WA Radio Scanner Users' Group

https://sites.google.com/site/policescannerhowto

Instructions showing you how to use you computer and a USB digital TV (DVB-T) receiver as a scanner. For analog and digital radio including trunking.
There's bit of messing about involved getting to the trunking stage.

That's an awesome article ... I'm really interested in getting that ... Thank's !!!

Many people are using this Digital TV dongle for that project. It's the same device but a number of places sell them with different names and labelling. I have a couple for just general scanning. They work from around 24 MHz to 1.868 GHz




I've just ordered a couple of these dongles as well. Somebody said they have the same chipset so should do the same job. Much smaller.

This has peeked my interest. What about running multiple dongles/streams on one PC? Since the good 'ol days is generally one scanner scanning how would it go say plugged 2+ dongles in and being able to set each one to different frequencies and/or set them to scan set ranges each is that possible?

And for trunking I'm guessing it supports MPT trunks? I'm currently using the 396T to scan a trunk which is like using a Front End Loader to crack a walnut.

there is also an android version that is heaps easier to set up and use (using the same rtl dongles) but alas no trunking for it yet. I use it on my tablet at work. All modes. Called SDR Touch
Nick
edited once added app name

Nick wrote:there is also an android version that is heaps easier to set up and use (using the same rtl dongles) but alas no trunking for it yet. I use it on my tablet at work. All modes. Called SDR Touch
Nick
edited once added app name

I read past that as well, although note you need an OTG (on the go) cable (which is only a few $ anyway).

I use a usb adapter.
Nick

yorky wrote:What about running multiple dongles/streams on one PC? Since the good 'ol days is generally one scanner scanning how would it go say plugged 2+ dongles in and being able to set each one to different frequencies and/or set them to scan set ranges each is that possible?

Apparently so. I haven't tried it but it is supposed to be just a matter of installing multiple dongles, making sure each one has the driver, then starting up multiple copies of the software. In each copy you select the dongle of choice. The CPU gets a bit of a hammering.

Also, if you have multiple sound cards/devices you can output each application to a different card. This allows you to patch the output to an input for audio processing, decoding digital (POCSAG, packet, ACARS etc) Some people are using VAC virtual audio cable to virtually patch the output to an input but the free version has limitations.

There are some tools for directly decoding digital signals without all the patching. ADS-B is popular and there are several apps to decode it and serve the data up to radar tools or to online services like FlightRadar24.

yorky wrote:And for trunking I'm guessing it supports MPT trunks? I'm currently using the 396T to scan a trunk which is like using a Front End Loader to crack a walnut.

Trunking is a bit of a hodge podge at the moment so I haven't bothered. Most of the software available for SDR and the dongles is moving at a rapid pace so anything could happen.

yorky wrote:I read past that as well, although note you need an OTG (on the go) cable (which is only a few $ anyway).

Yes, an OTG and preferably connect a powered USB hub to that. Most of the dongles suck a lot of energy.
I ordered a few of these micro OTG from the same place They also have mini OTG

Cheers Rob, does the SDR program or whatever program you have used enable recording and/or put a bunch of frequencies in and hit scan relatively easily for conventional scanning?

yorky wrote:Cheers Rob, does the SDR program or whatever program you have used enable recording and/or put a bunch of frequencies in and hit scan relatively easily for conventional scanning?

http://sdrsharp.com for Windows XP or later

Yep, most things like that are plug-ins. The recording and frequency manager plug-ins are supplied. There are a few other plug-ins including a better frequency manager and a couple of scanners.
The ability to work with these dongles is a plug-in.. sdrsharp works with a number of other software defined radios as well. The sdrsharp yahoo group is a good place to look for plugins and everything else.

Also, I just found my bookmark for this page which covers multiple dongles.

SDRSharp monitoring a 2.4 MHz VHF chunk which carries WAERN and others. You can see multiple WAERN repeaters currently active.

I'm just playing around with this now. On XP I have the issue where I can't change frequency without SDR# crashing out. I have to stop the session first, change it then start it again, is this normal?

Also if I double click on a saved frequency it crashes, sometimes nothing happens at all though.

I have tested a few known frequencies manually and it all works so looking to expand my knowledge on it as well (not sure where to find these plugins for scanning and such).

Update to my last, I've just tried the latest build and that doesn't crash when changing frequencies. Although the different to the v1 stable and the latest layout is a bit different.

I still can't see a scanner plugin

If you're running on XP then you need to download the XP version of the Zadig driver. The auto-download batchfile thingy downloads the Zadig version for Vista/Seven/Eight.
You should see some default plugins (recorder, freq manager, noise reduction) as supplied with the app. Other plugins are third party and a g%gle search helps there.
This is the site you need for the best scanner and frequency manager. It even has an installer. Usually plugins require you to manually copy files and edit the XML config file.
What dongle did you get? I got a couple of those really tiny dongles a couple of weeks ago but they are pretty cr@ppy. The USB connector is very poor. Also they don't do FM or DAB with the supplied software and drivers.

Edit: I just noticed you were using v1000 stable. That's way out of date. v1150 is very stable for me. I'm not sure why they don't make a recent version as stable and continue on from there.
Edit2: Also look here for plug-ins. Last time I tried "easy scanner" it was pretty bad.