SDR on PcDuino

Software-defined radio (SDR) is a radio communication system where components that have been typically implemented in hardware (e.g. mixers, filters, amplifiers, modulators/demodulators, detectors, etc.) are instead implemented by means of software on a personal computer or embedded system.While the concept of SDR is not new, the rapidly evolving capabilities of digital electronics render practical many processes which used to be only theoretically possible.

we will look at how to do SDR on pcDuino.

1 x pcDuino v2
  1 x SDR dongle (R820T) or SDR dongle (FC0013)

The following are the steps used to install RTL-SDR build software on pcDuino:
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$sudo apt-get install git
$sudo apt-get install cmake
$sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0.dev
$sudo apt-get install build-essential

The next step is to download RTL-SDR source files:
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$git clone git://git.osmocom.org/rtl-sdr.git
$cd rtl-sdr/
$mkdir build
$cd build
$cmake ../
$make
$sudo make install
$sudo ldconfig

The final step is to copy the rules file (rtl-sdr.rules) which can be found at /home/ubuntu/rtl-sdr and this file should be copied into /etc/udev/rules.d/.

We can test SDR dongle by typing:


$rtl_test -t

Before we launch the SDR server, we need to check the ip address of pcDuino using command as ‘ifconfig’. To launch the server, we simple type:


$rtl_tcp -a xx.xx.xx.xx

where xx.xx.xx.xx is the IP address of the pcDuino.

We will use SDR sharp as the PC client to connect to the pcDuino server. Remember to select RTL-SDR-TCP as the dropdown list next to ‘Play’.

When we hit the ‘play’ to listen, we will see that the server is pretty busy on pcDuino side: