Sunday, August 29, 2021

Overview of SDR Connections for Radio-Sky Spectrograph

Solar activity captured by K4LED using a RX888 SDR and Radio-Sky Spectrograph.

Radio-Sky Spectrograph (RSS)  is a free Windows program that provides a means to view and save radio spectrograms.  RSS was created to support a series of custom frequency sweeping receivers used by the Radio Jove Project.  Several years ago I added the ability to use an RTL dongle receiver (RTL Bridge), and this was further enhanced by CM2ESP's RTLW[ide]  interface that allows you to achieve spectra widths of up to 30 MHz!

Other contributors have provided interfaces for other SDRs (SDRPlay) and SDR Programs (SDR# and SDR Console).  By creating "plugins" for SDR# and SDR Console, these authors have in essence given RSS the ability to receive data from a large number of SDR models.  To see the models supported by these programs, please visit their websites. I expect the list to get even longer over time.

It is my hope that having these free tools available will encourage some to experiment and enjoy capturing some of the magnificent radio spectrographs of Sun and Jupiter activity that we have seen over the years. And dare I hope that a few will be interested in becoming more involved in the science that can be done with today's inexpensive equipment.


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RF Noise Source NF-1000 SZ evaluation

  I have been working on an automated step calibrator project in recent months, so I was excited when I saw the device shown above on eBay. ...