Trying to find SDR software to scan bookmarks

Forums › Gadgets, robotics, home automation, electronics (including wearables) › Trying to find SDR software to scan bookmarks

pomtom44

128 posts

Master Geek

#315711 8-Aug-2024 19:49

Gosh I keep forgetting about this site,
Hopefully someone here can help?
And im hoping im posting in the right sub forum

I have pulled out my old SDR kit and want to start using it to scan whats around on the "public" radio spectrums.
The issue I have found now is I will spend some time scanning known blocks to find active channels, and then bookmark them,
But im now looking for a way to scan my bookmarked list in the background and just have it tune in if something is picked up.

I have tried a few different SDR softwares, but nothing quite has what im after.
SDRangel seems too compliacted to setup
SDR ++ Has bookmarks, and scanner, but not scan bookmarks
SDR# kind of has it in older versions, but I can't find one which works proplery, and I think the addins have changed and no longer work on newer versions, or dont do what they used to do.
And a few others I cant remember now.

Just wondering if anyone out there has any ideas of software which I can try?

Oblivian

7284 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

#3269609 8-Aug-2024 20:57

From querying previously, they suggested GQRX as capable Of saving bookmarks. Then using squelch threshold to jump over the.

There's a few gqrx-scan like scripts.

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nickt

90 posts

Master Geek

#3269614 8-Aug-2024 21:45

I've tried various GUI-based SDR apps and didn't really like them. In the end settled on RTLSDR-Airband (github repo, docs) as a command line alternative on Linux. It has a "scan" mode to hop through discrete frequencies, the docs say 5 hops/second. Or if you are lucky and have bookmarks which are close (typically within 2.5 MHz for the usual USB dongles) then you can use multichannel mode and have full output from each freq without losing any overlapping transmissions.

Fair warning that it's no good for Windows, or for finding the frequencies, and the initial setup is a bit of work. Say you're on some Linux distro - it's not in the package repositories so need to compile it; IME this isn't too bad on Ubuntu because the docs are good. Alternatively there are Docker images now. Then there are decent example configuration files to start with, and a bit of Linux sound configuration fun to be had. After all that it works pretty reliably, and doesn't use up lots of CPU cycles with spectrum analyzers etc.

Anyway worth a look, if that made more sense to you than not.