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Getting Started with RTL-SDR and SDRSharp and CubicSDR Created by lady ada https://learn.adafruit.com/getting-started-with-rtl-sdr-and-sdr-sharp Last updated on 2022-07-18 04:47:18 PM EDT ©Adafruit Industries Page 1 of 23 Table of Contents Overview 3 SDR-Sharp for Windows 4 • Download & Install Software Driver Fix 6 SDR# FM Radio 8 SDR# NWR (Weather) Radio 12 • Going forward CubicSDR for mac os 14 • Download & Install Software • Start the SDR Device CubicSDR FM Radio 16 • Signal Type • Center Frequency CubicSDR NWR (Weather) Radio 20 • Going forward F.A.Q. ©Adafruit Industries 23 Page 2 of 23 Overview Software-defined radio (SDR) is a technique for turning a computer into a radio. But not just an AM/FM radio - by using the computing power on your desktop you can listen and decode a wide variety of broadcasts. SDR can turn your computer into a weather-band receiver, a police/fire report scanner, a music listening station, and more! Instead of manually tuning inductors, its all done in software by chips fast enough to pick up and decode radio waves on the fly If you've ever been curious about software defined radio (SDR), this USB stick is the easiest way possible to have fun with a powerful, configurable receiver. Packed with the powerful RTL2832U and R820T tuner, it can tune into signals from 24MHz to 1850MHz. That means you can use a computer (with Windows, Mac, or Linux) to tune into: FM Radio, AM signals (but not AM radio), CW (morse code!), unencrypted radio signals (such as those used by many police and fire departments), POCSAG pagers, and more. In this tutorial we'll show how to get your very first listening adventure underway listening to FM radio and decoding the RDS/RBDS data signal that is sent along with many FM radio stations as well. Want lots more info? There's hundreds of tutorials, posts and projects over at http://www.rtl-sdr.com/ ©Adafruit Industries Page 3 of 23 Next, we'll set up the software -- if you're using windows, head to the next page -- SD R-Sharp for Windows (https://adafru.it/Cd6). On mac os, jump to the page CubicSDR for mac os (https://adafru.it/Cd7). To see some SDR action live, check out this episode of John Park's Workshop: SDR-Sharp for Windows Download & Install Software We'll be using the awesome SDR# software for windows, which is really easy to use and very powerful as well! Visit https://airspy.com/download to download (https:// adafru.it/JAT) - we're using Rev 1243 If for some reason the site is down, we have a mirror of the install folder from 5/19/2014 (https://adafru.it/dsU) We suggest downloading the latest version as there will be minor bug fixes, etc! ©Adafruit Industries Page 4 of 23 Save and uncompress the zip file Double-click on install-rtlsdr.bat Double-click on SDRSharp.exe ©Adafruit Industries Page 5 of 23 Driver Fix Before we continue, we'll have to install the Windows driver for the RTL USB stick and then swap it for a 'low level access' driver. The default driver assumes you'll just be using the RTL-SDR for watching TV or radio but we want to be able to control it to do much more. Plug in the stick, Windows should automatically install the REALTEK 2832U driver Now from inside the SDR# directory, run Zadig which will do the driver swapping for us. Here's a version 2.2 exe if you need it: zadig_2.2.zip https://adafru.it/DkS ©Adafruit Industries Page 6 of 23 From the Options menu, select List All Devices Then from the devices drop-down, find one that says Bulk-In, Interface (interface 0). If there's more then one, select one at a time, and verify below to get the right one. Check that you get USB ID 0x0BDA (vid) and 0x2838 (pid) and the RTL2832UUSB driver Make sure to the right of the green arrow you see WinUSB Click Replace Driver ©Adafruit Industries Page 7 of 23 That's it! SDR# FM Radio Lets start by just listening to every-day FM radio. Open up SDRsharp.exe (you can close Zadig) Begin by selecting the RTL-USB dongle instead of audio card ©Adafruit Industries Page 8 of 23 Select WFM (wide-band FM radio) under the Radio signal type Click on Configure And set the gain about half-way up ©Adafruit Industries Page 9 of 23 You can set your favorite frequency (FM station) by clicking on the large numbers up top Click Play/Start and set the volume starting from low to high so you don't hurt your ears! ©Adafruit Industries Page 10 of 23 You can 'seek' for radio stations by looking for peaks. Click on them to tune in With the latest versions of SDR-Sharp it will automatically detect and decode RBDS/ RDS data that is sent along with FM radio Chances are your radio station is also playing Donna Summer! ©Adafruit Industries Page 11 of 23 SDR# NWR (Weather) Radio Most every-day AM/FM radios can't tune into theNOAA Weather Radio (NWR) All Hazards network but with RTL-SDR we can! NWR is the national weather alert system, which broadcasts weather data as well as emergency alerts. (https://adafru.it/Cd8) Let's tune into the closest weather station to Adafruit Southern California, which is in Los Angeles. You'll want to tune into whatever station is closest to you. To begin, visit the NOAA weather station frequencies-by-county index here (https:// adafru.it/Cd9) The frequency is 162.550 MHz, type that into the SDR# frequency window You can see a little peak, its much smaller signal than the FM radio stations. It's also much thinner which makes it a narrow-band FM rather than wideband. Since its voice, not stereo music, they use less of the frequency band, so select NFM as the decoding type ©Adafruit Industries Page 12 of 23 The station is marked as degraded, but by amplifying the gain on the RTL-SDR we were able to tune in ©Adafruit Industries Page 13 of 23 You should be able to hear a computer-generated voice speaking out the weather forcast. It's not terribly exciting but it is very thorough, often giving very detailed reports. The signal continuously transmits so you can tune in at any time! Going forward now that you have some basic functionality working, try tuning into other frequencies, and trying the different kind of decoding (e.g. CW/AM/NFM) to tune into AM radio! CubicSDR for mac os Download & Install Software On mac os, we'll be using the excellent CubicSDR (https://adafru.it/Cda) crossplatform, open source software. For this tutorial we'll use release version 0.2.3  Head to the Downloads (https://adafru.it/Cdb) page to grab the latest version, or click this link to directly download 0.2.3 Download CubicSDR 0.2.3 https://adafru.it/ARI Once you've downloaded the installer (in this case named CubicSDR-0.2.3Darwin.dmg), double-click it to mount the disk image, and then drag the CubicSDR.ap p to your Applications folder as shown here. ©Adafruit Industries Page 14 of 23 Now, plug your RTL-SDR dongle into a USB port on your mac, and then double-click the CubicSDR.app in your Applications folder to run it. Start the SDR Device When you launch CubicSDR, it will pop up a window asking you to select and start your SDR device. Pick the one named Generic RTL2832U OEM :: 00000001 and then click Start. ©Adafruit Industries Page 15 of 23 CubicSDR FM Radio We'll begin by listening to some broadcast FM radio.  First, make sure your RTL device has started by clicking the File > Stop / Device menu item. When it is running you will see the waterfall frequency display moving at the bottom of the interface, as well as some moving waveforms in the other areas. ©Adafruit Industries Page 16 of 23 Signal Type The CubicSDR software in combination with the RTL dongle can tune and demodulate different ranges and types of radio signals. For this example, we'll select Frequency Modulation Stereo (FMS) as the signal type. Center Frequency Next, you can tune in a station! Start by setting a center frequency for a station you like, by clicking on the numbers under the "Center Frequency" heading. ©Adafruit Industries Page 17 of 23 This will bring a range of frequencies into view -- approximately 3MHz at a time are available. Now, you can set a demodulator down on a range you want to tune. This is done by clicking in the waterfall display, with the cursor at the center of the frequencies you want to hear. This will usually be the orange and red display section, showing you where the strongest signal lies.  Here, the demodulator has been set at 91.499261MHz, and we have a nice strong signal. Music plays! ©Adafruit Industries Page 18 of 23 You can see the fine tuning section in the upper left corner gives us a zoomed in view of the demodulator. You can drag this one left and right in the waterfall section to fine tune, or grab one of the outer edges of the demodulator to change the bandwidth that is being processed. Too wide and you'll pick up unwanted signals, too narrow and you'll start to cut off important parts of the signal. You can search for other stations by scrubbing the peaks display left or right and looking for strong peaks. Set down a demodulator in the waterfall area under a strong peak to listen in. ©Adafruit Industries Page 19 of 23 The frequency band for FM broadcast radio is 88MHz to 108MHz. CubicSDR NWR (Weather) Radio Most every-day AM/FM radios can't tune into theNOAA Weather Radio (NWR) All Hazards network but with RTL-SDR we can! NWR is the national weather alert system, which broadcasts weather data as well as emergency alerts. (https://adafru.it/Cd8) Let's tune into the closest weather station to Adafruit Southern California, which is in Los Angeles. You'll want to tune into whatever station is closest to you. To begin, visit the NOAA weather station frequencies-by-county index here (https:// adafru.it/JJC) The frequency is 162.550 MHz, type that into the CubicSDR tuner window by hovering over the Center Frequency box and hitting spacebar. ©Adafruit Industries Page 20 of 23 You can see a little peak, its much smaller signal than the FM radio stations. It's also much thinner which makes it a narrow-band FM rather than wideband. Since it's voice, not stereo music, they use less of the frequency band, so select NFM as the decoding type. ©Adafruit Industries Page 21 of 23 Click to set a demodulator at the 162.550 MHz peak. You should be able to hear a computer-generated voice speaking out the weather forecast. It's not terribly exciting but it is very thorough, often giving very detailed reports. The signal continuously transmits so you can tune in at any time! Going forward Now that you have some basic functionality working, try tuning into other frequencies, and trying the different kind of decoding (e.g. CW/AM/NFM) to tune into AM radio! ©Adafruit Industries Page 22 of 23 F.A.Q. The SDR dongle seems to get hot! Yep, these run pretty warm. As long as it's still working, you should be good to go. There's a pretty advanced chipset inside which can consume a lot of power What kind of computer do I need? You need a computer with at least one USB 2.0 or higher port. You will also need admin privs to install the software, we used it on Windows 7, XP should be the same. There's also software for Mac and Linux but we don't have tutorials for it. Google around for RTL-SDR and what you wanna do for lots of ideas! ©Adafruit Industries Page 23 of 23