Software Defined Radio Part 2 - Decoding Digital Transmissions with an RTL-SDR USB Radio

[@kjoewhitehair7367]

SDR trunk is a great program for decoding public safety. Also try slow scan TV from the ISS. And weather satellites are also very fun. You can also pick up a lot of aircraft data in the HF spectrum. And also weather data in HF spectrum

[@TheRealBanana]

I never had much luck with DSD+ (non fastlane) and switched to using SDRTrunk instead with great results. It can channel follow and use multiple radios to cover a larger bandwidth than a single radio.

[@BillyLapTop]

Great video Lon! SDR radios are great fun for sure. Your presentation is excellent at explaining what one can do with them. I go back to the early 80's operating packet radio on 2 meters and 70 cm bands. Did a lot of satellite work then too. Good luck on your ham license.

[@RichCasey]

Lon: as a long time ham, I’m so glad to see you got your license. That said, I’m pretty new to the SDR world, and this video was very informative. I appreciate your enthusiasm and your explanations are extremely well done. There are few folks that can explain technical subjects as well as you do. Thanks and 73 de N5CSU

[@LonSeidman]

Glad to be of help! A lot of what you learn here will help on on the transmit side too.

[@earlyadapter643]

Very well researched tutorial. When looking at this sigidwiki, i was surprised that the vast majority of protocols are actually 2 cascaded modulations, often NFM for the RF and something else at audio freq, which shows that somebody actually took a walkietalkie and built a modem for the mic/speaker inputs. I had expected that almost all decoders that you hang behind the sdr would require I and Q streams piped over the virtual audio cable. Again learned something new today.

[@TomBo501]

Hi Lon, Good luck with your Technician license exam. I obtained mine several decades ago when Morse Code was still required for other licenses (not Technician).....N0QBI (November Zero Quebec Bravo India) is my call sign. I bought a couple of two way radios from Amazon for using while we RV in our 5th wheel trailer. Lots of fun and useful when I am backing the trailer up with the wife being a spotter. Search for BAOFENG UV-5R. I also got involved with the local Weather Warn Spotter group when I lived in MN. I learned a lot about weather going through the training. Thanks for doing an awesome review of the SDR. Didn't know it existed until I saw your reviews. As always, your reviews are very thorough. Much appreciated. Thank you, Tom (73)

[@sinisterpisces]

Thanks for this great video. I tried to set up a radio receiver (an actual big, physical unit that was meant to be paired with an equally large physical transmitter) several years ago, but the learning curve was too steep, and trying to figure out what antennas and other equipment I needed was too daunting. None of it would talk to a computer, either. I ended up giving the equipment to a family member. This looks like a lot of fun--and much easier and cheaper to experiment with.. I just ordered the kit. :)

[@GaryLech]

You're ready for the tech exam Lon! Thanks for all the VLOGS.

[@LonSeidman]

Thanks Gary! I passed the tech a few months ago and now working towards my General!

[@ricpla6930]

Excellent informative video. I just received the dongle and antenna today and within minutes I was surprised to actually hear faint voices coming through the speaker, I instantly felt like I was cool. I’m hooked now and I appreciate you going into detail because it helped a lot.

[@erichaan770]

Please keep us posted on all the things you find with SDR. Love the content. I had no idea this was a thing and I find it fascinating. I've begun studying for my technicians license as well!

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

I have a Chromebook laptop

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

I am finally starting to pick up trunk radio in other stuff

[@ruellerz]

Omg this vid is info packed! I've been using my rtl sdr v4 and having fun

[@newtron9]

Yea, I had 1 v3 now I am using a pair of V4s and trying to get SDR-Trunk to work correctly, so much to take in, a lot of trial and error.

[@JoeAnshien]

Great stuff Ron. My wife and I got our Tech licenses about 10 years ago before we went sailing. Sadly never did much with them. Looking forward to taking the journey with you.

[@dojohns]

absolutely an excellent presentation. Clear and precise and graphically presented for a newbie like me.

[@stevephipps9305]

Welcome to the Ham world, 73 from KB3VOG

[@adrianobueno6984]

Really great work, very complete and comprehensive! I just missed you talking about the one that I use the most with my SDR: SW Radiogram! Maybe in the part 3? :-)

[@LonSeidman]

oooh that's one I hadn't heard of before. Time to dive in :)

[@GadgetAddict]

You might like to try the "simple dmr plugin" as an alternative to a virtual sound card and DSD. Some physical radios can be fed into the same software, using an audio cable. But a lot of the time it won't work because the audio output on the headphone jack is too narrow.

[@TheKingOfInappropriateComments]

The bug bit him and bit him hard. He's already found the unencrypted hospital pagers. 😄

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

Lol

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

man

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

Ohok

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

hey hey how did he do that

[@neutrinolinux]

If you're using a physical radio, you should be aware that many of them filter and clean the audio before sending it out the jack. So if you use the earphone jack, you might be missing certain parts of the audio needed to decode, especially the more complicated digital transmission modes.

[@Larry21924]

This is a masterpiece. I recently read a similar book, and it was a masterpiece in its own right. "The Art of Meaningful Relationships in the 21st Century" by Leo Flint

[@gudenau]

I've been thinking about trying to set up a system to automatically decode SSTV stuff. Not really sure how I could make that work fully automatically or find it manually. That's just stuff I'll have to research and learn. Edit: You can setup Window's audio subsystem to monitor a mic like the virtual audio cable to double check things!

[@MartinPaoloni]

Darn it, Lon, I have too many hobbies already! 😂

[@TheIan350z]

Lol, one of us, one of us :). BTW, the tech license is super easy…. Might as well study the general test once you reliably get 90% on the tech practice tests…. I passed both in the first go, a year later I went ahead and passed the extra. It’s kinda silly how easy it is these days. No code ftw :)

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

I thought that was illegal

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

Me to same here

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

Lol

[@warsurplus]

Really good stuff Lon. Thank you for sharing this peek into what's going on in the RF spectrum all around us that contributes to modern wireless communications in ways other than personal mobile phones. APRS has had many successful applications that are implemented for surprisingly low cost such as tracking ambulances during disaster drills in my community. Amateur radio operators have helped relay important humanitarian messages during the conflict in Ukraine. Many amateur operators are prepared for loss of utility line power and can operate in austere conditions. I hope you seek out a local ARRL sponsored amateur radio club for more goings-on in your area. The trend on VHF and UHF is the transition to digital voice radio using modes such as Dstar, DMR and Fusion. Your technician class license will give you all the privileges you need above 50 MHz.

[@thecarradioandarongtong4631]

Great video, you are our Guru :) is there a way that the softwares can detect digital data tone protocols and digital audio data types on their own and then help convert it back ? Regards from India and best wishes !

[@MiTreasureHunter]

General offers so much more opportunity and is not much more difficult to get.

[@DavidEvans-dt2kc]

Lon, try the fldigi suite of free programs for digital modes in amateur radio. Very easy to use and will handle all protocols.

[@Thee_Squatch]

Welcome to the rabbit hole!

[@BitsofSkin]

This was an extremelly well presented video. Thank you.

[@stevewest438]

Hi. NZ Police operate a P25 trunked digital radio system in the ESB (VHF 138-144 MHz) and ESC (UHF 494-502 MHz) bands. This includes an AES 256-bit encryption layer, which secures the radio network from unauthorized monitoring. So I'm screwed???

[@technick2786]

Thanks! I have read a lot and watched a lot on this SDR.. and put in a lot of bookmarks, but your presentation was spot on. I have since reading this dumped some of those bookmarks LOL🤣. Thanks again & God Bless.

[@CantankerousDave]

Do these pick up spooky Cold War-era number stations?

[@W8RIT1]

yes, if you were tuned into that frequency.

[@TheKingOfInappropriateComments]

Lon once you get your ticket you will open up the doors to a whole new world of gear to test and do content on. You might even have to start a second channel if you do that because there is soooo much. Good luck. If you can learn as much as you did in the time span that you did, you can easily go straight to general, possibly even extra class. I wouldn't be surprised at all.

[@velorystanes9925]

Very good guide, but Decoding Digital Transmissions is done with specialized software (RTL-SDR is just a receiver)

[@blaa6257]

IMSI Capturing is possible or not possible on this rtl-sdr v3 device🙄 jest explain please🦋

[@ManuelPinner]

Use a SDR Play RSP DX with SDR Angel Software to Decode Digital Voice Modes and also Video, it's Covers from 1 Khz to 2 Ghz and also have a Adalm Pluto SDR for DATV Reception and Transmitting DATV,

[@tomb9420]

I remember my bear car scanner kept picking up a signal , when ever i pointed the antenna in a different direction it would stop , finally I started flipping tandums in the breaker box , then i was able to see what part of the house the signal was coming from. Come to find out , it was coming from a light bulb in the garage. It was the only bulb putting out a signal, I just thought it was weird.

[@joeeagles7528]

Huh? I made a comment about another piece of software but it has disappeared. I did not use any foul language or anything. Here is my comment once again (I removed a link, perhaps that was the problem: Like your channel. Tons of info. Regarding RTL-SDR, there is a piece of software called SDRangel. It's got a lot of plugins and features to do some analogue and digital signal processing without having to pipe the signal to an external application. Different demodulators can track multiple frequencies at the same time within a specific frequency range with just one dongle. If you have two dongles, you can use them with the same software and track different frequency ranges, for instance, track airplane VHF voice combined with ADS-B at 1090MHz. There is a learning curve to get the hang of this piece of software but there are some good channels out there describing it.

[@heliophobix]

What's the best way to decode LoRa? It seems like DSD+ can't decode that.

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

that's why i started listening to mine

[@gregory-hm9gm]

Absolutely fantastic video. Thank you so very much :)

[@coreybabcock2023]

I need some sma adapters for my sdr but I can't afford them and maybe that sat antenna too

[@kevtheskin]

Hi there, Thanks for the video. Are you using a small form factor pc there? If so what is the make please? Cheers 73s Kev

[@omsingharjit]

I found its Frequency sweeping for Spectrum scanning is very slow I am disappointed because I thought it can be use as spectrum analyser but with 1 MHz Screen bandwidth it's not as useful than my Arduino and si4432 based spectrum analyser which is very false in wide range 200 to 900 MHZ

[@worldtour1892]

Sir pl make a video about decoding LMR digital voice

[@kelplicker76]

A physical radio connected via audio cable may not work without doing a discriminator modification on the radio output.👍

[@CEG3RD]

Keeping that mini PC?

[@raymondfb]

thank you great video

[@twiki1963]

2:55 - Don’t skimp when getting a good antenna!

[@RADIOTObg]

HI Lon, with this rtl-sdr you can listen TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) which is digital voice. I do this with two different software: SDR# - kzbin.info/www/bejne/eYq2hY2Ioq6Ip6s and OpenEar - kzbin.info/www/bejne/nmWxk6ycp9yMpNk It's easy. The pay-version of DSD Plus have more digital modes: kzbin.info/www/bejne/noOwhnSdj9OfnJY You can see "no audio" reception of United States Department of Defense (AirForce) P25 signal: kzbin.info/www/bejne/fp7SiXyujtNlfKM

[@cemtanca2286]

goodmorning :)

[@johnwest7993]

Last I knew it was illegal to rebroadcast or even communicate the contents of ANY commercial radio communications to which you are not a party.

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

I thought it was illegal to unscramble signals

[@w.e.s.]

After me and others have been trying to download this for the past year I've came to the conclusion they've taken our money and ran. The website is down but still takes "donations"

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

how can you listen to cellphone conversation

[@cemtanca2286]

ohh my got that was 10 years ago :)

[@patriziocrispino]

Bravissimo ottimo

[@thegadgetemporiumaustralia8509]

Why is everything so complex 😢 i dont understand any lf how to install any of this. Can anyome walk me through how to do this step by step? Ill pay you for your time! Thanks!

[@W8RIT1]

I'm not concerned with being paid, I'll try to help in a way that I can. Tell me some things. Do you currently have a SDR? Tell me more about what it is exactly you want to do. Do you want to get up and running by installing software to control the SDR? Do you then want to use the SDR to decode digital transmissions? If so, could you elaborate more? There are radio transmissions from aircraft and ships as well as car key fobs...

[@thegadgetemporiumaustralia8509]

@@W8RIT1 thank you. Very kind of you. I managed to get SDR sharp and SDR trunk working in the end. However I really want to get RTL 433 to work and although it loads up I cannot get some of the other more detailed windows to show the device information. I can get a generic list of the devices so I know the program is running but the verbose screen doesn't let me see what the individual device parameters are. Do you know anything about RTL 433? Thanks so much!

[@W8RIT1]

@@thegadgetemporiumaustralia8509 rtl433 I haven't played around with yet. I also need to learn more about URH, Universal Radio Hacker. Since I work in the industry I'd like to learn more about the format of alarm devices in the ISM band. I have a host of other areas to delve into here, car key fobs, weather stations, etc. I've seen a few interesting videos on a BlackHat channel many from Samy Kamkar, and another from a guy reverse engineering his car tire pressure sensor monitor to the processor.

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

that's what I need

[@frequencywatchers]

SHow Us How REAL radio Would WOrk, I mean, Tuning And Everything, Does It Get Bypassed Or How That Would WOrk?

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

i just now started hearing a lot of stuff now

[@coreybabcock2023]

I use sdr trunk its a lot better

[@davidlum-ny]

Thanks!

[@LonSeidman]

Thanks David!

[@thejuggernaut217]

I wanna listen to p25 phase 1 & 2

[@W8RIT1]

for that I use sdrtrunk....

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

the you play with it the more stuff you hear

[@frequencywatchers]

When You Say "Very Inexpensive" There ARe People Watching You Who Earn Monthly 10 Euros, Its Not VERY UNEXPENSIVE SDR FOR THEM ANd They Might bbe In Hobby !! Im Talking Abbout Myself, But I Don`t Get 10 Euyros A Month, But I Know People Do And If I Would Buy All My Medicine And Do All My Surgeries I Would Be In MINUS Every Month. I DOn`t Do That To Survive So That Sdr Was HUGE BUY For Me

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

man I would be careful of doing that

[@VotecEV2]

Nope, go step by step in order.

[@вечная_мерзлота]

if one is a true Ham he shouldn't have a computer in the first place. the sec he touches it he isn't a ham anymore. stay away from sdr.

[@thesoutherndonkey]

Let people enjoy things.

[@MarkGreen-pp3qy]

Lol