Improving Reception on the Malachite DSP via USB Grounding

Thank you to Mitsonobu Saitou for writing in and sharing with us a product that he has created which improves reception on of the Malachite DSP software defined radio and other shortwave radios by up to 20dB by improving the grounding. It appears to work by using the negative USB line as a ground via a modified USB cable with grounding clip on the other end. The product is available via Amazon Japan with international shipping.

The Malachite DSP is a portable battery powered software defined radio with built in screen. It is popular amongst shortwave listeners.

Saitou writes the following summary, and full details about the product are available on his blog (link uses Google Translate to translate from Japanese to English): 

Today's item is "Dokodemo Earth KUN". This is an item to pull the ground wire from the charging connector of DCL radios and Mlachite DSPs.

The sensitivity of the receiver will be improved by strengthening the grounding. This is how I applied it.

It is easy to connect by pulling out the ground wire from the charging connector instead of the antenna jack.

It can also be used as a loop antenna by connecting the ground to the antenna.

We have confirmed the effectiveness of this product outdoors. Users who have used this item have experienced a significant increase in sensitivity. 

Malachite DSP and SWL Radio USB Grounding Enhancement Cable
Malahit/Malachite DSP+「どこでもアースくん」

 

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TechMinds: Testing DragonOS Focal, a Linux ISO with many SDR programs built-in

In the past we've posted many times about DragonOS which is an Ubuntu Linux image that comes preinstalled with multiple SDR software packages. This takes the hassle out of needing to compile and install programs on Linux, some of which can often be very difficult and time consuming to get up and running. Aaron who is the creator of DragonOS also runs a YouTube channel where he provides multiple tutorials and demos of the software installed.

This week on the Tech Minds YouTube channel, host Matt tests out DragonOS in a Virtual Machine and gives a broad overview of what DragonOS is capable of. He shows how to set up VMWare Workstation in order to create the virtual machine, installs Dragon OS, shows what programs are included and demonstrates a few programs in action.

DRAGON OS FOCAL - The Software Defined Radio Toolbox

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KrakenSDR CrowdFunding Week 1 Updates

The following was posted to our Crowd Supply page as an update to our KrakenSDR crowd funding project.

Funded!

Thanks to everyone’s amazing support we were able to fund in less than 24 hours from release! Now, thanks to funding, we can move on to the job of finalizing our batch manufacturing and accelerating development of our codebase.

Please keep in mind we’ve sold almost half of the first batch of 1000 units! So, if you have been hesitating, please get your order in soon since subsequent batches could be susceptible to manufacturing delays.

Enclosure Update

The design of the KrakenSDR enclosure is coming along nicely and we expect to be cutting the new prototype soon. The image below shows a 3D rendering (the blank space in the middle will contain the logo). The enclosure is a critical part of the KrakenSDR as it helps add thermal mass and cooling ability. Phase drift can occur when the tuner chips experience temperature fluctuations, so adding thermal mass helps to dampen ambient temperature changes significantly. The PCB is thermally connected to the enclosure via a thermal pad. The enclosure, of course, also helps block signals from directly entering via the PCB, which could skew results.

Arrow Antennas Update

Unfortunately Arrow Antennas have recently informed us that delivery of their five-element, fixed-site, dipole array we mentioned in the campaign text is going to be delayed due to the aluminum shortage crisis in the USA. We’re holding out hope this will be resolved early next year by the time we ship. Please note that this has no impact on the $99 set of five magnetic mount antennas offered directly by us through the campaign.

Support for KerberosSDR

There have been some concerns that the release of KrakenSDR means support for new developments on our previous product KerberosSDR is abandoned. We have stopped development on the older KerberosSDR code, but we want to clarify that KerberosSDR is fully supported by our new KrakenSDR code, which is a massive improvement.

The new code is designed to be compatible with x-channel Kerberos/Kraken style receivers. So it can support the four-channel KerberosSDR and the five-channel KrakenSDR as well as any DIY system with x-channels. The only change required will be setting the RX channel count in the configuration. The main disadvantage with the older KerberosSDR hardware is that even with the new code, you still will need to manually disconnect the antennas when calibrating (e.g., at startup or frequency retune).

If you have a KerberosSDR, you can try this code out right now by cloning and installing heimdall_daq_rx and krakensdr_doa. Everything, including install instructions and documentation, is in the development branches of our GitHub repo (please note this setup may be a little involved at the moment as the code is evolving rapidly). When the code is fully released, the ready-to-use Pi4 SD card will be usable with KerberosSDR simply by changing the RX channel count.

We have also considered the Android App and are happy to announce that all our previous KerberosSDR customers will receive a license for the upgraded app when it is released too. KerberosSDR customers, please keep an eye on the email address you used with your order for updates on that in early 2022.

Testing & Development

This week, the 4.5V bias tees were put through a stress test by powering five wide-band LNAs. This is working beautifully with a 5V, 3A power supply. A 3A supply will be required if you are intending to power an LNA on each port, as the KrakenSDR itself draws 2.2A maximum load when all tuners and the noise source is active.

We have also been testing how the KrakenSDR could be coupled with a small, low power, 10dBm 433 MHz ISM band CW beacon based on the Heltec WiFi Lora 32 hardware, but modified to run the LoRaFox fox hunting beacon software. The range of this low power beacon at 10dBm seems to be roughly three kilometers/two miles with the beacon obscured inside the glovebox of a car. We plan to provide more info on these tests in the next few weekly updates as we think there is an application for similar low power beacons combined with KrakenSDR for local asset, pet, or wildlife tracking.

We are also beginning work on our network mapping solution, which will allow users to run multiple KrakenSDRs in an area with all units uploading data to a central server over the internet. The server will run a web-based version of our Android app, collecting and plotting all bearing data on the same map, and determining a likely TX position. We hope to have a working beta out by the time we ship early next year.

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Imaging the Cygnus Star Forming Region with an RTL-SDR and Amateur Radio Telescope

Over on Facebook Job Geheniau has posted results from his latest radio astronomy experiment which involves 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. In the past we've posted about Geheniau's previous work which involved imaging the entire Milky Way at 1420 MHz, and measuring the basis for the dark matter hypothesis with a similar process and the same equipment. His latest post reads:

Cygnus-X is a massive star-forming region in the constellation Cygnus at a distance of 1.4 kiloparsecs (4600 light-years) from the Sun.

Cygnus-X has a size of 200 parsecs and contains the largest number of massive protostars and the largest stellar association within 2 kiloparsecs of the Sun. Cyg X is also associated with one of the largest molecular clouds known, with a mass of 3 million solar masses.
[Wikipedia]

The idea:
To take a radio picture of the Cygnus complex (Cygnus A + Cygnus X) with my 1.9 meter radio telescope.
Equipment:
1.5 - 1.9 meter radio telescope
Mini Circuits LNA ZX60-ULN33+
Bandpass filter 1200-1700 MHz
2nd LNA
RTL-SDR
VirgoSoft

Implementation:
Multiple 4-hour drift scans of the Cygnus complex and beyond.
In order not to be affected by HI at 1420 MHz, measurements were made at 1424 MHz. At this frequency there is Synchrotron radiation and no neutral hydrogen emission.
To be sure that no Milky Way synchrotron radiation is measured there would be no or hardly any measurable power change outside the Cygnus complex during the drift scan. This was also observed in these measurements and also confirmed earlier in test measurements.

A total of 7 drift scans of 4 hours were made at 1424 MHz. Because the start of the driftscan generates a lot of wrong data (the 'cooling down/warming up' of the RTL-SDR), this has been removed in the measurements.
The measurement starts at 2000 seconds and is always aborted at 12000 seconds in post-processing.

7 shots from RA 19 to RA 22. The declination varied each observation from DEC 36 to 43 degrees.

Because not every driftscan was perfect (heavy clouds gave worse results anyway as well as wind/rain or rfi) a total of 15 measurements were done, of which 7 were thus acceptable enough for editing.

In the end JRT performed measurements from 24 September to 9 October. Patience is a good thing.

Results:
By editing the driftscan data in Excel with Conditional Format (giving color to the data) the final result is a 'radio photo' of the complex.

Of course, in view of the dish diameter, the beam is 8 degrees and thus a somewhat rough image of the Cygnus complex is sketched here.

Job Geheniau - Netherlands.

Cygnus-X Imaged at 1424 MHz with an RTL-SDR based home radio telescope.
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Snooping Network Traffic from LAN Cables with an RTL-SDR or HackRF

Mordechai Guri is a cyber-security security researcher at Israel's Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Recently Guri has described a method for sniffing network data from LAN Ethernet cables over an air gap through the use of RTL-SDR or HackRF software defined radios. Guri's paper is available directly here.

The idea behind the attack is that ethernet cables can act as an antenna, leaking signals at frequencies which can easily be sniffed by a SDR. The specific technique in the paper does not decode normal network traffic, instead it requires that malicious code which modulates a custom signal over the ethernet cable be installed on the PC first. The technique used appears to be similar to what the Etherify software by SQ5BPF uses, which modulates data in morse code by turning the network card on and off.

Receiving a signal modulated by the LanTenna malware
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dumphfdl: A Multichannel HFDL Decoder for SDR

Thank you to Tomasz Lemiech for writing in and sharing with us the release of his new software "dumphfdl". Tomasz is the author of dumpvdl2 and also maintains RTLSDR-Airband. Regarding dumphfdl Tomasz writes:

dumphfdl is a multichannel HFDL decoder for Linux. HFDL (High Frequency Data Link) is a protocol used for radio communications between aircraft and a network of ground stations using high frequency (HF) radio waves. Thanks to the ability of short waves to propagate over long distances, HFDL is particularly useful in remote areas (eg. over oceans or polar regions) where other ground-based communications services are out of range. While many aircraft carriers prefer satellite communications these days, HFDL is still operational and in use.

Available HFDL decoding applications typically run on Windows and take an audio signal on input. The signal has to be delivered to the decoder via a physical cable from an external shortwave receiver or via a virtual cable from an SDR. This makes these apps inherently single-channel. This shortcoming does not apply to dumphfdl which interfaces directly with the SDR, so no pipes or virtual audio cables are needed. The program can decode multiple HFDL channels simultaneously, up to available CPU power and SDR bandwidth (there is no fixed channel count limit).

dumphfdl uses SoapySDR library (https://github.com/pothosware/SoapySDR) to communicate with the radio. Any HF-capable receiver for which a SoapySDR driver exists, should work. I have tested it briefly with an RTL-SDR v3 dongle in direct sampling mode. While I had a bit of a success with it, HFDL signals are often quite weak, so a real HF radio (like SDRPlay RSP1A or Airspy HF+) gives much better results (more decoded messages).

The program may log decoded messages to a file or send them over the network for external processing and storage.

HFDL messages often contain diagnostic data accompanied with aircraft position information. The program may extract this data from decoded messages and provide a positional data feed for external plane tracking apps (eg. Virtual Radar Server). An example screenshot from VRS is attached - taken after about 2 hours of decoding eight HFDL channels spread across three HFDL subbands: 6.6, 8.9, and 10.0 MHz with two dumphfdl instances on two radios - RSP1A and Airspy HF+. Definitely a nice way to expand the coverage of a home ADS-B radar :-)

Refer to the README.md file in the project repository for more details. The program is still under development, so new features and further improvements might be expected in subsequent releases.

dumphfdl - decoded aircraft positions plotted on a map
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Release the KrakenSDR! CrowdFunding now on Crowd Supply

KrakenSDR is now available for crowdfunding on Crowd Supply. Thank you to all interested parties for your patience while we navigated recent pandemic-related delays.

KrakenSDR is a five-channel, RX-only software-defined radio (SDR) based on the RTL-SDR and designed for phase-coherent applications and experiments. Phase-coherent SDR opens the door to some very interesting applications, including radio direction finding, passive radar, and beam forming. You can also use KrakenSDR as five separate radios.

KrakenSDR is an upgraded version of our previous product, KerberosSDR. It provides a fifth receive channel, automatic phase-coherence synchronization capabilities, bias tees, a new RF design with cleaner spectrum, USB Type-C connectors, a heavy-duty enclosure, upgraded open source DAQ and DSP software, and an upgraded Android app for direction finding. We are constantly working on new software and sample applications, so keep an eye out for future updates!

We expect to ship the first 1000 KrakenSDR units to backers before the end of March, 2022. And by the time that happens, we’ll have published a full range of in-depth tutorials to help you get started.

KrakenSDR Promotional Video

Some of our previous KerberosSDR and KrakenSDR posts might also be of interest.

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DragonOS: Spectrum Detection and Logging with RTL-SDR, ANTSDR and SDR4space.lite

DragonOS is a ready to use Ubuntu Linux image that comes preinstalled with multiple SDR software packages. The creator Aaron also runs a YouTube channel showing how to use the various packages installed. In his latest video Aaron shows how to use the SDR4space.lite application to automatically log the spectrum with an RTL-SDR, as well as with an ANTSDR (PlutoSDR clone).

This video shows how to setup DragonOS Focal to detect spectrum activity with the SDR4space.lite application, RTLSDR, and ANTSDR/PlutoSDR. I then show how to setup both InfluxDB and Grafana, which are both used to accept and log incoming detected frequencies from the SDR4space.lite application and RTLSDR.

InfluxDB is an open-source time series database and Grafana is the open source analytics & monitoring solution. The two solutions combined allow a user to log activity from as many receivers as they'd like and then near time display incoming results in custom dashboards and panels.

This first video goes over the initial setup, to include creating a cron job for repeated frequency detection surveys, how to link the database and visual front end, and then how to create and customize your first dashboard and panel. Information to populate the database comes from two separate receivers in this demonstration, both from a remote RTLSDR connected to a laptop and from an ANTSDR locally connected to the Intel NUC.

Everything needed to get started is either already included in DragonOS Focal or is easily installed as shown in the video. A key part is the included SDR4space.lite application, however, a newer version with updated features is expected soon.

https://github.com/SDR4space/FreeVers...

Hardware used,
- Intel NUC
- RTLSDR
- ANTSDR
- Laptop

DragonOS Focal Spectrum Detection Logging w/ RTLSDR, ANTSDR, and SDR4space.lite (InfluxDB, Grafana)

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