User:Klosito/ENES-100/SDR

Week0 Narrative
Sent two dongles home with team mates, one will examine antenna, one has 2 way radios to make work. Another teammate taking home TPMS system to investigate. Checking out some web sites related to SDR - http://sdrsharp.com/ what I'm recommending to try running the dongles so far. Seeing some possible projects using that.

Week1 Narrative
Checked out gnu-radio software. Dongles hadn't been set up. Tried setting one up on teammate's laptop with gnu radio. TPMS seems unworkable. Some project ideas - ship or airplane tracking, record signal from household RF like door alarm in order to playback to spoof. Met up with ham radio guys, chatted. One knows someone who does that ship tracking thing with a dongle. Left contact information. (I like boats! Team seems less enthused though.) Got another team mate up to speed with trying to set up dongle on his computer. I took a dongle home and set it up on a laptop at my house using SDRsharp. This was a pain complicated by learning new pc operating system, windows 8. Most of this stuff not tested on Win8, so crossing fingers. Downloaded zadig, set up windows stero mix as audio piping choice, although had directed team mate to vb-cable. We'll see which works out I guess. Downloaded and installed 7-zip for unpacking files, as it turned out newish laptop had no unzipping program. All seems working well in the end. Changed audio quality in sdrsharp to 48000 via notepad edit. Can't seem to figure out how to tune it properly. Version I have is slightly different on that front than the tutorials I'm encountering. Called ham radio friend, will meet with him monday afternoon, and he'll give me a quick overview of radio in general at least. May help on that tuning front. He points out hamfest on Oct 6, and invites me to National Capitol Radio and Television Museum to round out my radio education.

Week2 Narrative
I had a friend give me a bit of a radio overview. The dongle stopped working with error "cannot access rtl device." Turned out to be an error in having the frequency in sdr sharp set to an invalid value. This problem was resolved. I tuned in our first radio station by taking laptop and dongle outside an up on patio. 99.1 FM news came in. I went to a meeting for the HCC radio club where I demonstrated the sdr radio dongle and we tuned in a handheld radio. Went to a meeting of the Laurel Ham Radio Club too.

Week3 Narrative
I successfully picked up 2-way radio signals on FM band and recorded it. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buCzR5glg1I I tried unsuccessfully to locate frequencies and signals for some household things (cordless phone, wireless door alarm) -searched in frequency range appliance believed to transmit in, but the frequency range proved too large it seemed. I cut apart small antenna base with MCX connector to dongle. -Removed wire from base. Wire has braid exposed, is soldered to a rigid bit of metal rod. Helped make cable connection between MCX on dongle, and UHF connector on discone antenna -Coaxial cable cut, MCX wire exposed and teammate resoldered to small metal rod when existing soldering fell apart. -The inner wire of the coaxial and the rod connected to the MCX were joined to one another via a 10-12 butt splice. -I shrunk a sleeve around this. -A short length of copper wire was soldered to the braid of each cable by teammate. -I shrunk a sleeve around the total. I assembled discone antenna and connected it to the dongle Received better reception on dongle, bringing in local FM stations during testing that were unavailable without the discone antenna.

Week4 Narrative

 * Ran software while looking for and tuning in group's walkie talkies.
 * Picked up more local frequencies, like the local ham radio bands.
 * Pretty sure I saw the blips of an AIS signal at about 162.23MHz, while listening to the nearby national weather bureau station.
 * Downloaded and installed ShipPlotter software. http://www.coaa.co.uk/shipplotter.htm
 * Using windows stero mix as virtual audio piping
 * Need to test using discone antenna
 * Working on scanner plugin
 * Rounded up enough students to get amateur radio club off the ground, with luck.

Week6 Narractive

 * Read reviews of different scanner plugins to work with SDR#. Decided to go with Frequency manager and scanner from Jeff Knapp at SDR# Plugins - http://www.sdrsharpplugins.com/
 * Downloaded, created a folder for sdr# plugins and extracted filed to that
 * Ran the setup file which requested destination folders. Used SDR# folder for both destinations.
 * Got an error message that some files could not be installed, already in use. Closed out whatever was exraneous and open on desktop and tried again. Successfully installed
 * Opened SDR# and got an error message about the Center channel install. Did not seem important.
 * Saw the new scanner and frequency manager plugins in SDR#. Use of them still confusing - work better with large antenna.