AMRAD at Winterfest 2014

[fgentges at mindspring.com]

The people at Winterfest 2014 were kind enough to provide a couple of 
tables out front for AMRAD to set up and demonstrate some of our latest 
stuff.

We put together a display of what we called a "Cheap Thrill" receiver 
that anyone can build for $121.  The demonstration did not work all that 
well as the building blocked a lot of the VHF/UHF signals we can see out 
in our houses.  Anyway, here is our Cheap Thrill receiver.

The input uses the RTL-SDR dongle that has an antenna input and a USB 
connector output.  These are selling on eBay for less than $10.  It has 
an mcx input connector so we add an mcx-BNC adapter so you can add local 
antennas.

The processor is an EKEN GC10X tablet computer.  This is an Android 
based tablet and is sold by Microcenter for $79.99.  By almost any 
measure it is a bargain.  We add a 32 GB micro SD memory card to get 
more memory.

We added the Android based SDR Touch software.  The basic software is 
free on the Android Play Store.  But for $10 you can get the SDR Key 
that unlocks the spectrum display and the ability to save frequencies. 
This software is written by a fellow in Bulgaria and Andre has had a 
problem getting the key for which he has spent $10 sent to install. 
N4TS and I have gotten the key and have it installed without a problem. 
  We will try to get Andre installed with it shortly.

But like most things, this receiver is only a start.  There is a web site at

rtl-sdr.com

that has a lot more information and shows a lot of software that the 
dongle can run on.  Of particular interest to me is LINRAD that runs on 
Linux and Windows.  This has been around for some time and has a lot of 
sophisticated features.  The author has optimized a driver for these 
dongles and I suspect it will really do some interesting things.  The 
author is SM5BSZ.  He has a newcomer guide you can check out at

http://www.sm5bsz.com/linuxdsp/usage/newco/newcomer.htm

He also has some good videos on Youtube under his call sign.

There is some good information specific to RTL-SDR and LINRAD at rtl-sdr.com

So you can start up with the AMRAD Cheap Thrill setup and then grow into 
the LINRAD setup if you are interested in performance.  Maybe we will 
see a high performance program for Android.

I am going to get some information on the Cheap Thrill up on the AMRAD 
web site in the next few days.

Frank K0BRA