RPI R820T RTL2832 SDR Server

As a way of keeping an eye on conditions i have taken to installing the rtlsdr dongle out on the balcony hooked up to a 50MHz dipole and using the Dell laptop as a display sitting on a chair. The weather in Dallas has returned to Summer normal about a week ago after having a week of mainly rain so 100degrees F plus is now the normal. Too hot to sit out on the balcony and look at the bands, There had to be a better solution

Searching the Internet I came across a page by EB1HBK "Receptor SDR remoto con Raspberry Pi"
on how to set up a raspberry pi as an RTLSDR remote server. The pages are in Spanish but despite having had my Spanish corrupted by Mexican Spanish I managed to work it all out and get it up and running

The RPI sits out on the balcony with RTL-SDR and power supplied through the USB hub from a 5V 4A PSU acting as a server. It is connected  via an ethernet cable to the router. The server can be started remotely using SSH through the Putty programme

The laptop in the airconditioned apartment runs sdrsharp. In SDR Sharp the device is set to "RTL-SDR TCP" with the IP of the RPI (192.168.1.64) and the default port of 1234

R820T RTL2832 SDR Dongle under Android

Surfing the web I came across an article on the Ham Radio Science page http://www.hamradioscience.com/android-meets-the-rtl2832u/  with an app to use the SDR dongle I had previously used under windows and Ubuntu on my Nexus 7 Tablet under Android. The app is called SDR Touch, the authors web site is at http://sdr.martinmarinov.info/ . All I needed was  the appropriate OTG micro USB cable.

Firstly I downloaded and installed the demo version of the software and driver from the web site. I found my OTG cable that I bought after the Nexus 7 but never used. I plugged the dongle into the micro usb port via the cable and launched the App. It failed to find the receiver. I then noticed that the blue light had not illuminated on the receiver. Very Strange!

A trip was made to the local emporium (Frys) and a $5 OTG cable was purchased. Interestingly the sales lady asked what tablet was for. When I said the Nexus she said it would work, if I had a Galaxy it would not. Obviously all OTG cables are not created equal!

Now when I plugged the receiver in it lit up, the Tablet found it and I had a spectrum display. Tuning to the local classics station it demodulated nicely.

 The demo version has restricted features (no direct frequency entry, only 30secs of spectrum display, no waterfall display and  no presets) but I was so impressed with what I had seen so far that I went to the app store and paid my $9.99 to upgrade from the Demo to the Full Version of the software. This was easily installed and the following shows spectrum, waterfall and presets:-

I did run the driver app on its own and it did show communication with the correct tuner chip

Very useful discovery.

ADS-B using the R820T USB Dongle and VirtualRadar

Having managed to produce the Data I also wanted to try displaying it with virtual radar. This is available from http://www.virtualradarserver.co.uk/  To use it with ADSB# server some parameters have to be changed under options. Data source to "AVR or Beast raw feed", Address to 127.0.0.1 and port to 47806

Start ADSB# first 

then Start Virtual radar which will show incoming activity

To see the data in map format click on the link to http://127.0.0.1:VirtualRadar. The following is the map after running for a few hours showing the airplane tracks; not surprisingly all to the east of me. Currently 39 planes are being tracked:-

Looking back at the virtualradar window the above "connection" can now be seen listed:-

Comparing the plots produced by the same data using Virtualradar and PlanePlotter Planeplotter captures more planes, but it is not free! 

ADS-B using the R820T USB Dongle and PlanePlotter

G4VXE recently alerted me to software capable of producing ADS-B data under windows. http://sdrsharp.com/index.php/a-simple-and-cheap-ads-b-receiver-using-rtl-sdr. I downloaded the executable and after installing the R820T driver using Zadiq from http://rtlsdr.org/softwarewindows we were in business. Connecting the homebrew 1090MHz colinear on the window ledge data packets were being produced.

Note that the driver only needs installing once, not as some have tried after every reboot

Next we needed something to display the data

I already had the paid for planeplotter installed on the computer so I would try that first. A couple of changes to the setup used with the Modesbeast were needed. The mode S receiver option needs setting to "AVR receiver"

The IP address and port then needs to be set:-

Finally the input/output settings need to be set to AVR receiver TCP

Planeplotter was started and left running for 6 hours:-

Not as good as the ModeSbeast but very good for the price of the USB dongle.