SDR: SDRSharp Ubuntu 12.04
Linux Software
Options for free software in Linux are:
- GNURadio is an excellent but unwieldy piece of software for use with RTLSDR. It's the only software for now that will receive analogue (FM, AM, sideband) and digital modes such as AP25, FSK and ADS-B. Be warned it's not very easy to drive but if you are canny you can use it to build your own software defined radio. Follow the build guide for your Linux system as the latest code is always the best to use.
- GQRX apparently does too.
- As SDR# is written in C# it works with Mono in Linux!
Have a look here for a good summary of Linux utilities. Getting SDR# Running in Linux
This has only been tested on a x64 Debian system using the combined current stable/testing repositories but the process should be similar in Ubuntu and Fedora/Centos.
Install mono. This is the Linux version of Microsoft's .NET.
sudo apt-get install mono-complete
Install libportaudio2 to make sure sound works.
sudo apt-get install libportaudio2
- Compile and install the latest RTLSDR. I used the cmake version as detailed here. Don't forget to run ldconfig as root at the end to sort the newly installed libraries out.
- Download the latest development version of SDR# - it's a zip file.
- Make a new SDRSharp directory and unzip the contents of the zip file into this directory.
cd into the new SDRSharp directory and type the following:
ln -s /usr/local/lib/librtlsdr.so librtlsdr.dll ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libportaudio.so.2 libportaudio.so
If the last command doesn't work type locate libportaudio.so.2 and try again with the new path. On 32 bit systems it will be in a different directory to what's shown here.
Type mono SDRSharp.exe and you should see the following!
If you get audio stutter (I do on my i7 CPU!) change the audio latency from 100ms to 200ms or more. It seems Mono doesn't run SDR# anywhere as efficiently as the native Windows CLR. I have tried –optimize=all and also the –llvm options and it doesn't seem to help. Any advice appreciated!
Be sure to select [ALSA] sysdefault as audio output, otherwise you may experience audio
If you download source code from the the SVN tree the project/solution opens and builds just fine in Linux with MonoDevelop. Just make sure the above soft links exist in the Debug directory. Alternatively, you can build it directly from commandline with
xbuild /t:Rebuild /p:Configuration=Release SDRSharp.sln
RTLTCP
Have a look here for some words on using rtl_tcp and SDR#