Last weekend I was invited to speak at the Contest Universtity in Friedrichshafen, Germany. This year I tried to visualize a rather abstract topic, the influence of technologies on the art of contesting.
Mainly two topics are discussed: Information Management and Software Defined Radios.
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On my ongoing search for SDR appliances, I discovered a couple of weeks ago an SDR (Softrock & Linux) based Beacon Monitoring System. The system is making use of the NCDXF Internation Beacon Project (IBP) which consists of 18 timely synchronized automated transmitters, located around the world. It monitors the signals on the various bands and generates in real-time a graphical chart showing the signal’s strength. The chart is uploaded to a webserver and accessible for everyone through the Internet. Lately I had the possibility to interview the author of the system, Atsushi (JN1SDD). In this interview he revealed with great deepness how the system is build up. I hope you will enjoy this interview as much as I did!
If you are using Ubuntu Linux you might have problems to open the Dutch WebSDR page. The problems appears in both, Firefox and Chrome. Canonical does not ship the Sun’s Java Runtime Environment anymore with Ubuntu. Instead they included OpenJDK and IcedTea, a Java Web browser plugin. Unfortunately, IcedTea does not work with the WebSDR Java Applet. However, there exists a solution. Read how I fixed the problem.
Three years ago I added a Software Defined Radio (Softrock Clone) to the 455kHz intermediate frequency of my FT1000MP shortwave receiver. The idea was to use it as a spectrum scope in conjunction with CW Skimmer. Unfortunately the solution has one big disadvantage: I can’t use it with Win-Test my favorite Contest Software. In a detailed investigation I found out why CW Skimmer and Win-Test can not be used simultaneously with the same Radio. Now, about past 30 month later, the situation has improved. However there is still one little change necessary to finally be able to use CW Skimmer and Win-Test with (my) FT1000MP. Read in this article what has changed and what is still missing (my wish)!
This week I had the pleasure to interview Martin, IW3AUT. He’s the developer and founder of the Italian PMSDR Software Defined Radio receiver. In this interview you will get a look inside a successful SDR project. You will read about the design goals, the milestones of the project, the problems which Martin encountered an how he solved them. Enjoy the interview!
I decided to have a deeper look into Flexradio’s SDR Software PowerSDR. PowerSDR is published as open source under the GPL license and was written under Visual Studio 2003 against the old .NET 1.1 Framework. Unfortunately, the code was never migrated to a higher Version of Visual Studio. The last couple of days I had enough time to dive deep into the source code and finally make it compilable under Visual Studio 2008. In this post I’ll share the details with you.
[This article has been updated on 7/April/2010]
A lot of magazine and articles have already covered the principles of software defined radio. Most of them contain mathematical equations which require a greater level of math. Certainly, without math there would be no SDR, but I believe, that the concept of SDR can also be explained without. Let me show you the SDR concept from a different point of view!
Did you know that in 2009 more than 6000 Softrock kits have been ordered? Isn’t this an impressive number? Even having no concrete figures how many HF transceivers have been sold this year by the major brands like Yaesu and Icom, the trend is unoverseeable. The popularity of Software Defined Radio has increased significantly in 2009.
In the third article we will have a deeper look into the TX path of the FA-SDR-TRX. All components will be discussed, including the optional 1 Watt amplifier.
After a systems view on the FA-SDR-TRX, it’s time to go into more detail. This post is dedicated to FA-SDR-TRX’s receiver.
The FA-SDR-TRX is an allband low cost software defined radio. The FA-SDR-TRX was created by Harald DL2EWN an described in an article series in the German Ham Radio Magazine Funkamateur. After the big success of the single band kits like Softrock, SDR4080 or Genesis, the FA-SDR-TRX is the next step in the evolution of SDR kits. Thanks to the support of Harald I’m able to provide a detailed description of the concept behind FA-SDR-TRX.
Do you know what Mercury, Penelope and Pandora have in common? Yes, they are important characters in greek mythology. But did you know that there is also a Software Defined Radio Project with components called like this? The High Performance Software Defined Radio (HPSDR) project is currently the most sophisticated SDR project, lead by the Amateur Radio community. Yesterday, I stumbled upon the HPSDR Podcast! Continue Reading »
Short, but interesting news: I have the pleasure to show you some exclusive pictures of the FA-SDR-TRX prototype!
In its october edition, the German Ham Radio magazine Funkamateur started about an multi-article series of an all-band 1-Watt SDR transceiver called FA-SDR-TRX. Read here a first assessment.
Did you ever think that your GSM phone calls are encrypted and can’t be monitored? Well, unfortunately GSM has been cracked. Last week Steve Gibson explained in his weekly Podcast Security Now! how GSM can be cracked.