SDR Software

[KE4EST]

What software does everybody use for their SDRs. I have SDR# and HDSDR. I am still figuring out HDSDR, so not sure which one I like the best yet.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

So far I have only used SDR# and so far I have really only tuned in local FM, Weather and a few police frequencies.

I got the downconverter but havent had time to play with it yet, but hope to find time after CES and see if I can get any shortwave in.

 

[Santa Clause]

I use SDR Console v2.0, the others wouldn't work well on my slow PC. Don't know how good it performs compared to them but It picks up some ham and state & local police pretty good, would like to get the converter for the lower frequencies at some point. Been using my old tv antenna on the roof but I think I'll build a discone to see what else I can receive.

 

[mikelib]

I have a Flex Radio 3000 ham transceiver that uses PowerSDR v2.7.2 and a Flex 1500 that uses the same software.

 

[Joe DC]

There is ADSBSharp for using the DVB-T dongle as virtual radar for aircraft viewing.
TVSharp for analog TV viewing. Although I cannot get it to work on my setup.
MMSSTV Ifor viewing slow scan TV on the Amateur radio bands.
In addition there are a slew of plug-ins for SDRSharp to expand the fun!

 

[KE4EST]

I have got to re-install MMSSTV I used to use it all the time to send and receive SSTV on 40 and 20. I need to see if I can get it to work on my set-up.

 

[Titanium]

SDR# with all of the different plug-ins is hard to beat. Going to be connecting the second DVB-T tuner and give the trunk tracking a try.

Use ADSBSharp for aircraft "radar", but the novelty of watching blips move about on the screen wears thin quickly.

I have loaded HDSDR, but still figuring it out. Really like the radio style GUI as it feels like I am sitting in front of a nice piece of radio hardware. Easy to forget that it is a $16 dongle behing all of these menus!

 

[Jim S.]

I have got to re-install MMSSTV I used to use it all the time to send and receive SSTV on 40 and 20. I need to see if I can get it to work on my set-up.

I have MMSSTV working for receiving. There's still lots of analog SSTV on 20, but the crowd on 40 seems to prefer digital these days. (I have EasyPal installed for receiving digital, but it's hard to get a complete file received if you can't send requests for missed blocks, so I pretty much ignore digital SSTV unless I've got a huge signal coming in.)

For anyone who doesn't know, there are three ways, more or less, to get a digital decoding program to work with an SDR program on Windows.

The first is to check if your audio mixer control program offers you a "stereo mix" selection in the input panel. Most used to, then it went out of vogue for a while, although sometimes it was just hidden and needed to be enabled. I think my last few systems had it enabled by default again. This is the easiest method, but if you have anything else on your system making sound, it'll screw up your decodes.

The second one is to use a "virtual audio cable" driver that provides a device that you can assign as the SDR software's audio output device and another device that you can assign as the decoder's audio input device. This device should also show up in your Windows mixer input panel, so you can select it as a source to listen to so that you can monitor your SDR audio at all times, rather than switching inputs just to decode. For years, the only virtual audio cable drivers were commercial, but there are now donationware alternatives available from http://vb-audio.pagesperso-orange.fr/Cable/index.htm

The final alternative is, of course, to install a second sound card and connect a cable from its input to the output of the main sound card. But this poses the same interference potential as using the "stereo mix" input.

 

[Balock]

I've had the same problem with digital SSTV on 20 (the digital crew typically runs on 14.233) and have successfully captured one full file using HDSDR as the receiver. Too much noise and not enough signal.

I've been using the free/donor-ware virtual audio cable in Windows 7 for SDR and it's been working very well. Most of the decoding software I've tried recognizes the virtual cable without problem.