Tagged: rtl2832

Lightweight Windows Software uSDR Updated to Version 1.4.0

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.

The software can be downloaded from SourceForce.

  • customizable tool panel behavior (fixed, floating, undocked)
  • SDRPlay frontend support (API v.2.13)
  • RTL-TCP streaming interface support, presets quick switch (server, port, description)
  • high precision Wav IQ file play back
  • support RIFF 8, 16, 24 and 32 bits integer, 32 bits float, FR64 file formats for playback
  • recognize Wav IQ file central frequency for play back
  • frequency offset (shift) for x-verters
  • swap IQ (invert spectrum) option
  • improved FFT spectrum calculation and visualization
  • waterfall color map range may be changed manually on the spectrum window as well as on tool panel, also included the auto scale option
  • color map palette can be customized and fast switched, palette presets are included
  • FIFO buffer size (IQ history time) may be changed on the fly, all memory allocations are under hood, no losses of previously stored history 
  • pass band may be attachment to global frequency as well as to local baseband frequency or to screen position
  • squelched threshold control and level indicator for demodulation (in addition to adjustable spectrum threshold detector)
  • stereo FM demodulator
  • low latency audio
  • frequency manager, groups and interactive markers, visualize, edit, navigate, tune the pass band
  • spectrum and waterfall popup menus
  • improved GUI controls
  • "fine tune" option: set pass band to rounded frequency (spectrum right click)
  • statistics visualization window
uSDR aka microSDR. A lightweight SDR receiver program from Windows.

Tech Minds: Testing the Cloudmarkers SDRuno Community Plugin

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.

CLOUDMARKERS - Community Plugin For SDRuno

SignalsEverywhere tests our RTL-SDR Blog Active L-Band Patch Antenna

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.

If you're interested, this antenna has also been reviewed by Frugal Radio, Tech Minds, and Mike from SDRplay. 

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.

What can you do with this antenna?

The Best L Band Antenna for The Money PERIOD

Imaging the Cassiopeia A Supernova Remnant with an RTL-SDR and Amateur Radio Telescope

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 dish
Job's Radio Telescope

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

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.

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.

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