Many thanks to the crew at KiwiSDR.com who have made simple subdomain style forwarding links to open and explore popular KiwiSDR portals:
Thank you–this makes it so much easier to remember KiwiSDR portal addresses!
The KiwiSDR (Photo by Mark Fahey)
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mike, who writes:
Hi Thomas, I just noticed that Amazon has an inventory of KiwiSDRs for sale. I’m planning to snag one even though I don’t plan to put it online (because my IPDSL connection is just too slow). I’ve always wanted one and let’s just say I’ll be ready to join the community if I ever get a bandwidth upgrade! Price on Amazon is $299 for the full kit.
Thanks for the tip, Mike! You and I are in similar situations–my KiwiSDR (a gift from Mark Fahey–thanks!) would be online right now if I had the bandwidth and enough monthly data to support it. Like you, when I get an Internet pipeline upgrade, one of the first things I’ll do is put my KiwiSDR online!
Click here to view on Amazon (this affiliate link supports the SWLing Post at no cost to you)
In January, András Retzler–owner of the SDR.hu KiwiSDR portal–started requiring registration and a ham radio license in order to access their extensive online database of SDRs.
Today, we learned of the site’s closure. Here’s the message posted at SDR.hu:
The SDR.hu project has been finished
I’d like to say a big thanks to everyone who joined my journey with this project!
I hope you had a good time listening on the site, and learnt some things about SDR. The purpose of this site was to provide a technological demonstration for amateur radio operators about Software Defined Radio, and I hope this goal has been reached. As this website was a one-person hobby project, with my tasks and responsibilities growing, and my focus moving to other projects at which I hope to make a greater positive impact, I’m unable to further develop SDR.hu and protect it from abuse.
Furthermore, I think this site has some good alternatives now. Nevertheless, in my opinion amateur radio receivers should be shared with strict access control in the future.
If you have more questions, feel free to consult the FAQ.
73!
Andras, HA7ILM
SWLing Post contributor, Mark Fahey, shared the following message sent by Andras to all KiwiSDR owners in the database this morning:
Hello,
You are receiving this e-mail because you were listing a receiver on SDR.hu in the last 3 months.
I wanted to let you know that the SDR.hu project is discontinued.
This is because I have to focus on my PhD and unfortunately I don’t have enough time anymore to maintain the website and protect it from abuse.
If you have questions, there’s a FAQ on the front page: https://sdr.hu/
For KiwiSDR users there is another listing service available on the KiwiSDR website: http://kiwisdr.com/public (I’m not involved with this one.)
Thank you very much for having participated in the project!VY 73!
Andras, HA7ILM
Fortunately, there are a number of other KiwiSDR portals that do not require registration or a call sign. Here’s a list:
If you prefer another KiwiSDR portal, please comment with a link. I’ll try to update this post with any new additions!
Last month, we noted that the popular SDR.hu KiwiSDR portal now requires registration and an amateur radio callsign to use the site. While SDR.hu is still online, we certainly get the impression all site development has been halted. This is not the end of the world because SDR.hu is only one of several KiwiSDR portals–we linked to others in our January article.
Personally, I only used the SDR.hu map view to keep track of KiwiSDR sites and found it quite useful because I typically select sites based on geographic location.
I’ve just learned via the KiwiSDR Twitter account that Priyom.org has updated their KiwiSDR map portal using Dyatlov maps. The results are brilliant and, in my opinion, even better than the SDR.hu’s map.
The Priyom.org map uses the full window, is uncluttered and easier to navigate.
If you click on a KiwiSDR site, you’ll see a pop-up window with basic site information. If you hover the cursor over that site info, another window will pop up with current details about the receiver, number of users, antenna, SNR, and GPS clock (see above).
This is now my favorite way to geographically surf KiwiSDR sites.
Click here to check out the new map portal.
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Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who discovered via Gilles Letourneau’s YouTube Channel that the popular SDR.hu KiwiSDR portal now requires registration and a ham radio callsign.
I almost didn’t believe this at first, but then checked on the SDR.hu FAQ page to find this message:
What is a callsign and how do I get one?
An amateur radio callsign is issued by the appropriate authority in your country (e.g. FCC in the US). The amateur radio callsign allows you to both transmit and receive with amateur radio equipment, and you need to pass an exam to get one. (If you are not familiar with this, please search Google about amateur radio.)
Can I access the receiver list if I do not have a callsign?
No.
Why do I need a callsign to access the receiver list?
The purpose of the site is to serve amateur radio. I decided to restrict access to the receiver list in order to protect the site and its purpose in the long term.
To be clear: this doesn’t imply you need a callsign to access the KiwiSDR network. This only applies to the SDR.hu KiwiSDR portal operated by András Retzler. I’m guessing he’s doing this to regulate his site’s resources. (See UPDATE below.)
kiwisdr.com/public/ provides a list of all active KiwiSDRs.
As Dan points out, there are a number of other KiwiSDR portals that do not require registration or a call sign.
Here are a few:
If you prefer another KiwiSDR portal, please comment with a link. I’ll try to update this post with any new additions.
UPDATE – Many thanks to Cristiano Amaral who shares this update sent by Andras to all of the OpenWebRX contributors:
Hello,
You are receiving this e-mail because you were listing a public OpenWebRX receiver on SDR.hu in the last 3 months.
I wanted to let you know that the OpenWebRX project is discontinued [1], which means that it will not receive any updates (including security fixes) from me. I hope that you will be able to run your receivers without problems in the next years, and hopefully the community will be able to help each other even if I’m not working on the project anymore.
It is also important to know that starting from next year, Python 2, a dependency of OpenWebRX is not maintained either, at least officially by the Python team [2], as it is deprecated in favour of Python 3.
If you want to keep running your public receivers securely, you should be looking for a Python 2 fork that is still patched against the latest security vulnerabilities. There is a possibility that Anaconda [3] or Red Hat [4] will keep patching Python 2.
As a note, you can also find unofficial Python 3 ports of OpenWebRX online, though I’m not involved with those either.
Thank you for participating in the project, and I wish you a Happy New Year!
VY 73!
Andras, HA7ILM
—
sdr.hu
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dan Robinson, who recently took advantage of a rainy Sunday in Maryland to put together the following video.
Dan notes that the video/screencast demonstrates, “reception of the low power Radio Kahuzi, the religious station in Democratic Republic of Congo, via two of the best KIWI SDR sites, in Sweden and Switzerland. The video shows how the signal of Radio Kahuzi propagates the 9,000 + kilometers from DRC into Europe.”
Fascinating! Thank you for sharing this, Dan!
Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Mark Fahey, who shares the following tweet from KiwiSDR:
“Happy Holidays. Software update brings integrated DRM receiver (Digital Radio Mondiale) based on Dream 2.1.1 to all KiwiSDRs. Stock BeagleBone-Green/Black based Kiwis support one DRM channel, BeagleBone-AI Kiwis support four. Development work continues.”
Ironically, I had only recently published a post asking if anyone had ever attempted to decode DRM using a KiwiSDR. Turns out, several readers had by porting the IQ audio output into the DREAM application. Now that KiwiSDR will have a native DRM mode, this will no longer be necessary.
Many thanks, Mark, for sharing this tip! As you say, this is “mega news!”