Building A Global Network Of Open Source SDR Receivers (jks.com) 68
hamster_nz writes: A fellow Kiwi is attempting to crowdfund a world-wide network of open-source, software-defined, radio receivers. Once in place, this will allow anybody anywhere in the world to scan the 0 to 30MHz RF spectrum from the comfort of their HTML-5 web browser. Built on top of the Beaglebone, the "KiwiSDR" RF board also includes a GPS receiver front-end, which will allow timing between receivers to be correlated, giving a lot of options for projects like long baseline interferometry and lightning detection. Prototypes are already deployed, and I've been RXing in Sweden, Australia and New Zealand. [The KiwiSDR design has been detailed on JKS.com, where there is a link to the project's Kickstarter page.]
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Link to Kickstarter (Score:3)
The link in the summary is in the process of being slashdotted... Here is the link to the Kickstarter page:
https://www.kickstarter.com/pr... [kickstarter.com]
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If the NSA did this, you'd think it was creepy. (Score:3)
Now we're crowdfunding a world wide surveillance network.
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Doubtful. GHz of base frequency, maybe, but certainly not bandwidth.
Re:If the NSA did this, you'd think it was creepy. (Score:5, Informative)
Shortwave stations from every continent. Longwave stations. The long established 160-, 80-, 40-, 20-, 15-, and 10-meter ham bands, as well as the newer (and lower bandwidth) WARC bands. Time and frequency reference stations. Weather fax. Lots of pirate radio. Various textual and other FSK encoded data transmissions. Beacons. Natural phenomena such as solar RF emissions. The AM radio bands. Maritime weather broadcasts. Citizen's band radio (both European and US band spans.) All manner of military and commercial and non-military government signals.
In addition, because of the way RF propagates through the atmosphere, signals at these frequencies are far better able to reach long distances than signals at higher frequencies; get much higher than 50 MHz, and reliable reception falls down into line-of-sight distance without the assistance of intermediate receive-and-re-transmit relay stations such as towers or satellites.
During the course of the day, the propagation characteristics of the atmosphere change, primarily due to varying exposure to solar radiation. This varies with solar output and events, terrestrial weather, and can even be affected to some degree by intentional energy delivery by technological means.
There are also signals at the low end that are electromagnetically sourced that have been found to presage events such as earthquakes.
If one goes to the (very minor) effort of converting from other types of signals, for instance from sound (air pressure variation) to electrical (IOW, use a microphone or a speaker-as-microphone), you can look into information realms normally out of perceptibility. For instance, I have a couple of old super-tweeters mounted in my attic and this enables me to check out the otherwise inaudible chirps and whistles of the bats that live up there (I have a bat habitat.)
There is more in the world than data packets. That doesn't mean these things will be of interest to everyone; but they are definitely of interest to some, and so that's what gives SDR hardware designed to work in this particular frequency range real value.
I write software for SDRs [fyngyrz.com]; it works with any frequency range the SDR is capable of, and because I do this, I have quite a few SDRs on the bench at any one time, and quite a range of frequency capabilities. I live in a fairly rural area, and for me, there is a lot more interesting going on from 0-30 Mhz than there is within 30 MHz and above. It's all in what tweaks your particular curiosities and leanings. :)
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I have one here, and hope to write a proper network server for it; right now its in limbo, as they're being spotty in terms of developer communications. As it stands -- as a USB interface device -- it suffers from the wildly differing USB APIs between linux, OS X and Windows. Supporting it directly means writing three completely different sets of code; supporting it via the supplied libraries means low OS revision compatibility.
So far, the best bang for the buck I've run into are the ANDRUS MK 1.5, AFEDRI a
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I'm sorry, I don't have an airspy. I was thinking of the SdrPlay. Too many SDRs, not enough brain cells...
The airspy, however, also shares the design flaw of a USB interface. Without a server, it's much more difficult to support. From my POV, the place to put most of my effort is on the SDRs that have full network interfaces.
Re: If the NSA did this, you'd think it was creepy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: If the NSA did this, you'd think it was creep (Score:2)
f the NSA did this, the listening would be done by a small cadre of unknown people with no data being shared publicly
Sure, for Intel that only has significance militarily; but for all the rest?? "Parallel reconstruction" is just the start; it's only a matter of time until TPTB find other ways to monetize that data (think stock manipulation, data shared with competing businesses, etc, etc).
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The coolest part of this project is the ability to pinpoint the location of transmitters. There are some very interesting stations on the air, and it would be really cool to know where exactly they are. Here is an example:
http://www.enigma2000.org.uk/ [enigma2000.org.uk]
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The problem is the 0 to 30 Mhz range is too limiting to be useful.
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Funny (Score:3)
Over here in The Netherlands it is no problem as our freedom of expression goes a little wider, it includes freedom of information.
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But in the examples of France an Germany you are not even allowed the opportunity to tune in.
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In Germany this can be found in https://www.gesetze-im-interne... [gesetze-im-internet.de] under 89. Basically it says that you can only listen to open material that is meant for the public. If you accidentally listen to other things you are not allowed to publish them in any way. So a broadband receiver on the web would publish everything.
This is pathetic, maybe people should use encryption. Maybe if they only have a law to protect them, the information wasn't worth anything in the first place.
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When I first arrived in Germany, in 1986, folks told me that the GEZ had trucks with equipment that could detect a house that was receiving TV signals without paying for a "license" to watch TV. To those who are not familiar with television in Germany, the GEZ is a government extortion agency who charge 100€ per month for your right to watch crap game shows, hosted by a daft twat named Thomas Gottschalk.
So, what are they going to do . . . send out trucks which can detect "illegal" [sic] monitoring of
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Most EU countries have public broadcasters paid form such charges or public money.
The resulting programming is in many cases better than the competing commercial stations, prime examples are Germany and the UK.
About your very true last sentence, indeed if it isn't specifically allowed it is forbidden.
A nice example is the success of Dutch architects in Germany, they
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You are exaggerating the cost of the licence, at he moment it is below €20.00 / month, for special cases less than €6.00 / month. Most EU countries have public broadcasters paid form such charges or public money. The resulting programming is in many cases better than the competing commercial stations, prime examples are Germany and the UK.
I call bullshit on that . . . the programs on ARD and ZDF just plain suck. Like I said, stuff for the Thomas Gottschalk crowd. I pay for cable, and get my news from CNN, N-TV, N24 and Phoenix. I mostly watch documentaries on the same channels. I never watch ARD or ZDF . . . so why should I pay for them? Oh, ZDF has a great show with a neo-Nazi apologist named Guido Knopp, called ZDF History [sic] . . . sure, I'll pay 20€ per month, to support the Nazi cause! In case you want to debate this, the
$199! (Score:2)
Wow, it's a bit pricey for the first tier to actually get one. Still it would give that beaglebone black I have a use other than sitting on the desk.
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Plenty of things below 30MHz worth listening to.
Ham Radio guys of all sorts in all sorts of frequencies
Aircraft and marine radios
CB Radios
Many radio stations operate below 30MHz depending on what part of the world you are in (especially AM radio)
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North Korean ICBM launch codes have been known to be transmitted in the clear betweeen 15-50 MHz.
Yeah, but everyone already knows what they both are, now.
Re: For What? (Score:2)
North Korean ICBM launch codes have been known to be transmitted in the clear betweeen 15-50 MHz.
I havevit on good authority that Somalian starship launch codes are also broadcast on a fairly low frequency... (and apparently aren't being received, either).
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Who cares ?!? (Score:2)
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Broadcasting on the shortwaves is rapidly dying, and everything that can be heard there is available on internet with much better quality. Ham radio chit-chat on shortwaves is just plain boring, and the remaining stuff isn't intended to be listened (i.e. it is strongly encrypted). I really wonder why they are so eager to crowdfund this project.
Okay...but this isn't shortwave. Actually, 30Mhz and below is very, very longwave, as long as it gets.
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Tried and failed? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Television is broadcast in VHF and UHF; well above 30Mhz.. These SDR receivers won't pick up any broadcast television. If any AM radio stations care enough to sue over this (something they haven't bothered to do so far, despite WebSDR existing) it's easy to filter the broadcast AM bands, or anything else that has to be blocked.
In other very interesting SDR news; last month David Rowe did a linux.conf.au presentation [youtube.com] that covered his work on fully open source (from the boards and firmware through the pro
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I think it's more interesting as an educational toy than anything else. I've been meaning to learn Software Defined Radio and play with receivers for the purposes of understanding why wireless connection bandwidth speeds in my house only come near the official ratings if I hold my laptop so close to the wireless access point t
WebSDR (Score:3)
Like that?
http://websdr.org/ [websdr.org]
Actually this KiwiSDR project covers the entire range up to 30MHz, the WebSDR receivers usually only cover bands except for the one in Enschede. If you have limited dynamic range the narrowband approach might be a good idea, lets see how the KiwiSDR is going about all this. Ultimately I hope the projects can merge somehow.
Aw shucks:
"Unfortunately, it looks like I may not be able to obtain a license to use the WebSDR code, which is currently closed-source. So for now this part of the project is just a demonstration. I am however working on an open-source alternative."
from the Kiwi website: http://www.jks.com/KiwiSDR/ [jks.com]
Well KiwiSDR is the way to go then.
like websdr? (Score:2)
but the best one is here http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8... [utwente.nl]
For my money, RTL-SDR with a downconverter (Score:2)
For my money, RTL-SDR with an HF downconverter is a better bang for the buck, but less than 3 MHz of the spectrum is available at one time depending on the USB speed you choose (here's hoping for USB 3.0 RTL-SDR some day).
The Kiwi will do the entire 30 MHz if the screen shots on the Kickstarter site are correct, for 3x the price, or 4x the price if you want the $100 enclosure. Seriously, a $100 enclosure.
Then there's this custom job that can monitor and record the entire 30 MHz spectrum at once:
http://webs [utwente.nl]
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Another angle - the Reverse Beacon Network (RBN) (Score:1)