Many thanks to Jon Hudon of SDRplay who shared the following on the SDRplay Facebook page:
One of the SDRplay user community, Jukka, has started an interesting discussion on what he has called ‘propagation-triggered recording’ – he outlines the concept, and what he is doing, on our forum – see http://www.sdrplay.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1839
The idea is that you monitor signals to determine if conditions are particularly good and can thereby trigger an I/Q recording of a whole band during that particular propagation high point -Jukka welcomes more comments on this idea.
Many thanks, Jon. I would certainly be a fan of this as so many times I’ve missed fantastic band openings while travelling. It would be nothing short of brilliant to come home to automatic SDR spectrum recordings taken during prime propagation. At the moment, propagation is so dismal, rare openings are worth recording!
As Jon points out above, check out the SDRplay forum for more details.
If you take a Arduino Leonardo and the TCS34725 from Adafruit this might be possible
https://www.adafruit.com/product/1334
This is actually something very doable with an arduino and a RGB light sensor.
HF condition peak up and drop down changing the color of the transmission on the waterfall. When conditions are ideal or starting to riss you can see realtime gradients changes from dark to bright. When the transmission is brighter I can usually work the DX
Usually reds are strong trasmission. Trigger the IQ recording with the light sensor to detect RED and trigger an IQ recording via keyboard shortcut when red threshold is reached
Hope this makes sense
Wow cool – this would be the best!