There was so much I didn't get done today because coding a bit of radio was more exciting. The result is a sort of radio that you can see here
Inspired by KiwiSDR, which unfortunately I don't own myself, I've made a Web-SDR that can access the more than 800 KiwiSDRs out there in the big wide world.
Besides the basic functions, this version can display the familiar waterfall, show radio stations on the frequency, decode a wide range of modes (CW, FT8, PSK31, RTTY, Navtex, SSTV, Weatherfax) and attempt to decode an unknown signal.
Settings are saved so you can easily return to the page and pick up where you left off.
It's been a sh... load of fun to work on, but you're the best judges of whether it's useful in real life. If nothing else, it's fun to play with for those of us who don't have antennas. But you can connect to a radio somewhere else in the world and test whether you can be heard "out there".
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this first attempt at BG's Web-SDR
Goodnight and sleep well 🌙
Thanks 🙏
It's definitely useful. I have a WEB SDR+ running on a Linux installation myself, with a frequency range from 2 m up to ADSB (1090 MHz from aircraft, using a Discone antenna in the attic. There's a decoder for the little weather stations found in many homes. Car tyre pressures, DMR+ and much more....
But I have a problem, and it's common to many of these servers. I use Windows 10 and a Chrome browser. The mouse wheel moves the whole window, not just the frequency.
Great that it's useful to you 🙂
I'm running win 11 and recently switched to Edge after using Chrome for 100 years. The reason was that Google had quietly loaded people's Chrome with a hell of a lot of memory-hungry shi… so my system was getting slower and slower.
Have fun 🌞
I have Edge on my PC too. Just tested whether the mouse wheel worked there. Unfortunately it didn't. But my son, who's the family's "Big Geek", is coming on Thursday and can usually fix that sort of thing in a split second.
The memory thing is true, but I haven't really noticed it, because my client machine is made from leftovers from my son's server upgrade and has 32 GB of memory...
Everything works except the mouse wheel
When the black radio window is at the bottom I can tune the frequency upwards with the mouse wheel
I've tried Edge and Chrome with the same result and searched online
It says "Mouse wheel: tune" when the cursor is inside the radio window
Please please help me 😊
A little refinement has just been added - when you save a station, any decoder settings are saved too. A neat little feature that comes in handy for the more specialised modes. E.g. Pinneberg weather RTTY.
When the cursor is in the black window and the black radio window is at the bottom, it says "Mouse wheel: tune" and I can tune up in frequency
When I try to tune down, the whole user interface window moves up
I'm experiencing the same thing - I can scroll up in freq. but not down - so it's exactly as Gert describes - the whole "window" moves down, rather than (as expected) the freq.
I don't use WEB-SDR, so this was just for info...
//Lau
Over the past few hours, a few new features have snuck into the SDR radio here on BG:
:: The mode of SSTV signals is now decoded automatically, and decoding has become more error-tolerant.
:: RTTY now has auto-tune & analysis, which is a huge help with settings for unknown signals
:: Signal-ID attempts to analyse the signal it finds and is actually pretty good at helping you understand what strange signal you've found
The "Speech" transcription is running as a test, and the analysis takes place in your own browser. It's not particularly good and could be significantly better if we used AI, but that costs credits. Easy enough to build, but hard to ask for money for it 😐
Are these new additions useful? I'd really love to hear your feedback.
Enjoy
NAVTEX decoding had a bug, but it's fixed now
(and there's some pretty interesting stuff to read !!)
While I was at it, I wrote a guide on how to use it. You'll find it as a menu item under NAVTEX.
What you've made is like having a big Swiss Army knife in your pocket
Looking forward to finding the time to try it all out and give you some serious feedback you can actually use
But it looks very promising
🙏💚
There are 865 receivers, but many of them are busy, you can't connect to them, the antenna conditions don't seem optimal (radio noise from the surroundings), or there's no audio. Now, I haven't been through them all, but is there a way to rate them?
I've solved it myself by marking the ones I think are important as favourites. And they're easy to filter using the star button.
Would that work for you?
A few updates before bedtime:
:: It's now much easier to start the SDR radio - click on a receiver and it starts automatically
:: Editing Quick Selections has become easier with the new dedicated edit window.
Have a good evening 🌙
I've been playing with the brilliant Web-SDR Christiane has made.
Here it is with some RTTY, running perfectly smoothly. Give it a try.
CQ CQ CQ DE DDK2 DDH7 DDK9
FREQUENCIES 4583 KHZ 7646 KHZ 10100.8 KHZ
RYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRY
CQ CQ CQ DE DDK2 DDH7 DDK9
FREQUENCIES 4583 KHZ 7646 KHZ 10100.8 KHZ
RYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRYRY
I've also tried CW with deep(AI) decoding. That runs beautifully too.
The WebSDR here on the site has had a facelift. It's now even more user-friendly and has a bit more of a "radio feel" 😊
You can now click on the scale for coarse tuning, there are quick-select buttons for the 3 ranges (LW, MW, SW) and a Favorites button.
When you save a frequency, you can give it a name and put it in a group, and the mode and bandpass filter are saved along with any decoder you may have selected.
Have a play with it and let me know what you think.
Enjoy ☀️
Now with HELL decoding too 😊 Hellschreiber (also known as Feldhell).
A Hellschreiber decoder doesn't decode text into letters using a lookup table. It plots the audio level directly as black/grey dots on a scrolling, retro paper strip (ticker-tape). It looks fantastic on screen as the letters "grow" out of the radio noise.
How it works: Unlike, for example, RTTY or PSK31, the letters aren't transmitted as binary data bits. Instead, the letters are sent as a small graphical dot matrix (7×7) of audio pulses. The receiver software draws the dots directly as letters on a virtual paper strip. The advantage is that the human eye can easily read the letters, even if the signal is full of noise and dropouts.
The historical twist behind DA125RH: The special callsign DA125RH has just been activated by German radio amateurs to mark the 125th anniversary of Rudolf Hell's birth (1901–2026) – so of course they're using the inventor's own mode.
This just gave me an idea. It may not have quite so much to do with coding, Hellschreiber and encryption, but DRTV has a season of 8 fascinating programmes called The Codebreakers. How codebreakers worked in the old days, right up to today's mapping of DNA.
Just a few more details about the decoders I've made for WebSDR:
1) So far I've tested CW, FT8/FT4, PSK31, RTTY (Professional + amateur), Olivia, MFSK16, NAVTEX, SSTV, HELL, Weatherfax and Speech.
2) New and currently untested are DSC, ALE, Packet and Thor.
Does anyone here on the channel know about these and perhaps have time to help test them?
PS: There's a short help section and introduction to all the decoder modes, which you can bring up by clicking on '?'
Happy decoding 🧑💻🙂
