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Many thanks to Jon Hudson at SDRplay who produced the following excellent instructional video about setting up SDR-Console V3 for remote use. Jon writes:
For SDR Console users, this video guide shows you how to access other people’s SDRs and how to add your own.
If you are wanting to add your own SDR for remote use, there are a couple of things to be careful with:
Be careful when plugging multiple SDRs into a single USB2 socket to make sure there’s enough power – for multiple SDRs, you may need a powered hub ( like this: http://amzn.to/2oa84kM) [or this in North America].
Once you are up and running – please go to http://www.sdrspace.com/Version-3 and view your listing – if there is a yellow triangle, then you are not accessible outside your own firewall – attention is needed! Just because you can access it on your own LAN doesn’t mean it’s accessible via the internet!!! This is the most common area to have problems – double check your router’s port forwarding settings are correct (default port 50101 TCP).
As someone who evaluates a number of software defined receivers and who regularly makes off-air audio and spectrum recordings, I’m simply amazed by SDR Console’s versatility.
The recording functionality, as Guy previously stated, is phenomenal–perhaps the best of any SDR application I’ve used to date save, perhaps, that of the Titan SDR Pro (which is proprietary).
Though I still haven’t logged a lot of hours on SDR Console, I can already mention several powerful features that I love:
Virtual receivers
So few SDR applications allow you to run multiple virtual receivers and–especially–make independent recordings from them simultaneously.
When I started writing this post last night, I was listening to and recording the Voice of Greece on virtual receiver #1, Radio Guinea on #2, and WRMI on #3 using the brilliant little AirSpy HF+.
Audio recording options
When you start a recording of an active virtual receiver, a dialog box pops up allowing you to make a custom file title–it pre-populates the date, start time, frequency and mode. This is a simple but time-saving feature as most SDR applications save files according to global application settings–not for each individual recording. With the SDR Console dialog box, I can insert the name of the broadcaster in the file title which makes organizing recordings later a breeze.
Additionally, you can choose between MP3, WAV or WMA file types for each recording. I know of no other SDR app that gives you this flexibility.
Scheduled recordings
I’ve yet to use the scheduler feature, but based on Guy Atkins’ feedback, I know this will be an invaluable resource for collecting off-air recordings while I’m away from home.
So many features to discover…
As both Guy and Ivan have shown us in past posts, SDR Console allows for multiple application “instances”–meaning, you can run two independent SDRs simultaneously. This is a fantastic feature for those of us who make multiple spectrum recordings. Of course, it’s an ideal platform to compare SDR hardware as settings can be easily matched between both units (something very difficult to do when using different SDR applications).
I’ve so much to learn about SDR Console, but I can tell I’ll be spending a great deal of time with the application this year, attempting to learn every nuance.
I sent a donation to Simon (G4ELI) last night after having only used SDR Console for a few minutes. SDR Console is totally free, but I’m a firm believer in supporting creators who are doing amazing things! If you use SDR Console, consider sending Simon a donation as well.
I’ve a little free time this morning and plan to set up SDR Console to run my Elad FDM-S2, RTL-SDR dongle, SDR Play RSP1A and RSP2. It’ll be a bit revolutionary to have one SDR application to unite them all!
Post readers: Any other SDR Console fans out there? What are your favorite features?
Simon Brown, G4ELI’s widely used, free SDR-Console V3 was upgraded from “Preview” to “Beta 1” level today. Many SDR enthusiasts have waited for this next step; even in Preview form, Version 3 has performed nearly as well as a production release in many ways.
I have briefly used SDR-Console (V2 and V3) off and on for a few years, but it wasn’t until acquiring AirSpy HF+ receivers that I took a serious plunge into V3. Now that I’ve gone through its modest learning curve, I like this SDR software quite a bit!
There are many things I enjoy about SDR-Console, not the least is the power and ease of use of the Recording Scheduler, a feature that’s important to medium wave DXers. I’m sure others who like to set up unattended WAV I/Q recordings for later review benefit from this also.
I’ve not found a list of improvements between Preview and Beta 1, but I suspect Simon has made the upgrade because the Preview has shown itself to be quite stable already. He did publish a list of a few known bugs:
External Radio using IF output does not work.
Remote Server using the SDR-IQ has stutter.
Kits are not signed – a code signing certificate has been purchased from Comodo but is not yet available.
Simon indicates that these bugs will be worked on in the next few weeks.
If you use and benefit from SDR-Console software, please considering support the development efforts through a PayPal donation. Links to download the newest Beta 1 version, and/or to donate, can be found here: http://www.sdr-radio.com/Downloads
Here are a couple YouTube videos which show SDR-Console V3 (Preview build) in action:
Guy Atkins is a Sr. Graphic Designer for T-Mobile and lives near Seattle, Washington. He’s a regular contributor to the SWLing Post.
Mike Ladd, with SDRplay, has done an amazing job putting together a comprehensive series of how-to videos for those of us with the SDRplay RSP1 and RSP2 receivers. His first set of videos have focused on using SDRuno (SDRplay’s custom SDR application), and now he’s started an SDR Console series as well.
If you own an SDRplay RSP, take time to watch some or all of these videos as they’ll help you unlock RSP functionality you likely never knew existed. I’ve learned something new in each one I’ve watched.
Below, I’ve embedded 23 SDRuno how-to videos, a new SDR Console video and PDF/printable SDRplay documentation. Enjoy! (And thanks again, Mike!)
Many thanks to Simon Brown for updating SDR-Console V3 Preview to fully support both the RSP1 and the RSP2- you can download the software from http://sdr-radio.com/v3_preview_downloads (be sure to click on the software link under where it says ‘Downloads’ unless you want to download the software from the advertisers who support Simon’s work!)
As new YouTube demo videos of SDR-Console V3 in action become available, we will add them to the playlists on our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/SDRplayRSP
