This excellent article from SWLing.com shows a number of practical options for indoor antennas:

https://swling.com/blog/2018/09/shortwave-antenna-options-for-apartments-flats-and-condos/

This will be of particular interest to users of HDSDR who would like to use it with the RSPduo.

We are pleased to announce the release of the ExtIO plugin for the RSPduo. This release uses the latest API (v3.01) which has also been updated. The plugin will work both in single tuner as well as dual tuner mode so multiple applications can use the same RSPduo at the same time.

The plugin installer will automatically install the Windows 3.01 API so there is no need to install it separately.

It will put the ExtIO dll into a default directory (usually C:\Program Files (x86)\SDRplay) and then you should copy that into your application install directory (e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\HDSDR)

In order to improve the interoperability between this plugin, SDRuno and dump1090, both of those applications have been updated as well. There have been no other functional changes to those applications.

All of the installers can be found on the SDRplay downloads page (https://sdrplay.com/downloads)

We have been collaborating with RS Components to put together  a demonstrator “laptop radio” with full SDR receive and display capability.  This is a good way to introduce newcomers to the world of Radio Communications and an exploration of the wireless spectrum.   We took the popular Raspberry Pi based Pi-Top laptop computer to see if we could easily add an SDRplay RSP to it   (see https://pi-top.com/products/pi-top to find out more about the Raspberry-Pi based modular computer designed for educational and developer use).

The Pi-Top has a pull-away panel above the keyboard under which additional circuit boards can be mounted.  We found that the RSP1A circuit board fitted snugly inside as you can see in this picture:

We also added an additional rotary shaft encoder to act as a tuning knob, and an external SMA coax socket for the antenna.  This “concept video” shows the resulting unit which becomes a powerful compact “all in one” SDR radio with keypboard and display.  The purpose of the video is to show the kind of educational project which can encourage computer lovers  to explore the radio spectrum:   https://youtu.be/C4U1r-lF-YI

The video uses the off-the-shelf SDR package “Cubic SDR” but as can be seen in another other recent video from SDRplay,  we have additional guides for those using non-windows software in conjunction with an RSP:  https://youtu.be/ekFgShByK20

This Pi-Top + RSP combination could form the basis for any number of educational or research projects alongside bespoke Raspberry Pi software controlling the full functionality of an RSP.

RS Components reference page: RSP1A:   https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/radio-frequency-development-kits/1503954/

RS Components reference page: Pi Top (UK keyboard version):  https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/processor-microcontroller-development-kits/9176213/

Cubic SDR software site: https://cubicsdr.com/

For those heading to Alabama this weekend for the Huntsvillve hamfest, be sure to drop by the Kenwood stand and meet Steve from SDRplay who will be running demos and answering technical questions.

Next to the Kenwood stand is Ham Radio Outlet, our US channel partner and reseller.

This week saw Simon Brown of SDR Console release V 3.02 of SDR-Console which now has added support for the RSPduo (in single tuner mode).  Simon relies on donations to support much of his work so please give generously via his website on https://www.sdr-radio.com/Software/Downloads .  SDR Console remains a great way to provide remote access to an RSP.   For those of you thinking about buying an RSP you can try out actual RSPs around the world by going to http://www.sdrspace.com/Version-3 where, if you scroll down you can see a list of all the available remote SDRs – usually there are at least 10-20 RSPs on there, to try out (avoid the ones with padlocks or warning triangles!)     For those of you with an RSP wanting to make yours available for remote listening (great to play with at work for example!) then this video guide shows how to do it (some of the exact screens may have changed since the video was made): https://youtu.be/z2jr_ksIMp8

We are testing the EXTIO plugin for the RSPduo and hope to have that out within a matter of days – this will enable HDSDR to run the RSPduo.

Many thanks for all the positive feedback from our Non Windows Video guide which is encouraging us to get on with the next one which instead of Cubic SDR,  will take you through the GNU installation.

I am late getting out a blog on the educational project we are doing in conjunction with RS Components to put an RSP1A inside a Pi-Top Raspberry-Pi laptop computer – it will come very soon!

Finally, one thing we really enjoy at SDRplay is looking at the numerous videos posted by users – like this cool one taken during the recent meteor shower: https://youtu.be/xDmPZTbI-ss

Last month we introduced our interactive web interface for non-windows installations, for people who want to create their own software builds – it included details on how to get up and running with these our libraries. There’s a link to this in our downloads section of the website: https://sdrplay.com/non-windows-workflow

Well now, we have released the first of what should be a series of videos demonstrating how this works in practice.

The video talks through how to get started and is a step-by-step guide to the installation process for people using non-windows platforms such as Linux or Raspberry Pi and who want to build their own configuration (i.e. not using a ready made build).  This video goes on to show installation of Cubic SDR on the resulting platform.  We plan in future videos, to show the process for GQRX, Pothosware and GNU radio.

Click here to view the video: https://youtu.be/ekFgShByK20

The video should be useful to developers and students who want to control the RSP directly using the API for their own radio spectrum processing applications.

More Library information:

As part of our plans to increase the software support for the RSPduo, we have updated 2 key libraries to enable single tuner mode functionality using API 2.13 on all supported platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux – both x86 and ARM based). The first of these libraries is SoapySDRPlay (https://github.com/pothosware/SoapySDRPlay) and the second is gr-osmosdr (https://github.com/SDRplay/gr-osmosdr/tree/sdrplay2)

SoapySDRPlay is used within the SoapySDR framework for applications that support this flow, e.g. CubicSDR and Pothosware

gr-osmosdr is used within the Gnu Radio framework for applications that support this flow, e.g. Gnu Radio Companion (GRC) and GQRX

Over on the SDRplay forum, Mike Rooke has been checking out how coherent the two tuners of the RSPduo are. Using the sample v3 api code for windows he added code to dump both tuner IQ streams to stdout. An earlier version of the play_sdr command line app that he’d hacked together for his RSP2s under Linux already gave him antenna switching, tuning and frequency hopping. Taking the tuning bits of that code and porting it to windows enabled Mike to do basic testing of the RSPduo, to check how coherent both tuners are. – Mike summarises this as “in a  word, excellent”.

Here’s his video showing the duo tuning via a windows laptop streaming IQ samples (via netcat) to a Linux server running baudline.
https://urlme.net/dl/sdrduo-dualtuningtest.mp4

And a still capture

Mike writes “The main learning with the API, was the getting the correct initialisation sequence to use for the dual tuner use, and updating the example code to actually output samples. You can see Mike’s forum post which includes the relevant example code expansion. It’s not a complete example, and needs incorporating/rewriting for the final requirements of your  particular application.  Go to:  https://sdrplay.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3508