Hey there folks, I'm trying to set up and APRS IGate on an Ubuntu machine.
I'm currently using this antenna: https://www.adafruit.com/products/1497?gclid=CJnEo-irt8wCFQeraQodmk4OXA
with this dongle: http://store.linksprite.com/rtl-sdr-fm-dab-usb-dvb-t-dongle-hd-dvb-t-rtl2832u-r820t/?gclid=CI3sofurt8wCFQqoaQodZ6gJSA
Anyone had any experience with this before?
So happy to see a thread other about interesting technology other than consumer electronics.
What you want to do is run a program called Xastir. It will act as an igate. Then pipe the rtl-sdr output into Xastir.
http://ae6rs.com/xastir-with-rtl-sdr.html
I love software defined radio
>>54312883
Thanks, I'll give that a shot.
I had previously tried using a raspberry pi and installing rtl_fm and feeding it into direwolf, but I was having issues with getting one or the other to work.
>>54312937
>>54312959
I'm also relatively new to amateur radio in general, got any ideas of what kinds of stuff I should with it after I get this working?
>>54312679
nice, can it collect "raw" IQ samples?
You're not going to be getting much with that antenna. If you want a semi cheap antenna with decent gain that you can make pretty easily, look into the arrow antennas dual band J-Pole. Since its dual band, you could theoretically connect a SDR listening on 2 meters and another on 70cm to the same antenna, so you could pick up transmissions on either band. Keep in mind, this would all be receive only.
>>54314854
I'm unsure
>>54314909
Interesting, I'll have to look into it, since all I'm doing is receiving. The intention at this point is to use the information to track a weather balloon, and then display that information
>>54312959
In regards to the instructions that you showed me I'm running into some issues that I'm not exactly sure how to solve. At about step 7 it says for you to try decoding some APRS, but it doesn't return any APRS info, and yields this:
Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U OEM
Found Rafael Micro rr820T tuner
Tuner Gain set to automatic
[R82XX] PLL not locked!
Tuned to 253719 Hz.
Oversampling input by: 46x.
Oversampling output by: 1x.
Buffer size: 8.08ms
Exact sample rate is: 1014300.20041 Hz
[R82XX] PLL not locked!
Sampling at 1014300
Output at 22050 Hz.
When I tried to use Kalibrate, it didn't provide back a channel after 'kal: Scanning for GSM-900 base stations.', so I was unable to calibrate it.
Xastir and rtl_fm are both running fine, but without the APRS I can't feed anything into Xastir
Any thoughts/solutions? I looked into [R82XX] as a possible error, but the results online say its either nothing to worry about, or provide no clear solutions.