Tagged: rtl2832

An RTL-SDR & SDRplay based WebSDR Designed Specifically for QO-100 (Es’Hail-2) Monitoring

Over on YouTube user [Radio Electronics] has uploaded a useful video showing how to install your own personal SDRplay or RTL-SDR based WebSDR for QO-100 (aka Es'Hail-2) reception. Es'Hail-2 is the first geostationary satellite with amateur radio transponders on board, and is positioned at 25.5°E which covers Africa, Europe, the Middle East, India, eastern Brazil and the west half of Russia/Asia.

The idea behind a WebSDR is to run your RTL-SDR QO-100 receiver on a remote Raspberry Pi (perhaps mounted close to the antenna on your roof etc). The Pi runs custom WebSDR software that has been created from scratch by [Radio Electronics] specifically for monitoring Es'Hail-2. Then you can access your QO-100 receiver from any device on your network that has a web browser (computer/phone/tablet etc). The interface of his WebSDR appears to be quite slick, which multiple QO-100 specific options and labels.

Quite a lot of work must have gone into this software which looks to be of high quality, so it is definitely worth checking out if you are interested in QO-100/Es'Hail-2 monitoring.

Es'Hail-2 QO-100 WebSDR
Es'Hail-2 QO-100 WebSDR

In the first video he first talks about various methods for downconverting the 10489.550 MHz QO-100 CW signal into a range receivable by the RTL-SDR or SDRplay. He then goes on to show the exact steps to install and run his WebSDR software on a Raspberry Pi 3.

In the second video he goes on to demonstrate the web browser interface highlighting the QO-100 specific features that he has implemented such as being able to compensate for any LNB frequency drift via a feature that can lock to the QO-100 PSK beacon.

es-hail-2 QO-100 WebSDR Part-1: INSTALLATION

es-hail-2 QO-100 WebSDR Part-2: OPERATION

KerberosSDR App Update: Heatmap + Precise TX Localizing & Turn by Turn Navigation Demo Videos

We have just released an updated version of the KerberosSDR Android direction finding app. If you didn't already know KerberosSDR is our experimental 4x Coherent RTL-SDR product. With it, coherent applications like radio direction finding (RDF) and passive radar are possible. Together with the KerberosSDR direction finding Android app it is possible to visualize the direction finding data produced by a KerberosSDR running on a Pi3/Tinkerboard.

The KerberosSDR hardware is currently in preorder status on Indiegogo for the second production batch, and we expect it to be ready to ship out this month. If you preorder then you'll be able to purchase a KerberosSDR at a reduced price of USD$130. After shipping for batch two begins the price will rise to USD$150.

The new version of the KerberosSDR Android app adds the following features:

  1. Heatmap Grid Plotting
  2. Precise TX location pinpointing when enough data points are gathered
  3. Turn by turn navigation to the RDF bearing direction / TX location
  4. Bearing moving average smoothing

To understand what these features are, we've released two demo videos showing them in action. In the first video we use the new features to find an 858 MHz TETRA transmitter, and in the second video we find a 415 MHz DMR transmitter. The first video explains the new features so we recommend watching that first.

KerberosSDR Radio Direction Finding: Heatmap + Auto Navigation to Transmitter Location Demo 1

KerberosSDR Radio Direction Finding: Heatmap + Auto Navigation to Transmitter Location Demo 2

SignalsEverywhere: Creating a DIY Upconverter with a HackRF and RF Mixer

Over on YouTube Corrosive from the SignalsEverywhere channel has uploaded a new video showing us how you can make a DIY upconverter using a HackRF as a signal source and a cheap $10 RF Mixer. An upconverter converts lower frequencies into higher frequencies. For example, an upconverter is commonly used to convert HF signals into VHF, so that VHF/UHF only SDRs can receive HF.

In the video he uses the HackRF as a local oscillator source, a cheap RF mixer on a breakout board, and an Airspy as the receiver. In most circumstances if you needed and upconverter you'd just purchase one like the Ham-it-up, or the Spyverter for ~$40. However the interesting advantage of using a versatile signal generator like the HackRF is that it results in an upconverter that can upconvert HF to almost any frequency. Even without any filtering (which is recommended to remove signal images), Corrosive fings that he has excellent HF reception.

This video is an excellent way to learn about how upconverters work.

HackRF and RF Mixer = DIY RTL SDR Up-converter | Basics of the Passive ADE Mixer

 

SignalsEverywhere: Windows 10 usb_open_error -12 Fix

The process to install an RTL-SDR dongle on Windows involves the simple step of running Zadig and installing the generic WinUSB drivers to the RTL-SDR, which shows up as "Bulk-In, Interface (Interface 0)" in Zadig.

However we find that people sometimes accidentally use Zadig to install WinUSB to "Bulk-In, Interface (Interface 1)" by mistake. Installing WinUSB to this interface can break your installation, and it can cause the RTL-SDR to display a "usb_open error -12" on command line software, and can cause problems connecting to the device on GUI software like SDR#.

Over on YouTube Corrosive from the SignalsEverywhere YouTube channel uploaded a very useful video that shows how to fix this problem.

RTL SDR Drivers On Windows 10 2019

Creating Wide Area Composite Images with WXtoIMG + Weather Satellite Failure Updates

With so many independent people receiving weather satellite images from the NOAA satellites daily, an interesting collaborative task is to stitch these images together to create a wide area composite image. Fortunately the WXtoIMG software already has stitching as a feature.

Over on his website "usradioguy" has created a tutorial explaining how to use WXtoIMG to stitch together multiple NOAA weather satellite images that have been uploaded to individuals websites. As well as the tutorial he has created a table of people's websites that contain recent and the required "pristine" processed images that can be used for stitching.

NOAA Weather Satellite Composite by Jeff Kelly (New Jersey, US), Mike Kimzey (Philadelphia, US), David Kunz (San Francisco, US), Cornelius Danielsen (Norway), Alan Hinton (UK), Michael Sørensen (Denmark), and Hans-Juergen Luethje (Germany).
NOAA Weather Satellite Composite created with images from Jeff Kelly (New Jersey, US), Mike Kimzey (Philadelphia, US), David Kunz (San Francisco, US), Cornelius Danielsen (Norway), Alan Hinton (UK), Michael Sørensen (Denmark), and Hans-Juergen Luethje (Germany).

Weather Satellite Failure Updates

We also wanted to provide a brief update on some weather satellites that we RTL-SDR users often receive.

NOAA 15: About two weeks ago NOAA 15 failed and was producing glitched images. However after a few days it came right again, only to have failed again at the end of last month. It appears that the camera scanning motor is getting stuck due to being low on lubricant as the satellite is now well past it's intended life cycle at 11 years old. If you're interested, some info on how the camera on these satellites works can be found here. There is currently no plan for a fix, the only hope is to wait and see if the motor unsticks.

Meteor M2-1: Meteor M2-1 has also recently suffered problems yet again with it's orientation control, and we're regularly seeing off-axis or distorted images that show the curvature of the earth. Over the weekend it was turned off, and should be reset this week. This problem seems to occur and be fixed often, so hopefully it will be back online soon.

Meteor M2-2: The recently launched Meteor M2-2 is functional, but it is still in the testing phase, so is sometimes being turned off. Do not be alarmed if no signal is received sometimes.

GOES-17: GOES-17 is reported to be experiencing problems with it's infrared camera due to a blocked heatpipe, however it appears that they are able to work around this issue and obtain 97% uptime.

A Distorted Meteor M2-1 Image from R4UAB Blog.
A Distorted Meteor M2-1 Image from R4UAB Blog.

Using an RTL-SDR, RF Fingerprinting and Deep Learning to Authenticate RF Devices

Every device that transmits radio waves has a unique and identifiable RF fingerprint which occurs due to the very slightly variations in the hardware manufacturing process. This means that devices using identical transmitters of the same make and model can still be differentiated from one another.

Nihal Pasham has been using this knowledge as a way to securely identify IoT sensors and other RF devices like car keyfobs. The idea is that these unique RF fingerprints are immune to authentication spoofing which could be used to create a fake transmitter with fake data. He suggests that RF fingerprinting could be used as an additional authentication check for low cost IoT devices with only basic security.

In order to recognize the minute differences in the RF fingerprints of different devices Nihal notes that a good pattern detection algorithm is required, and that a deep learning neural network fits the bill. Using neural network software Tensorflow, and an RTL-SDR for signal acquisition, he was able to train a proof of concept neural model that was able to classify two test transmitters with 97% accuracy.

Training a Deep Learning Neural Network with an RTL-SDR for RF Fingerprinting
Training a Deep Learning Neural Network with an RTL-SDR for RF Fingerprinting

In the past we've seen similar experiments by Oona Räisänen who used an RTL-SDR to fingerprint several hand held radios heard on the air via small variances in the power and frequencies of each radio's CTCSS tone. Using simple clustering techniques she was able to determine exactly who was transmitting based upon the unique CTCSS.

In a somewhat similar fashion, Disney Research has also been working on a RF fingerprinting technique that uses an RTL-SDR based wrist watch to identify what particular electronic devices the wearer is touching.

Updated Meteor M-N2-2 Tutorial and Decoder Now Available

Thank you to Happysat for submitting the following information about the updated LRPT decoder for Meteor M-N2-2. He has also provided a link to his very useful Meteor Satellite reception tutorial.

Today the official LRPT-Decoder V42 ready for release :)

Before we did use a older internal debug version from 2014, because this one was still in development.

This version 42 of LRPTDecoder will work with both Meteor M-N2 and Meteor M-N2-2.

Example ini configuration files for other modes are attached in the archive.

http://happysat.nl/LRPT_Decoder_v42.rar

Howto overhere http://happysat.nl/Setup_Meteor/Setup.html

Author of LRPT_Decoder is Oleg ROBONUKA.

The new Meteor M-N2-2 Decoder + Sample Image
The new Meteor M-N2-2 Decoder + Sample Image

YouTube Video: Information Packed Introduction to SDR

Over on YouTube Nick Black has uploaded a video where he does a good introduction to software defined radio (SDR), SDR history, how SDR works, various SDR concepts like sampling and bandwidth, different SDR hardware, the SDR Linux stack and reverse engineering wireless signals.

The information is presented fast and densely, so it may be a bit hard to follow for newbies, but if you already have some experience with SDR it may be a good video that helps tie everything together and fill in some gaps. Nick also has a Wiki where he's documented some of what is said in the video.

DANKTECH 001: Software-defined Radios