New project at KB7RQQ (a remote SDR receiver install)

…Likely available in March 24′

I’ve been toying with the idea of having a remote SDR located at our place at the lake. The site is at 1,260′ elevation and is pretty RF quiet environment. I have fairly reliable power, but internet has been an issue.

We aren’t in good range of cellular. I can get about a bar-and-a-half from a single AT&T tower across the lake. This has worked OK for DMR with the hotspot but summertime with tons of people in the local campgrounds… the cell site doesn’t have enough bandwidth for everyone to use it at once and often it’s hard to get even a text to go through.

We currently have a WiFi system that is radio linked through the woods that operates much like WiFi in a hotel or airport in that you have to authenticate your account each time with a browser. This means it isn’t an always on connection and I have no ability to get IP addresses for devices and be able to route to them from the outside. It also suffers greatly from lack of bandwidth, foliage in the way, wind, snow, heavy rain, and crashes often during high usage. The cost was palatable though at $100/year.

More recently and Luckily!, I have a neighbor up there that runs an ISP in Portland and he has put some equipment on Davis Peak near Woodland, Washington. This is linked to the KGON tower in Portland, Oregon and fiber linked to his servers in downtown Portland. Davis Peak is about 10 miles line-of-site from us at the lake. The back-haul from Davis Peak to Portland’s KGON tower is about 35 miles!! Testing has ensued with excellent results… and the internet radio equipment should be installed at my site within the next few weeks.

Next is putting together the wide-band receiver. On order is a KiwiSDR 2 that should arrive sometime in February as they are just now going into production for the first run of the model-2’s.

The KiwiSDR is an IP based SDR that allow users to control it via the web browser from anywhere in the world without having to run any software. The KiwiSDR runs WebSDR and allows users full control of the device. The KiwiSDR is wide-band and runs as a ‘hat’ with the computer being a BeagleBone Green running linux and the associated software. It samples from 0 – 30Mhz all at once and you can zoom out and see the entire HF spectrum in a waterfall. Visit KiwiSDR.com for further info and links to receivers that are online currently.

The picture above shows the entirety of 0 to 30Mhz being sampled all at once. The picture below shows zoomed in at the WWV AM signal at 15 MHz with another signal in the waterfall to the right.

Initially, the antenna will be an MLA-30 loop but I do have plans to be able remotely switch antennas via the browser and will have some sort of terminated Beverage antenna as an option too.

This is the Kiwi: Still have to work out a quiet power source and get all the proper connectors. Hope to have this online spring of 24′

So What’s the Point?!?!

Harder question to answer 🙂 I just really like to hunt signals and identify them. These remote SDR’s are a blast! I’ve been able to get very current news on Ukraine and other conflicts from areas closer to the source by being able to listen to their MW and LW local stations. I have been listening to military channels from all militaries by finding receivers closer to the source. Cool world music programs, utility and ‘numbers’ stations, monitoring the ham bands in different countries to see what’s going on etc. For the end user… this is all free and doesn’t require a radio or software… just a web browser and an internet connection. Goal is to add my station to this community and add to the west coast options and further experiment with SDR technology.

visit: rx.linkfanel.net to get a map of all the SDR’s on the network. Click to use them.

or visit KiwiSDR.com for the lowdown