Daily Archives: 3/8/2009

SDR Software for the Mac

Part of the difficulty that I had testing my Softrok was the apparent lack of SDR software for my MacBook. Both WY7USA and NM5DV came through for me though, and suggested that I have a peek at DSPRadio, by Sebastian Mrozek, DO8SEM. It didn’t fix the imbalance/lack of sensitivity that I had, but it did allow me to test it in a more interactive fashion. Here I am, centered over the K beacon (the frequencies aren’t calibrated, but might be close).

picture

First signals heard through the Softrock Lite II

Well, I’m not sure that the Softrock I put together is working entirely well. I’m beginning to believe that the transformer that I wound might be bad. My receiver seems a bit deaf, and also seems to have only about 20db or so of opposite side rejection (I’m getting images of signals on both sides of the center carrier frequency). I’m a bit stymied by the fact that I only have my macbook in a place where it can be used to decode the softrock, and the software for it is, well, to a first approximation, there isn’t any. I did a bit of hacking, and took a recording I made and extracted this Morse code recording, which I’ll archive here as the first that I ever got.

Morse via my Softrock

I’ll have to work on it some more in the future, but for now, I’m back to beaconing with my FT-817.