SDR Quest: Looking for Software Defined Radios for FreeBSD

penguinslayer

penguinslayer

I'm interested in a list of SDR's which are supported by FreeBSD. For example, "rtl-sdr." I have no experience with them but I will have if I can find one which works well. :) Are you a SDR user? If so, please say hello!
 
this is a thread I'm also interested in, thanks for opening the discussion.

for me the SDR support in FreeBSD was not great. I have two radio devices (HackRF one and SDRplay RSPdx) and been using them with urh, gnuradio and gqrx with great success in Gentoo.

in FreeBSD HackRF is supported. software wise the coverage is good, but drivers are lacking for some devices - like for the SDRplay.

I got two gripes:
- the hackrf port does not come with devd rules that would alter the usb permissions so that the device can be accessed by non-root users.
- the audio buffer gets corrupted when the radio gets tuned to different frequencies (at least in gqrx) - this needs an aplication restart to fix
 
I always wanted to play with the WinRadio devices when I was into trunk-tracking.
Any way to interface the USB WinRadio versions on FreeBSD?

I have been spying this for a while:
HamGeek ADI Pluto+
So much of this seems to be in our ports tree: libiio, iioscope gnuradio.
It seems like a nice setup.
 
I would like to know how flexible the SDR equipment really is.

Could you do 915MHz LORA over SDR? Perhaps a Wireless Access Point?

What are some uses beyond human audio? Data transfers or a sensor net possible? Networking?

A link to the above mentioned device:
www.sparkfun.com

HackRF One

This is the HackRF One, a Software Defined Radio (SDR) peripheral capable of transmission or reception of radio signals from 1MHz to 6GHz.
www.sparkfun.com www.sparkfun.com
 
Phishfry said:
I would like to know how flexible the SDR equipment really is.

Could you do 915MHz LORA over SDR? Perhaps a Wireless Access Point?

What are some uses beyond human audio? Data transfers or a sensor net possible? Networking?
Click to expand...

for me SDR is a means to demodulate and capture a signal that is being transmitted over the supported frequency band. an RX-only 'wireshark for RF'. so reverse-engineering of unknown digital signals sent by sensors would be one of the use cases. it's also perfect for debugging RF devices and protocols if one happens to create such software or hardware.
another use-case would be a spectrum analyzer - you can even get a nice waterfall (signal strength over frequency over time) on a wide band.
I've seen examples where some use it to receive images from weather satellites - but I expect you need additional hardware to be able to do this.
or as you said, a simple radio to listen to.

if you have complex protocols (like LoRA which AFAIK is using frequency hopping) you should have a look at gnuradio and the large number of modules it can use - in this case google gr-lora - it seems to be able to demodulate LoRA signals and you can further feed that data into a logic chain of other modules that can do filtering, conversions, etc. I'd expect that one would be able to capture LoRA signals, decode them and perform an action based on what was received.

be warned, if you also want to send out a signal via a similar chain you need a radio that has TX capability - which most of them do not have.

I'd love to know what others are using SDR for.
 
Phishfry said:
This seems to be the dividing line in the USA. For transmitter you need DX license? Unless low power RF like Wifi or LoRA ???

I seem to remember wanting the Canadian version of WinRadio because of blocking frequencies issues.
Click to expand...
I do not know these details. you can ask sparkfun since they were located in Boulder, CO IIRC.

keep in mind that most TX capable SDR radios are USB 2 devices with at most rubber duck antennas that do not have a separate power source, so the TX will be quite localized. this ain't no pirate radio unless someone goes the extra mile and ties the SDR to an external amplifier.

also by default the device does not transmit anything, you have to explicitly set up an output chain to generate a signal.

If you simply want to receive and/or send messages over a specific protocol (like LoRA) you should be using a dedicated transceiver instead of an SDR. that way the RX/TX stages and the antenna will be optimized for the carrier frequency of your protocol and the setup complexity will be far lower.
 
I use an inexpensive, no name, light blue USB device (sold as a DVB-T receiver) with rtl-433 running on Alpine Linux to remotely read the heating oil level in my Mother's tank which is 250 miles away. I didn't try FreeBSD as I had an old 32-bit laptop at her place already installed with Alpine, I just went with that. It works well.
 
I can't remember for sure, but I think I heard/read that if you stay in unlicensed bands and power out put is less than (1/10)watt (in the USA) then you don't run afoul of FCC regs with regard to SDR experimentation, but don't take that as gospel.
 
vmb said:
light blue USB device (sold as a DVB-T receiver) with rtl-433
Click to expand...
I don't see that one but a search led me to this:

Buy RTL-SDR Dongles (RTL2832U)

Login to your account Where to Buy RTL-SDR RTL2832U DVB-T Tuner Dongles At RTL-SDR.com we sell significantly improved premium RTL-SDR dongles but keep our profits low and offer free shipping in order to maintain low retail pricing. We strongly believe that our V3 and V4 dongles are currently the...
www.rtl-sdr.com
From ebay $55 bucks but maybe clones.
vmb said:
250 miles away.
Click to expand...
What frequency is used for that range?

From the reviews NOAA Satellite maps sound nice.
 
If you're just curious to see what's out there, check out websdr. The first antenna (0.000 - 29.160 MHz) is really really good and gets ton's of stuff from Europe to North Korea to USA. It's pretty amazing. You will never get a signal so clear on that range with a regular antenna. Theirs is on top of an aluminum building. Their range is so large because they have a custom fpga.
Depending on where you live, SDR is boring. In North America, for example, there's like 5-9 religious channels, 1 music channel, and that's it.
You would need a use-case. If you want TX, the choices are really limited (and expensive). RX has no limit, but uncertified you're limited to 5-8W on commercial hardware (like a walkie-talkie), and nothing at all on experimental hardware.
Maybe look around where you live if there's a radio club. You can see what they do and if it's something you enjoy.
 
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