Linux

Explore Software Defined Radio — by Wolfram Donat (11 / 30)

👈 Windows | TOC | Troubleshooting 👉

Hopefully you had no problems getting the rtl-sdr drivers and GQRX installed. Once your antenna is connected, you can start receiving signals by opening a terminal and entering

gqrx

You may get a crash-warning window, which states that the current settings are not optimal and may cause the program to crash. Click Open Anyway. You should be greeted by the window shown.

Like Windows’ SDRSharp, there’s a lot of info here, so take a moment to look around before you blindly start clicking and dragging (unless you’re like me and that’s just how you do things). The main part of the window, on the left, displays the current frequency in megahertz to which you’re tuned, with a gain meter just to the right. Below that are the graphic representations of the surrounding neighborhood of the RF spectrum.

The top of the window contains the standard File menu options, like Preferences, Open, Save, and so forth. The right side of the window is where you perform all of your advanced settings and tunings, like antenna selection, choosing hardware, adjusting gain, and choosing filters.

The first thing you’ll need to do is choose your receiver as the input device…