Sunday, July 06, 2014
Software-Defined USB Radio
For $40 or less you can plug in a USB device with free software that makes your computer into a ham radio receiver, covering all the bands from about 30KHZ to 3GHZ.
This one I have is a Terratec dongle, about the size of an MP3 player.
Get free software to cover wide band reception using a program called SDR# (SDR Sharp) from this link sdrsharp.com. Don't install the CD software that comes with it, it is intended for German digital radios. Install the zadig USB driver, replacing the default windows one. Full instructions and a link to the driver can be found at
Here's a help page and another to get started. It comes with a plug-in whip antenna. Test it on a local FM station.
Then I got interested in picking up the ads-b signals from aircraft transponders such as are used in Flight Radar 24
I made the coax-collinear antenna on this page with 8 elements for 1090 MHZ by cutting up an old TV cable. Cost $0. You may need to buy some RG-6 co-ax cable and a 75 ohm resistor.
Here is a screen shot of SDR# showing the pulses received from some planes.
You also need a plane plotting program, I used free sofware adsbscope. Download the zip file here. I could not get adsbscope to display the data from the planes with SDR#, so downloaded the free RTL1090 beta 3 version from this page. It worked instantly and is dedicated to 1090 MHZ whereas SDR# is a multi-band receiving program.
Here is a screen shop of RTL1090 feeding data to adsbscope.
I have since changed map and background settings on adsbscope and this is how it looks now. You can only plot the tracks of the planes that used the adsb-s transponders which supply lat & longtitude. Most of the local planes don't have those. So what's this screen showing? It is plotting a French-registered Airbus A340-300 registration F-OJTN Flight TN-102 to Papeete/Los Angeles climbing out through 20,000 feet on heading 67 degrees. And another local Beech19 plane ZK-EAM at 12000 feet.
At other frequencies you can get ship tracking, weather satellite data, aircraft bands, cellphones and more. Probably you will need an antenna for that specific frequency, but it might work with the supplied one.
This one I have is a Terratec dongle, about the size of an MP3 player.
Get free software to cover wide band reception using a program called SDR# (SDR Sharp) from this link sdrsharp.com. Don't install the CD software that comes with it, it is intended for German digital radios. Install the zadig USB driver, replacing the default windows one. Full instructions and a link to the driver can be found at
http://rtlsdr.org/softwarewindows. This driver MUST be installed successfully for proper operation of the dongle.Here's a help page and another to get started. It comes with a plug-in whip antenna. Test it on a local FM station.
Then I got interested in picking up the ads-b signals from aircraft transponders such as are used in Flight Radar 24
I made the coax-collinear antenna on this page with 8 elements for 1090 MHZ by cutting up an old TV cable. Cost $0. You may need to buy some RG-6 co-ax cable and a 75 ohm resistor.
Here is a screen shot of SDR# showing the pulses received from some planes.
You also need a plane plotting program, I used free sofware adsbscope. Download the zip file here. I could not get adsbscope to display the data from the planes with SDR#, so downloaded the free RTL1090 beta 3 version from this page. It worked instantly and is dedicated to 1090 MHZ whereas SDR# is a multi-band receiving program.
Here is a screen shop of RTL1090 feeding data to adsbscope.
I have since changed map and background settings on adsbscope and this is how it looks now. You can only plot the tracks of the planes that used the adsb-s transponders which supply lat & longtitude. Most of the local planes don't have those. So what's this screen showing? It is plotting a French-registered Airbus A340-300 registration F-OJTN Flight TN-102 to Papeete/Los Angeles climbing out through 20,000 feet on heading 67 degrees. And another local Beech19 plane ZK-EAM at 12000 feet.
At other frequencies you can get ship tracking, weather satellite data, aircraft bands, cellphones and more. Probably you will need an antenna for that specific frequency, but it might work with the supplied one.
