sdr receiver

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jimmyk

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was reading a thread on the other side about hf radio for weather info. someone suggested sdr radio receiver. having never heard of it i looked on ebay where i get all my technical information! they retail at about 40 quid. plug into your laptop. anyone with any experience of these. looks cheap enough to play with
 
A little experience..... There are any number of SDR's on USB sticks out there. I believe there is a 'magic' chip set which is the version you want... i can't remember what it is called. I set mine up to receive VHF AIS signals, pass the audio to another program that decoded the audio to a data stream and passed that to openCPN vi TCP/IP to show received AIS signals live on charts. Total cost about £35 and a bit of messing around.

http://www.rtl-sdr.com/ais-decoding-video-tutorial-with-opencpn-aismon-and-rtl-sdr/

They are extremely wide band receive, so I guess could easily be used for weather reception.
 
You need an up converter HF to VHF for most cheap Software Defined Radios. Still quite cheap and worth a play. Widely used by people who monitor HF DSC from home. Not yet tried mine at sea myself as have ICOM SSB.
 
Alpha22 said:
A little experience..... There are any number of SDR's on USB sticks out there. I believe there is a 'magic' chip set which is the version you want... i can't remember what it is called...
Click to expand...

RTL2832

See http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?362984

I've got a couple of links to suitable gear, but I'm not allowed to post them anymore. Search Amazon for B009VBUYA0
 
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nigelmercier said:
I've got a couple of links to suitable gear, but I'm not allowed to post them anymore. Search Amazon for B009VBUYA0
Click to expand...

Surely no-one is going to complain about links which don't have affiliate stuff in them?

FWIW I find ebay is cheaper for this kind of thing: Stick rtl2832 into an ebay search and there's folks will flog you the same thing for under six quid, postage included. Amazon obviously quicker than china and arguably lower risk but personally I've not so far had a problem with ebay electronics from the far east.
 
I've been using metscan meteo to listen to a proper HF radio then print out the faxes. I've also been playing with SDR using 2832 and funcube dongle. The problem is to get one program to listen to the other in the same laptop, I can't see me simply plugging speaker to phones..could it be that easy?
 
Billjratt said:
I've been using metscan meteo to listen to a proper HF radio then print out the faxes. I've also been playing with SDR using 2832 and funcube dongle. The problem is to get one program to listen to the other in the same laptop, I can't see me simply plugging speaker to phones..could it be that easy?
Click to expand...

http://software.muzychenko.net/eng/vac.htm


You missed this bit.....Get it to work and life is but a dream.... :) Does what it says on the tin and takes the sound from the SDR radio software and puts it into the fax software.
 
I picked one of these dongles up off ebay and was playing around with it last night. Interesting device. The aerial it came with is pretty flimsy. Is there something that might be more robust to fix to the pushpit? I might then use a usb extension cable and put the dongle in the back locker.
 
dgadee said:
I picked one of these dongles up off ebay and was playing around with it last night. Interesting device. The aerial it came with is pretty flimsy. Is there something that might be more robust to fix to the pushpit? I might then use a usb extension cable and put the dongle in the back locker.
Click to expand...

You can get 10m USB extension cables (basically powered hubs), but I would suggest using coax instead.
 
Bi111ion said:
You can get 10m USB extension cables (basically powered hubs), but I would suggest using coax instead.
Click to expand...

What aerial though? I suppose I should have said I was reallly after NOAA weather satellite images at 137 Mhz (it sounds as though I know what I am doing, but that's not the case). There seem to be a variety of options and a search of YBW suggested that anything would actually do (Lenseman - http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?216843-Weather-for-Lowbandwidth-Satphone-Users/page2).
 
A quarter wave dipole would do. I am not sure how strong the signal is. If it is strong a cheap rubber duck antenna designed for a ham 2m (or airband vhf) hand-held transceiver would probably be ok. It might work off a whip antenna designed for marine VHF - the ideal would be a little longer but it does not matter so much for receive. It is line of sight so mounting it high up helps. If you can experiment try a wire about 54.7cm long.
 
Well, I've been doing a bit of research on weather images from the SDR dongle and perhaps others are interested. It seems that a QFH is the usual method (something to do with circular polarization which I don't understand) for getting weather images from satellites on the 137 Mhz band.

One company - http://www.xaxero.com/skyeye.htm offered these in stainless but no longer does.
Another company - http://www.yachtsoft.com/ offered a stainless small and a larger one but no longer does.
I have not been able to find any other vendors. Are there any?

There are various instructions on making these, but perhaps the best I have found is http://www.jendela.nl/diversen/PADAT137LES_web.pdf This looks like a project for next winter.

Here's a picture of one version:

micromarine6by20inchesat3lbs.jpg
 
dgadee said:
Well, I've been doing a bit of research on weather images from the SDR dongle and perhaps others are interested. It seems that a QFH is the usual method (something to do with circular polarization which I don't understand) for getting weather images from satellites on the 137 Mhz band.

One company - http://www.xaxero.com/skyeye.htm offered these in stainless but no longer does.
Another company - http://www.yachtsoft.com/ offered a stainless small and a larger one but no longer does.
I have not been able to find any other vendors. Are there any?

There are various instructions on making these, but perhaps the best I have found is http://www.jendela.nl/diversen/PADAT137LES_web.pdf This looks like a project for next winter.

Here's a picture of one version:

View attachment 49372
Click to expand...

I made myself one of these for use at home: http://www.gregorystrike.com/2010/05/16/quadrifilar-helix-antenna-137-mhz/

However, afloat I've found that a bit of wire onto the backstay does fine for both HF wefax and APT transmissions from NOAA satellites around 137.5MHz. (SDR or scanner into laptop or Raspi).

SDR lets you can extend the bandwidth so no need to retune because of the doppler effect.
 
agurney said:
SDR lets you can extend the bandwidth so no need to retune because of the doppler effect.
Click to expand...

Is that something to do with the circular polarization?

I presume you mean that you just look for the peak single around 137 Mhz and that's where the images are?
 
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