapySDR, then the software can be more easily used with any SDR, assuming a Soapy plugin for that particular SDR is written. This stops the need for software to be re-written many times for different SDR’s as instead the plugin only needs to be written once.
rx_power scan with the HackRF at 5 GHz over 9 hours.
Akos also points out how most of the “full band” direct sampling based RTL-SDR’s are incredibly overpriced. We note that for the same or an even cheaper price you could pick up a regular RTL-SDR dongle plus an upconverter, and enjoy much better performance, or as Akos notes purchase a Soft66RTL3 or RSP. He also points out overpriced dedicated ADS-B sticks, which are now outperformed by even the cheapest of RTL-SDR dongles. Finally he mentions to avoid some sellers who are simply combining RTL-SDR dongles into strange contraptions mounted on a small camera tripod and selling them at high prices.
Strange RTL-SDR ripoff contraption at a much higher price.
IBM’s “Horizon” is an Internet of Things (IoT) networking technology based on decentralized peer to peer technologies that are already used in successful apps like BitCoin and BitTorrent. It works by using a Horizon app which accesses your local data and sends and receives data from the Horizon P2P system. Currently Horizon is an experimental project, but they already have up and running two proof of concept projects that utilize the RTL-SDR.
The second RTL-SDR based proof of concept is a radio spectrum analysis application which scans the spectrum from 24 MHz to 1.75 GHz and sends the waterfall data to the cloud. This also runs on the Raspberry Pi 2. You can contribute spectrum to the cloud and you can also search the cloud for a device anywhere in the world that will allow you to listen to its RTL-SDR server. Currently the implementation allows you to view the waterfall of a remote RTL-SDR server and capture a 30 burst of audio from any frequency.
Remote Radio Scan with IBM Horizon and an RTL-SDR.
To try the radio spectrum app on a real server go to bluehorizon.network/map/, click the cog icon in the top left and deselect everything but the ‘sdr’ check box. Then search the map for an SDR (there are only contributors in the USA and one in Germany at the moment), click on the blue dot, and select the radio tower icon that pops up. In the new screen you can use the mouse wheel and click and drag on the mouse to move the frequency. You can use the capture waterfall and Radio capture buttons on the left menu. After clicking the button the job will take a few seconds to run and complete.
It will be an interesting future when SDRs all over the world are accessible on the cloud and this could lead to many new interesting applications. Apart from RTL-SDR based applications, they are write about using Horizon to share weather station data, and to measure internet network speed.
In the June edition of The Spectrum Monitor, SDR enthusiast and ham Mario Filippi N2HUN published an article titled “Your New CB ‘Good Buddy’, the SDR Dongle”. While the CB radio heyday is well and truly over, Mario discusses how an RTL-SDR dongle can be used to have some fun listening to CB without needing to go out and buy a full CB radio. If you don’t know what CB radio is, Mario explains what it is, and its rise and fall in these excerpts:
In the mid-1970’s an early form of social media was sweeping across the country known as CB (Citizens Band) radio. In those years the FCC required CB radio operators to obtain a license, easily gotten by filling out FCC form 505, paying the fee ($20 or $4 depending on what year you applied), and waiting very patiently, usually two to three months for your license to arrive by mail with your call sign.
The concept of wirelessly communicating with others without studying for a licensing exam somehow caught on and was embraced by the American public. As a result, in the mid-70’s CB sets started flying off the shelves by the millions to appease this new insatiable appetite of Americans to talk over the air with their “good buddies” (CB slang for friend). Other major factors played into the oncoming tsunami of CB’ers: gasoline was getting scarce as a result of the recent oil embargo, prices were quickly escalating at the pump, and the Interstate Highway maximum speed was lowered to 55 MPH prompting drivers with heavy feet to communicate the whereabouts of radar-enabled local police (CB slang: Smokies or Smokey Bears) or the cheapest place to fill up. In addition, traffic information such as road conditions, accidents, speed traps and the best greasy spoon location was now available to the commuting public by simply turning on the CB radio and tuning to the trucker’s Channel 19, the epicenter for the latest road-related poop.
By the late ‘70’s there were so many CB’ers congregating on the air causing non-stop channel chatter and ignoring FCC regulations (C.F.R. Part 95) that Uncle Charlie (CB slang for the FCC) eventually dropped the license requirement. The American public now ruled the airways with expanded 40 channel radios and pandemonium. Call signs were replaced by nicknames or “handles” and everyone prided themselves with their own, unique self-descriptive moniker when “ratchet-jawing” (slang for talking a lot) on their CB radio. But when the early 80’s rolled around the public’s fleeting romance with this mode of communication had dwindled markedly and only the diehards remained on the air in happy solitude.
The article goes over several points which may be useful to those who did not play around on CB back in its popular days. He explains how CB radio exists on frequencies between 26.965 MHz to 27.115 MHz and how you should use an appropriate (large) CB antenna, such as an 43 foot S9 vertical antenna. He also notes how CB radio conditions can be affected by ionospheric conditions, and how on a good day (CB is usually open during the day as opposed to the night for the lower frequencies) you can actually receive CB radio from all over the world including Europe, the Caribbean and the US.
As the article is a part of The Spectrum Monitor magazine it is not free to read, but each monthly edition only costs $3 USD, and comes with multiple articles from other authors too, which makes it quite a good bargain read every month. You can find the June edition at http://www.thespectrummonitor.com/june2015tsm.aspx.
CB Radio coming in with an RTL-SDR and CB antenna on SDRSharp.
RTL-SDR enthusiast and blogger Akos has recently uploaded three new articles. In his first article he discusses what he believes is the differences and advantages of Generic vs Premium branded RTL-SDR dongles.
In his second article he shows how easy it can be to perform the direct sampling mod on newer dongles, as most have the direct sampling break out pads. He shows how it can be as easy as sticking a wire into these holes. Please note that if doing this we would caution you to take decent ESD precautions as these pins are not ESD protected.
In the third article he reviews the recently release Nooelec SMArt dongle. The SMArt is a new RTL-SDR variant which comes in a smaller black case, cooling via thermal pads and with an SMA connector. With these modifications it is very similar to our RTL-SDR.com units, however the one advantage of the SMArt is that it is small enough to fit two side by side on closely spaced USB ports, like on the Raspberry Pi. In the post he shows what is inside the SMArt and discusses various points such as heat generated, included antennas and performance.
After listening to dock workers with his RTL-SDR for a few days, RTL-SDR.com reader Eoin decided that he wanted to try a more practical experiment. He decided to see if he could reverse engineering the wireless protocol on his garage door opener. Upon opening his remote he discovered a bunch of DIP switches, which are presumably used to program the remote to a particular garage door. Eoin’s next step was to determine at what frequency the garage door opener was transmitting at. He made an assumption that it would be in the 433 MHz unlicenced ISM band as this is where many handheld remotes transmit at. He was right, and found the signal.
The garage door remote showing the DIP switches.
His next step was then to record the signal audio in Audacity. From the audio waveform he could see a square wave which looked just like binary bits. By manually eyballing the waveform and translating the high/low squarewave into bits he was able to get the binary data. He then confirmed this data with the dipswitch positions and discovered that a 010 binary code matched with the UP position on the dip switch and 011 matched with the DOWN position.
Having decoded the signal manually fairly easily, Eoin decided his next challenge would be to automate the whole decoding in GNU Radio. In the end he was successful and managed to create a program that automatically determines the position of the DIP switches from the signal. His post goes into detail about his algorithm and GNU Radio program.
Showing the decoded DIP switch positions from his GNU Radio program.
Active USB cables allow cable lengths to be stretched to much longer than the maximum length of 5m allowed by the USB specification. However, although the packet timing requirements are met by the repeaters used in the active cables, there is still a significant voltage drop which can affect devices like the RTL-SDR.
Over on YouTube Shaun Dobbie discovered that his RTL-SDR would not run properly on his long active USB cable, and he suspected low voltage. After opening the case on the USB cable head he discovered two pins which allowed for external power input. By simply connecting an external 5V supply from a battery to the 5V input of the active cable he was able to fix the low voltage problem. If you’ve ever found that a long active USB cable doesn’t work then this may be the problem you have experienced. An alternative to this home solution might be to use an external powered USB hub, or buy an active USB cable that already has an external power input like thisor this one.
Back in April we posted about Philip Hahn and Paul Breed’s experiments to use an RTL-SDR for GPS logging on their high powered small rockets. As GPS is owned by the US military, a standard GPS module cannot be used on a rocket like this, as they are designed to fail if the GPS device breaches the COCOM limit, which is when it calculates that it is moving faster than 1,900 kmph/1,200 mph and/or higher than 18,000 m/59,000 ft. The idea is that this makes it harder for GPS to be used in non-USA or home made intercontinental missiles. As SDR GPS decoders are usually programmed in open source software, there is no need for the programmers to add in these artificial limits.
In their last tests they managed to gather lots of GPS data with an RTL-SDR, but were only able to decode a small amount of it with the GNSS-SDR software. In this post Philip discoversa flaw in the way the GNSS-SDR performs acquisition and retrackingthat GNSS-SDR decodes in such a way that makes it difficult to obtain a location solution with noisy high-acceleration data. By using a different GPS implementation coded in MATLAB, he was able to get decoded GPS data from almost the entire ascent up until the parachutes deploy. Once the parachutes deploy the GPS has a tough time keeping a lock as it sways around. His post clearly explains the differences in the way the code is implemented in GNSS-SDR and in the MATLAB solution and shows why the GNSS-SDR implementation may not be suitable for high powered rockets.
In addition, they write that while the flight was just under the artificial COCOM GPS fail limits for speed and height, the commercial GPS solution they also had on board failed to collect data for most of the flight too. With the raw GPS data from the RTL-SDR + some smart processing of it, they were able to decode GPS data where the commercial solution failed.
GPS data acquired from the RTL-SDR on the rocket (blue line shows solution from MATLAB code, yellow shows GNSS-SDR solution, and red shows commercial GPS receiver solution).
