Windows

Explore Software Defined Radio — by Wolfram Donat (10 / 30)

👈 Attaching the Antenna | TOC | Linux 👉

Windows users are going to use the SDRSharp application to tune the dongle to different frequencies. It’s in the sdrsharp-exe directory you created and modified earlier in the book, so if you don’t have that directory open already, open it now.

Double-click SDRSharp, and you should be greeted with the window shown here:

There’s a lot of stuff in this window, so let’s take a moment to familiarize ourselves with it. At the top center, as you’ve probably guessed, is the frequency in megahertz to which the program is currently tuned. Underneath the frequency label are two graphic representations of the frequency spectrum in the general neighborhood of the current frequency. You’ll see those in action shortly. The sliders along the right side of the window allow you to adjust what you see in those windows, including the contrast of the displays and how much of the spectrum appears in the window.

The left side of the window contains the fine-tuning settings you’ll be playing with as you experiment. You can choose the source of the signals, what form they’re in, and play with things like gain, filters, bandwidth, and any number of other settings that we won’t be getting into at the moment.