Sunday, October 3, 2010

QRSS, WSPR on SDR

I could not sleep about 4AM,  so I got up to listen to my Softrock RX Ensemble SDR via MS XP, tuning to 10.1387MHz for both the LO and the Tune frequency provides the 1300 to 1600Hz audio signal for both the QRSS and WSPR decoders.

Normally, the audio would be decode by additional processes like ARGO (1300 to 1400Hz) for QRSS, and the WSPR program (1400 to 1600Hz) for WSPR. To re-route the audio to those two programs requires an additional sound card, or a "virtual audio cable" (VAC). SDR and the two decode programs can run concurrently, assuming WSPR is configured for receive only. The SDR audio bandpass filter makes it very easy to select the desired signals.

I do not have VAC and my second sound card was not working, so I slowed down the SDR audio water fall, and averaged two adjacent scans, and then was able to visually decode "KC7VHS" on QRSS. Several other QRSS signal were seen, but I was not able to decode them. Also, WSPR signals were seen, but obviously I could only observe.

My gaol is to reestablish my QRSS Grabber and report WSPR Spots with this receiver (at yet another location), but time for; an antenna installation, and a disk replacement tasks, are holding up progress. The computer system will be Ubuntu, as it provides multiple virtual X displays that the decode programs can run in. ARGO requires it's own unobstructed window as it uses "screen scrapes" to obtain images that are published by an Internet Grabber Server. Pop-ups makes using MS Windows to run ARGO some what difficult on a remote system, especially when the desire is to have more windows displayed than space on the screen.

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