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I recently got a NooElec NESDR Mini 2, with a small antenna (this one: https://www.amazon.com/NooElec-NESDR-Mini-RTL2832-Antenna/dp/B00P2UOU72) and I've been playing around with SDR# on my laptop. I understand the basics of how to use the software from playing around with websdr for a while now, but I'm far from an expert. The problem is that I dont hear much. Even in the designated HAM, CB and Amateur bands, where I'd think I'd hear something, the only things that show up in the waterfall that I can hear that arent static are constant tones. I can tune local radio, the local weather band, but I dont hear much else of interest, just hundreds and thousands of constant tones all over the spectrum. I'd think between the amateur bands and CB, I'd hear something. I'm in metro Milwaukee, so someone HAS to be broadcasting something I can hear that isn't a tone. I guess I have a couple questions: 1) Are those tones digital data that I somehow need to convert into listenable audio? 2) Why am I not hearing literally any listenable audio anywhere outside of local FM radio? There are tons of those tones I can tune in perfectly, so while I dont have a 50 foot aerial in my backyard, I can tune some things, I just thought there would be more. 3) Is there a good guide for what I should be able to hear locally and where it is on the spectrum?
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Mar 29, 2018 14:50
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Can I do anything with the constant tones I find?
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Mar 29, 2018 15:12
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People on reddit are being useless turds (what’s new?) and I can’t get a decent answer to my question therequote:I recently came into a bunch of RF gear for free, and I was wondering if I can use any of it with the RTLSDR, or if its useful at all for any home setups, not just RTLSDR Anyone?
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Sep 28, 2019 02:33
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I’m gonna probably go driving around tonight hunting signals with my RTL-SDR and the bipole antenna that it comes with. What’s your favorite way of scanning the whole (RTL-SDR usable) spectrum for signals? The SDR# frequency scanner never seems to work for me, but maybe I’m doing it wrong? I can scrub through the frequency’s but that takes forever.
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Sep 28, 2019 19:13
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I’ll try that thanks!
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Sep 28, 2019 19:53
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Tonight’s lesson in RF: Antennas are really complex but also they aren’t? These are both extremely expensive enterprise-grade WiFi antennas. I took them apart to see if there was any logic on them that might need to be powered for them to work. Nope      At least the BelAir one helpfully came with SMA to N adapters
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Sep 30, 2019 02:59
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The first one is before disassembly of the second one. The 3rd and 4th just had an ABS case around them Also, what is up with there being a ton of what sounds like terrestrial radio showing up around 20-30 MHZ? I ran into a boatload of it tonight
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Sep 30, 2019 06:25
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Yeah it was weird. I listened for a while and one of them identified as KISS FM, although they didn’t say which one, which doesn’t help because every major city in the US has a KISS FM It might be rebroadcast? Any real KISS station would have RDS in the sideband and I don’t see that.
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Sep 30, 2019 12:59
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What type of filter handles that?
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Sep 30, 2019 15:30
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Huge rear end lighting storm rolling through Wisconsin. Kind of cool to watch it live http://en.blitzortung.org/live_lightning_maps.php?map=30
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Oct 1, 2019 19:32
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Maybe this thread already knows about that page but it’s extra cool if you turn the stations on and watch stations in western Canada pick up lightning strikes in Cuba. Really cool RF nerdery
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Oct 1, 2019 22:59
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Where do you guys find is the best frequency to hear actual voice? Or maybe I should be asking where is the best place to go to find out for your location? 99% of the spectrum is tones and digital data these days it seems
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Oct 2, 2019 01:10
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CapnBry posted:I think I asked the same thing a few pages back since I had a hard time finding people talking as well. I tried looking up repeater lists and scrolling endlessly around only to hear the (blaring low baudrate sound) of DMR everywhere I went. I even installed DSDPlus and Virtual Audio Cable to decode it only to find it was just the repeater letting me know it was out there. Thanks for the tip! I got DSDPlus up and running last night, didn’t find anything decodable, but I only had about 15 minutes to look around the spectrum. I’ll look around more tonight.
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Oct 2, 2019 12:56
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A drip loop generally won’t have cable below it, that defeats the purpose and transforms it into just a general loop
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Oct 2, 2019 23:48
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Picked up a cool old radio today. It works! It needs some TLC. All the knobs are staticky as hell and the ball on top of the antenna is snapped. But otherwise doesn’t look too bad.  The best part 
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Oct 3, 2019 21:41
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It is a cool formfactor, it stuck out to me on the shelf and triggered the "thats something cool" section of my brain. I'm probably gonna try to restore it. The tuning meter and light dont work, which according to the internet are both common problems for this model
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Oct 3, 2019 22:13
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d0s posted:Unrelated but I checked out your twitter and this blog post you linked there needs to be linked in every single ham radio publication imo Yo put this in the OP of every ham thread ever.
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Oct 27, 2019 20:34
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Imagine using technology to harness electrons to fire sound waves out of a literal magic wand across the entire planet, to have someone pick your shouting up with their magic wand only to use that technology to go “fuckin Mexicans am I right?” Sheesh. Boomers stand down.
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Oct 27, 2019 23:51
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This isn’t technically an amateur radio question , but RF is RF and all the good RF info is here. If I have a usb NIC that can work on both 2.4 and 5ghz networks and has an SMA connector, is there any reason I can’t use an SMA Y-cable to hook both a 2.4ghz and 5ghz antenna to it simultaneously? Are there resistance/signal loss/attenuation/whatever things to worry about?
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Oct 30, 2019 00:39
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What if this setup is RX only, no TX, it’s specifically only reading wireless signals. Do the same problems apply?
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Oct 30, 2019 12:37
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OK, well for $6 I ordered the Y splitter (I actually ordered it before I posted my question, so, oops). I'll do some tests to see how it affects reception vs individual antennae for each spectrum. It will probably be bad, so I'll have to just run one antenna at a time for now. I guess it would help if I explained a bit about what I'm doing because this is a thread full of RF geeks, so maybe someone is interested in my digital Pokemon escapades. Remember Netstumbler? If not, it was this software that you could use back in the very early days of Wifi that would put your wifi card (usually a PCMCIA card, at the time) into what was called promiscuous mode, and just barf the details of every wifi network it could see onto the screen in a big list. This was handy in the early days because not all wifi cards were great at dealing with different networks, and it could be tough to see what was out there. Well, it wasnt long before people discovered that they could drive around with a laptop and gather up all the wifi networks they could see, and "wardriving" was born. In the Bad Old Days, this was an obnoxious process, even with Netstumbler. Not every card could be put into promiscuous mode, and those that could (based on the Orinoco Gold chipset) had their prices inflated quite a bit, putting them out of reach of the average hobbyist. Nowadays, every NIC can operate like the old cards used to in promiscuous mode, without any special hacks or anything. Enter Vistumbler (https://www.vistumbler.net/), a modern-day equivalent to Netstumbler. What Vistumbler does is scan once every second for every Wifi device it can see (access point or not), and report the details of it. The neat part is that it can also note where you are via GPS when it sees the network. So you can drive around, the software knows where you are, and makes a map of all the Wifi devices it can see. It can then filter them any way you wish, or, the big deal here, it can upload them to the WifiDB (https://wifidb.net/wifidb/opt/map.php), which allows everyone to see what is around them for Wifi networks.Vistumbler itself outputs its data in its own format, then into an MDB database, which you can access with MDB Viewer Plus (http://www.alexnolan.net/software/mdb_viewer_plus.htm) to slice and dice the data any way you want. IT will also spit the data out in Google Earth KML format, CSV, etc. Why would you do this? Why not? Its interesting to see whats around you, and you can see a lot of interesting data just by looking at the Wifi RF spectrum. For instance, there are multiple routes across my town where you can go the whole way on open wifi networks, OPEN WIFI NETWORKS IN TYOOL 2019. You also learn a lot about what sort of equipment is around and which businesses use what, etc. Eventuallly, as you collect enough data, you can see how and when the devices move. Its amazing how much data is out there. A one mile stretch from my house to downtown revealed 700 different wifi devices I could see from the street. This is just geocaching and pokemon mixed together, isnt it  YesWhat does it take to do this? Literally just a computer with wifi and GPS is what you need to start. My Setup -A surface 3 Pro (touchscreen and light weight is very nice in a car rig) -A generic USB GPS dongle (the surfaces inbuilt GPS doesnt use a com port, not many modern embedded GPS's do) https://www.amazon.com/GlobalSat-BU-353-S4-USB-Receiver-Black/dp/B008200LHW -A USB Wifi NIC with an SMA port for external antennas (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CCMUN8C) -External 2.4GHZ and 5GHZ omni antennas mounted on a suction mount for the car. Right now I have to run one or the other, but I'm gonna save up for that diplexer to run both. As it stands, the 2.4Ghz omni can see 5ghz signals, but I would guess not very well.  -An external 5ghz directional panel antenna for focusing on a building if needed I've been driving around at night catching 'em all and filling in my local map. The nice thing is the google earth KML maps it makes will easily let you see where you have and havent been, so you can fill more of the map in as you go.
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Oct 30, 2019 16:07
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There are for sure some creepy things you can do with the data. My personal belief is that the data is there for anyone to grab with literally any modern device including cell phones. My antenna rig allows me to “hear” the data from farther away, but that’s it. I don’t join the open networks or anything. I’m receive-only. What you do with the data is what defines its creepiness. Me? I’m filing in maps and playing Access Point Pokemon. Numbers go up and all that. The WiFiDB seems a little designed to gamify things, as it does show your overall numbers, although I’d argue the current owner hasn’t taken this far enough to get people into it. If nothing else this should help raise awareness of just what’s out there. Beve Stuscemi fucked around with this message at 16:28 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 16:24
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Hmmm, I do have a galaxy S5 kicking around. Can WiGLE use an external usb nic through an OTG cable?
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Oct 30, 2019 20:00
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Eh, half the point of my setup is the big gnarly antennas that pick stuff up from far off. I guess Netstumbler still works and actually works with wigle, so I’ll try that out
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Oct 31, 2019 00:19
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Cocoa Crispies posted:Is monitor-mode scanning still a thing like it was on Prism 2 wifi chips? Or is the closest to that scanning with some kind of SDR? From my research, all of the scanning is done with actual WiFi devices. SDR would involve an extra analog to digital conversion that the WiFi devices are already doing. Tons of WiFi devices sold today can monitor for SSIDs no problem. “Promiscuous mode” is a thing of the past
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Oct 31, 2019 18:25
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Yeah probably. I haven’t thought about wardriving since the early 2000’s
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Oct 31, 2019 22:30
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Lmao. That is a worry of mine, while pokemoning access points sometimes I have to drive a block multiple times. Thankfully the antennas are in the car. I don’t know if it would be better or worse with the antennas on the outside.
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Nov 1, 2019 00:16
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Wardriving rig 2.0 I got sick of having the antennas on the window and the surface tablet knocking around the car, so I decided to build an all in one solution    It’s a Getac T800 8.1” Windows 10 machine. It’s an Atom Z8700 quad core processor with 8gb(!) of ram. I fabbed up an antenna mount out of some powder coated aluminum stock and a tablet holder. Now I just need a shorter tripod. My current one is too tall and the antennas hit the ceiling of my car
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Nov 1, 2019 18:19
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Have modern CB radios gone full digital these days? I ask because I picked up a set of Cobra HH36 ST CB radios at my local Goodwill (which is loaded with radio gear these days, weirdly). Of course they can still talk to each other and will make for some nice walkie talkies, but are modern CB radios on any kind of technology that these can pick up? http://www.radiopics.com/CB%20Radio/USA%20CB/1-Handheld/Cobra/Cobra_HH-36ST.htm
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Nov 7, 2019 18:19
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CB is interesting to me because it’s an easy and cheap service to transmit on. When you’re like me and have recieve only devices like RTL-SDR’s and whatnot and don’t have a HAM license, that’s a big deal.
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Nov 8, 2019 14:31
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It’s what Jonny said. I got two brand new in box radios for $6.99 at goodwill, no license, no training. I can hand one off to someone, or my kid even, and have some pretty serious 4 watt walkie talkies, or I can pick up CB traffic with them. I’m not opposed to licensing at all, that’s not it. But transceiver hardware gets pricey
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Nov 8, 2019 21:27
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You know the song, chuds and weird radios go together like birds of a feather
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Nov 9, 2019 01:26
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What is the $20 baofeng? I keep seeing that referenced
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Nov 12, 2019 05:12
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How can we best communicate? I’ve got it!!! With 9000 different inscrutable and incompatible protocols! 
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Dec 11, 2019 14:13
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I want to know more about that Rc monster truck with the aperture science wheels
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Dec 14, 2019 18:29
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That. owns. Is there video of it?
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Dec 14, 2019 20:54
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That is sick and I know this isnt the thread for it but I find that massively interesting
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Dec 14, 2019 22:56
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Please do not post the url for my culinary academy
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Dec 21, 2019 03:01
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I understood maybe 1/10th of that sentence
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Jan 8, 2020 19:47
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If you have a Mac just run Windows in boot camp. Way easier than screwing with Linux in a vm
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Mar 24, 2020 16:53
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