2023-06-01 Written by Martin D.C.

Adventures into SDR-RTL

While developing software for hydrogen line detection, I had so much fun that I ended up creating several offshoots of the application. These have become self-contained widgets with broader applications beyond astronomy, particularly for use in Software-Defined Radio (SDR) and Radio Listening Technology (RLT).

Here is a list of them. If you find any widget useful, sign up on my homepage, and we’ll get in touch.

Swathe SDR Explorer

I wanted this app when I was starting out: a scanner that covers the entire spectrum range of your SDR device, allowing you to quickly see everything in the radiospectrum on an absurdly long, high-resolution waterfall graph. I couldn’t find anything like it online, so I made one!

For my device, it usually takes hundreds of 4K waterfall snippets of the RF spectrum to cover the entire range of the device. (25e6 to 1750e6 MHz)

Here it is in action:

In later versions I have added more settings and overall time-estimation scanning process will take.

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