Testing and troubleshooting – page 4
-Transmit
-Receive
Recording with Audacity – page 5
-Recording settings
-Record all received and transmitted audio
-Timer recording
-Saving
-Playback
Sound card clock calibration – page 6
Introduction
This document will demonstrate basic setup of a radio interface device in the Windows Sound Control Panel to use with Ham Radio Sound Card digital modes. Programs include: Ham Radio Deluxe DM780, MMSSTV, Fldigi, wsjtx, FreeDV, Easypal. In addition, it will demonstrate how to record digital transmissions and play them back.
This is written with the beginner in mind and many concepts outlined step-by-step. It will provide direction for further experimentation on your own or on the net and direction for troubleshooting.
The SignaLink USB was used but these instructions can be adopted for similar devices. Those using other methods may find the settings and techniques useful.
SignaLink and many other external interfaces have external volume controls. Set these controls at half to start. Adjust these controls first as they are the easiest to adjust and fine tune while operating. If a situation occurs where you have too much/little audio with the volume controls set low/high, then adjust the Windows audio levels second.
It is important to point out:
Plugging the same device into a different USB port will be recognized as a new device by the system. This means the audio settings will need to be re-configured. In addition, the audio device settings in the digital mode program may need to be re-configured as well.
The process of setting audio levels is not exact. Each system is different, drivers are programmed differently, hardware interacts differently with the operating system. It will take some time to fine tune audio levels.
Prepared for The Lake Erie Amateur Radio Association’s Digital Net (http://www.leara.org/).
Program versions
Windows 7 – 64 bit
Audacity 2.0.6
Resources
Still having trouble after using this tutorial? Read through the product manual and support documentation. Below are links for popular devices.
Specific instructions can be found online typically by searching: [name of application] [radio interface device]. Example: Fldigi SignaLink USB.
Station setup: MP Antennas Classic Mobile NMO Antenna – This is a local company in Cleveland and were reviewed in QST. Been using their antennas for a long time with great success. Since the antenna is multi-polarized (the MP in the company name), it is supposed to be a good substitution for receiving satellite transmissions without a directional antenna and not worrying about Doppler Shift (which needs to be accounted for in some cases). The height is about 15 feet.
The antenna was connected to my ICOM IC-7000 with DSP settings turned off on 145.800 MHz FM. Used this radio only because my SignaLink USB is connected to it and the one I use for digital operation on all bands. MMSSTV is the Slow-Scan TV program I use.
Station setup: MP Antennas Classic Mobile NMO Antenna – This is a local company in Cleveland and were reviewed in QST. Been using their antennas for a long time with great success. Since the antenna is multi-polarized (the MP in the company name), it is supposed to be a good substitution for receiving satellite transmissions without a directional antenna and not worrying about Doppler Shift (which needs to be accounted for in some cases). The height is about 15 feet.
The antenna was connected to my ICOM IC-7000 with DSP settings turned off on 145.800 MHz FM. Used this radio only because my SignaLink USB is connected to it and the one I use for digital operation on all bands. MMSSTV is the Slow-Scan TV program I use.
Station setup: MP Antennas Classic Mobile NMO Antenna – This is a local company in Cleveland and were reviewed in QST. Been using their antennas for a long time with great success. Since the antenna is multi-polarized (the MP in the company name), it is supposed to be a good substitution for receiving satellite transmissions without a directional antenna and not worrying about Doppler Shift (which needs to be accounted for in some cases). The height is about 15 feet.
The antenna was connected to my ICOM IC-7000 with DSP settings turned off on 145.800 MHz FM. Used this radio only because my SignaLink USB is connected to it and the one I use for digital operation on all bands. MMSSTV is the Slow-Scan TV program I use.
I received 13 images total from my location near Cleveland (EN91bl). Not sure why there was a sync issue on the second day (noted by the green line on the left in some of the images).
The holidays were a busy time at the K8JTK laboratories with a couple RTL-SDR projects. The RTL-SDR is the European TV tuner dongle that was turned into a software defined radio receiver.
Thanksgiving is one of the busiest travel seasons and I wanted to decode ADS-B data to see how many aircraft were flying around. ADS-B stands for Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast allowing aircraft to be tracked by ground stations and provide situational awareness to nearby aircraft. This is part of the FAA’s NextGen project and mandated by agencies across the globe.
I saw this project in the January 2014 edition of QST written by Robert – W9RAN. He covered building a Collinear Array for the ADS-B frequency of 1090 MHz. I used one of my ham antennas. The RF signal received by the dongle is turned into data packets by a program called ADSB# (included in the SDR# download). VirtualRadar receives those packets, decodes the data, and plots aircraft on Google Maps. This setup can work with a Raspberry Pi and I hope to try this in the future.
Thanksgiving travel in Cleveland, Ohio.
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I saw 25 aircraft flying around Cleveland on average. I think the most I saw was 48 at once. Not all aircraft have full ADS-B implementations. For example: I would see a call sign but no position data. My receive range (depending on aircraft altitude) was east of Toledo to the PA border and south to Canton. Visit my write-up on this project: ADS-B Decoding with ADSBSharp and VirtualRadar Server.
The second project is a little more complicated but it helped me understand how trunked radio systems work. With the FCC narrowbanding mandate in certain RF spectrum, many public service agencies have decided to “go digital.” In my area the MARCS-IP system and the Greater Cleveland Radio Communications Network are most popular. Both are P25 trunked digital systems. P25 is a specification for voice and data transmission. Trunked radio systems operate by having a radio send data to the control channel requesting communication on a talkgroup. The control channel directs all users of that talkgroup to a specified channel. When the user is done transmitting, all radios switch back to monitoring the control channel for further instructions. This is done seamlessly and allows many users (agencies) to use a small set of radio frequencies. Users only hear the conversations on their assigned talkgroup and not other users on the same system.
P25 trunked decoding with a single voice decoder.
Scanners that receive these systems run $500 and go up from there. Using two RTL-SDR dongles and software (mostly free), I’ve been able to receive P25 trunked systems for about $65. One dongle monitors only the control channel and other dongle(s) jump frequencies to receive the digital voice modulation with a program decoding the audio. I can have as many voice receivers as I want whereas a scanner cannot be expanded. Most I’ve heard of is eight. There are some drawbacks like portability. Find out my experiences in my P25 Trunked Tracking post.
Fresh Baked Pi
Raspberry Pi foundation released new models over the last couple months. The biggest news coming at the beginning of February: the Raspberry Pi 2. This model comes with a quad-core CPU and 1GB RAM offering a six times speed improvement, still at $35. Initial reports are it is a lot faster!
Raspberry Pi 2
Along with the new Pi2 came a new version of the Raspbian operating system with optimizations and a new look. In the near future, Microsoft will be releasing a version of Windows 10 Embedded for the Raspberry Pi 2 FREE OF CHARGE! (see the Raspberry Pi 2 link above.)
That’s A Wrap
A goal behind this series has been to expose many hams to newer technologies and younger people to ham radio. These technologies are getting young people interested in experimenting, programming, and even Ham Radio. On podcasts I watch, I’ve heard “I want to get my Ham Radio license” by 20 and 30 year olds like I’ve never heard before. These are young people interested in experimenting, making things, building things, and hacking things — all of which are the foundation of Amateur Radio. Making has evolved into writing software, sending a chip a set of commands and analyzing what is returned, or analyzing packets. Then figuring out “what can I do with this?”
I saw a great technology round-table over the holidays and they talked about getting kids into technology. Many of the methods apply to Ham Radio. As a builder, you build something and presume what will happen. Then something different happens and now you have a mystery to solve. “Why did X happen and not Y?” A new theory develops and sucks you in. This is exactly how the Raspberry Pi, RTL-SDR, and every project surrounding them came to be. It is my opinion that we, as the Amateur Radio community, need to encourage, capitalize, and focus efforts on younger makers and hackers to get them licensed.
As this is my last planned article, I would like to take time and thank the newsletter editors for thinking this series was worth publishing and recreating all the links I included. Thank you to those who told others about this series. I got a ton of feedback and couldn’t be happier that others have found this interesting and sparked them to start experimenting. Most of all, thank you for reading.
I’ve been licensed since 1999 and upgraded to General and Extra in 2008 but I hadn’t been on the amateur HF bands very much. When I graduated from Grad School, I bought myself and setup a new HF station.
This post is going to be about my experiences, things I’ve learned along the way, and maybe some things that may not be obvious to someone starting out. I will add to this post.
This is not meant to be “all-inclusive” by any means and not meant to be a substitute for elmering and experience. It’s meant to be for someone who has operated VHF/UHF for a long while but just venturing out into HF.
I’m bitter in alot of this post because many points draw on real interactions I’ve encountered. It’s not to discourage you to operate HF but to be better than the other guy acting like a jerk. Common sense helps tremendously. Folks out there who are all about the points, number of exchanges, getting that last contact, and awards common sense almost always goes out the window. Just remember you have a choice to not work those stations.
A quick note… ac6v.com has a TON of good information on everything from “antennas to zones.” I think it could be organized a little better and layout is a little 1996ish, regardless 700 amateur radio topics are covered. The Google search at the top really helps finding things.
I saw a news story on the ARRL website that talked about the Russian International Space Station cosmonauts plan to send Slow Scan TV images around the holidays. December 18 and December 20, 2014. Those are two of my interests, SSTV (or digital modes in general) and spaceflight. From the news story:
The Russian Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) team members plan to activate slow-scan television (SSTV) from the ISS on December 18 and December 20. The expected SSTV mode will be PD180 on a frequency of 145.800 MHz with 3-minute off periods between transmissions.
I setup my station to monitor 145.800 MHz on both days to see if I could receive any images, I did!
Station setup: MP Antennas Classic Mobile NMO Antenna – This is a local company in Cleveland and were reviewed in QST. Been using their antennas for a long time with great success. Since the antenna is multi-polarized (the MP in the company name), it is supposed to be a good substitution for receiving satellite transmissions without a directional antenna and not worrying about Doppler Shift (which needs to be accounted for in some cases). The height is about 15 feet.
The antenna was connected to my ICOM IC-7000 with DSP settings turned off on 145.800 MHz FM. Used this radio only because my SignaLink USB is connected to it and the one I use for digital operation on all bands. MMSSTV is the Slow-Scan TV program I use.
The project that got me really into experimenting with the RTL-SDR dongles is using them to decode P25 digital trunked public service radio systems. I have been a casual scanner listener for years and like to listen to emergency calls nearby. In college it was great to listen in on a party weekend hearing fights, disturbances, or why my street suddenly filled with cars at 3 AM.
Narrowbanding
That was when most agencies were analog. To get more use out of the radio spectrum, the FCC decreed a narrowbanding mandate requiring a “maximum of 12.5 kHz bandwidth across the private land mobile bands between 150-174 and 421-512 MHz.” This means going digital for much of that radio spectrum because traditional FM transmissions are 15 KHz. Ironically they will “go digital” but move to 700/800 MHz.
Lurking around the Radio Reference forums, I saw references to being able to use the RTL-SDR dongles for trunked digital decoding. I had to try it. I had played around with these dongles and read about the many projects people were doing with them. In actuality this project cost me $65.
About the project
You will need at least two RTL-SDR dongles ($20/each) and a copy of Virtual Audio Cable ($26). I already had a premium Radio Reference account. You can do the project with one dongle but you loose many features in Unitrunker like talkgroup priority. Theoretically, the single dongle listens to the system control channel and then tunes to voice calls, then back to the control channel. You will miss calls because that notification comes across the control channel while the dongle was tuned to a voice transmission. I will cover a two dongle setup and do not plan to cover a single dongle setup.
This project is still very complicated but it is MUCH easier than it used to be. This manly thanks to Rick, the developer of Unitrunker who implemented support for the RTL-SDR chipset in his program. Previously, there needed to be a plug-in for both Unitrunker and SDRSharp, there were all kinds of “moving parts.” In one respect, being able to see the signal waveform on a spectrum analyzer made it much easier to fine tune the PPM correction on-the-fly as opposed to guessing on a modulation scope. This setup is much cleaner and the Unitrunker developer has implemented advanced features like drift correction. It will take some time and patience to understand, research, and know the types of systems and system specifics.
There are some advantages like cost and being software based. Changing modulation types is often as easy as changing programs. As an example, DSDPlus will decode MotoTrbo as opposed to no standalone scanner being able to do so currently. However, portability of this setup is limited as you have to have many pieces of equipment with you. You’ll need an Internet connection to find sites to program and a PC to tweak settings.
Two very specific and key things to note about trunked radio systems in general:
You cannot tell the tower your’re listening to which talkgroup you want to monitor. Doing so would require the ability to transmit and IS ILLEGAL because you are not authorized to do so. If the talkgroup is not transmitted by the tower, you’re out of luck. You can’t be in Dayton and tell the system you want to listen to a talkgroup originating from Cleveland.
Nothing here (and no program I know of) will defeat encryption, even if you own the keys. Decoding encrypted transmissions is not implemented in any of these programs. On the flip side, be aware that using this tutorial and feeding the audio to Radio Reference and Broadcastify may not make agencies happy. You could get a take-down notice or even worse, it is trivial to turn on encryption at the system level and you just blocked reception for all scanner listeners.
I used a Windows 7 64 bit PC. Applications and versions used in this writeup:
SDRSharp: 1.0.0.1330
Virtual Audio Cable: 4.14
DSDPlus: 1.51
UniTrunker: 1.0.30.10
Parts list
Listed below are all the parts needed to get this project working.
Computer with some processing and memory horse power. It is recommended to have a computer with a recent Intel Core i5 processor and 8GB of RAM, or better.
Receive antenna that covers 700 & 800 MHz where P25 trunked usually resides. For an external antenna, splitters and coax runs maybe needed. The stock RTL-SDR dongle antennas worked fine for me.
Two RTL-SDR Dongles. To decode more than one voice transmission, increase the number of dongles needed.
Recommend a USB hub. Couple years ago I picked up a Rosewill RHUB-300 USB 2.0 Hub 7-Port HUB. I recommend this hub because when the dongle is plugged in, the antenna connector is pointed up. This makes it easier to connect an adapter and a Pryme RD-98. If available, connect the hub to an Intel USB chipset on your motherboard. I’ve had far less issues using Intel based hardware.
Update: ADSBSharp (ADSB#) is no longer available and has been deprecated. Copies can be found by doing some searching. It is not available from the authors site as described in this post for the RTL-SDR. A program like RTL1090 or Dump1090 (or any of its forks) can be substituted. The author is focusing on AirSpy devices and ADSBSpy is available from the same site as SDR#.
An interesting project I came across using the RTL-SDR dongle is to decode ADS-B data. ADS-B stands for Automatic dependent surveillance – broadcast allowing aircraft to be tracked by ground stations and provide situational awareness to nearby aircraft. It is part of the FAA’s NextGen project and mandated by agencies across the globe. ADS-B uses a frequency of 1090 MHz.
Thanks goes out to Robert Nickels – W9RAN and his article in the January 2014 edition of QST which covers this project and how to make a Collinear Array for 1090. HAK5 also did a couple episodes showing how to make an antenna and configure Virtual Radar Server.
Block diagram of the ADS-B Hub setup. From: QST, January 2014.
Program versions
I used a Windows 7 64 bit PC. Applications and versions used in this writeup…
Listed below are all the parts needed to get this project working.
Antenna with receive coverage of 1090 MHz. RTL-SDR dongle.
I had a ham radio antenna that I used. It is the MP Antenna 08-ANT-0860 Ultra Mobile Antenna if you’re interested. To build an antenna, see the QST article above. The one that comes with the dongle will work but at short range.
Last time on Dongle Bits, I talked about the $20 European TV tuner dongle that was hacked allowing direct access to the signal data. The result is a cheap wideband receiver for your computer. We’re going to take a look at key settings you should know about when using these devices. Then look at some software and projects that transform these into systems that would have cost hundreds or thousands of dollars!
PPM and Settings
An important thing to know about these dongles: they are cheaply made and not tested for accuracy. They are designed to receive DVB-T signals at a bandwidth of 6 – 8 MHz where a few KHz error doesn’t matter. This is obviously not true when you’re dealing with FM signals that are 16 KHz wide or digital at 12.5 where a few KHz will put you on a completely different frequency or channel.
PPM stands for parts per million and is the difference in received frequency vs. frequency shown. To visualize this, use SDRSharp to receive a known FM signal. The center frequency shown will be different from the signal on the scope. Typical PPM offset is anywhere from 45 – 65 and will be in the programs settings. The dongle will drift another 2 – 5 PPM over the next 20 – 45 minutes as it warms up. Gain is obviously another setting that will help you receive signals. The RTL AGC setting works but will err on the side of too much gain. Manually, using more than 32.8 dB will overload and produce duplicate signal spikes. The Correct IQ setting will get rid of phantom spikes at lower gain settings.
Dongle with no frequency correction. The actual 162.550 frequency is just to the left of the displayed frequency. 162.550 is one of the NOAA Weather Radio frequencies.Shows the gain and PPM frequency correction of 55 for the dongle I’m using.Shows 162.550 centered with frequency correction applied.
The crystals on the RTL-SDR dongle can be replaced with higher accuracy temperature controlled crystals (TCXO) that have a variance of 1 ppm! These crystals are $10 but you have to wait for them to ship from China. Pre-modified dongles are available but you will pay three times the price for the dongle.
Android
PCs aren’t the only place these SDRs can be used. They can be plugged into an Android device too. You will need a USB OTG cable (on-the-go) and Android 3.1 or later. Search Amazon or EBay for “USB OTG.” OTG is a standard for plugging in USB keyboards, mice, and thumb drives into mobile devices. Running external USB devices off the internal battery will drain it much faster. A powered USB hub would off-load the dongle power consumption. Apps include SDR Touch (wideband receiver program), ADSB Receiver, and SDRWeather for monitoring NOAA weather alerts on your device.
This is the RTL-SDR running on my Android Nexus 7 tablet with SDR Touch receiving the 146.880 repeater in Lakewood, Ohio. It is connected with a USB OTG cable to the RTL-SDR dongle, then to an MCX to SMA, and then SMA to PL259 adapter.This is a screenshot of the above setup with SDR Touch.
What can I do with this thing?
The definitive source on all things RTL-SDR is at the appropriately named www.rtl-sdr.com website. This site has it all. They regularly post software, updates, projects, and new developments. There is something new just about every week.
Some features of RTL-STR.com are The Big List Of RTL-SDR Supported Software. This is the list of software packages that support RTL-SDR on all platforms. Software ranges from wideband receivers to single purpose programs. This will give you some ideas of things to try with RTL-SDR. SDRSharp was written to have plugins extend the functionality of the program. These include plugins that make SDRSharp scan frequencies, add an audio FFT, scope, level meter, or CTCSS (PL) detector.
With the onset of many digital standards and narrowbanding, there are more digital signals out there you may not be able to identify by hearing them or seeing them on the waterfall. This Signal Identification Guide has known types, frequencies they may be heard on, mode, bandwidth, sample audio, and waterfall image. I find myself using the Radio Reference database search utilities to help identify signals and their owners (a premium account maybe needed for some features).
My first SDR project was to use the Raspberry Pi as a SDR remote network server. The Raspberry Pi could be placed in an attic or basement connected to an antenna and controlled by another computer.
Audio can be piped from one program into another using Virtual Audio Cable (VAC). Some time ago, during one of the digital nets on the .76 repeater in Cleveland, I used SDRSharp and VAC to receive the FLDIGI messages being passed on the net. The signal path looked like this: received RF signal (146.760) -> RTL-SDR (signal data) -> SDRSharp (audio out) -> Virtual Audio Cable -> FLDIGI (audio in) -> message decoded on screen. If I had a HackRF, I probably would have been able to transmit messages without using any “ham” gear.
The next and probably final article, I will demonstrate tracking airplanes equipped with ADS-B transmitters and listening to trunked P25 public service radio systems for under $100.
